OS

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Has anyone ever encountered the hard drive limitation for windows XP in prior service packs of 137Gb.

Also, I think its time to give Vista a chance. My company is going to update all our workstations to Vista so I might as well run it at home. Who is running it and what are your experiences pro and con with Vista.

Also, do we have a usable copy of Vista on the FTP. Thanks for the input.

[LA_MERC_T4rg3T]

The motherboard and bios have to support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing.

After that, You will need Windows XP SP1 or higher to take advantage of drives larger than 137GB

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

10-4 Toby. My board does I just had a guy at work that upgraded to two 200Gb HD's and couln't get them to register more than 137 Gb. I'd never heard of that but I don't buy drives bigger than 120. What are you thoughts on Vista Toby?

[LA_MERC_DocSparky]

I would not upgrade over the 1xx limit. You can apply the SP and it will work fine. You can even use something like Ghost to get back to a single large hard drive (if that is what you are after).

Since I'm a developer, I made the move to Vista to support new products. I would have to do it eventually, so I bit the bullet (so to speak). I personally like Vista, but it doesn't run games as quickly as XP. The newer NVidia and ATI drivers help things a lot. I find the OS to be more stable for me and with the driver updates, my games are plenty fast now. If your OS is running fine now... stick with it. Wait until you have a real reason to upgrade.

my 2 cents.

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

Andy - I have a legal copy of Vista Business if you are interested...I'm not going to run it - I've settled into Ubuntu, and I have my Windows games running fine in Wine (hey that rhymes!) and I've been playing UT2004 a lot - which is native to Linux...so I'm pretty settled in.

Are you going to load 32 bit or 64 bit? I've ran both, and although it's a little more picky, the 64-bit seems to run a lot better than the 32, but the choice is yours.

Let me know if you're interested in the copy I have - if you want 32 bit, I could send you the disks, if you want 64 bit, you could download the .iso off the FTP and I can send you the key.

It HAS been installed once, but you can call the 800# and tell them you formated, and are reloading - they will re-activate - pretty much the same way XP was - they just won't let two machines run it at the same time.

http://www.lamerc.com/uploads/Screenshot2.jpg

[LA_MERC_eX1|eS' ch1|d]

Vista works pretty well form all accounts I've heard. It just doesn't play well with apps yet. Operating systems are just like cars, you should wait a year before you go buying the newest thing out so the engineers have time to trouble shoot them. Or in the case of OS's, for the programmers to fix the broken parts and make good drivers for all your apps.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Well, I'm not sure when the office will be switched to Vista and my operating system is working fine but I think I need to go ahead and bite the bullet and see what its like before being made to do it. So if you still have it Jayson I would like your copy. Let me know if you need any money for it. Thanks everyone for the input.

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

are you wanting to run 32bit or 64bit? if you want 64 bit just grab the iso off the ftp, and let me know and I'll pm you the key.

Like I said earlier - 64 bit ran a LOT better for me - I'm running 64 bit linux now - I will never go back to a 32 bit OS of any kind again.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

I should try 64 bit first. Which folder is it in.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Is it the one in drive 3 under apps called Windows Vista 64 Ultimate Retail.

[LA_MERC_Shadow]

Uh....maybe

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

yes that's it andy

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Sweet. Thanks Jayson.

[LA_MERC_Andyconda]

Got it downloaded. May be until Saturday before I can get a chance to install it. Thanks again Jayson.

[LA_MERC_MadMAX]

cool beans man - here's an EXCELLENT tweak guide: http://www.tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/index.htm

Also - make sure you stay on top of the latest Nvidia drivers - they had gotten to a point when I was running Vista, to where it had finally surpassed XP - both in actual games FPS and in 3Dmarks!

I know you have a pretty killer machine, so when you get it installed, and all your drivers updated, make sure you refresh your windows experience index, and post your scores for me -I had (if I remember right, 5.0 on CPU, 5.9 on everything else, except Hard Drive which was like a 5.4...5.9 is as high as you get - I doubt you'll get a 5.9 on CPU since even the Intel Extreme Quad cores overclocked to nearly 4GHz aren't even hitting that yet - I'd guess you'd get about a 5.5-5.6 - can't remember excactly what you are running.

[Ab1dab1]

One word of advice.

If anyone buys a new machine with Vista, you may want to do your homework to make sure the system is backwards compatible with XP. There are some distributors out there selling hardware that has no XP support, so if you don't like Vista you will be stuck with it.

A few more tid-bits about vista. Better have a dual core or better machine and at least 2gb or RAM or don't even bother upgrading as your performance will suck compared XP.

I haven't gotten reports from people who have loaded Vista themselves, but machines that are pre-loaded with vista eat up anywhere from 8-24gb of disk space just for the OS (I'm sure some of that space is media generation, etc...but still it is a heck of a lot of space considering the fully patched XP Pro install is around 1.5 - 2.5gb in size).

Also Microsoft recently announced that the first Service Pack for Vista will not be released until April of 2008. I find some irony in that Dell recently announced that they will still sell XP machines (although you have to order them through Business channel instead of Home channel) until May of 2008.

Abi

[Ab1dab1]

One thing I forgot.

If anyone out there works in IT and doesn't know about this. Microsoft has a Software Subscription service they provide for businesses and IT consultants to promote use of their latest software. It is called Action Pack.

For around $200 a year you get fully licensed software from Microsoft (literally all of it...comperable to what you would get from an MSDN subscription).

I've been in IT now for over 12 years and have participated in this program from its inception. It is a great way to get hands on experience with the latest release of their desktop and server products (Win XP, Vista, 2003 Server, Small Business Server, Sharepoint, Exchange, SQL, etc).

Here is a link:
https://partner.microsoft.com/40016455

Yeah you have to pay for it annually, but when you consider that the cost of this package is less than 1 MS Office license it is by far worth it (did I mention you get 10 licenses for all of the desktop OS, Office, Visio, Project, etc?).

Abi