Topic: Vista users step inside

[Teen Wolf Blitzer]

Well I'm really liking Vista thus far.  What gadgets are you using or do you find worth it?  I am really liking the Utorrent and cpu gadgets.  Very handy.  Vista is pretty cool.  So far it handles every piece of software I use.  Haven't had an issue yet.  The quad core just screams.  So happy I finally upgraded the pc.

[RobertNC]

I upgraded my laptop to a quad core a couple of months ago, and run Vista 64 Ultimate.  I am mostly doing software development on the machine.  It took me a few days to get used to the new Explorer layout.  Other than that no real issues.  I have two applications that I have to use in with an XP virtual machine but only because the company I am working for is using some crappy old legacy systems that could not be installed.  Everything else I run works fine, although a few programs have to be run in XP compatibility mode, but I could care less about that as long as they run without having to switch to VM.

I'm very happy with Vista so far.  For running SQL Server and development tools, it's great, very stable.  I guess a lot of the flap with Vista was people running it on machines that really did not have enough RAM etc, but it is the best version of Windows I have used so far.

[mmadd29]

I upgraded my laptop to a quad core a couple of months ago, and run Vista 64 Ultimate. 

How much RAM do you have in your machine?

I know 64bit can access 16GB, against only 3GB that 32 bit can.

[Gordon]

I upgraded my laptop to a quad core a couple of months ago, and run Vista 64 Ultimate. 

How much RAM do you have in your machine?

I know 64bit can access 16GB, against only 3GB that 32 bit can.

only 3?  xp pro sees 3.5 of my 4.  I figured vista could at least do better than xp pro in that regard. 

[mmadd29]

I upgraded my laptop to a quad core a couple of months ago, and run Vista 64 Ultimate. 

How much RAM do you have in your machine?

I know 64bit can access 16GB, against only 3GB that 32 bit can.

only 3?  xp pro sees 3.5 of my 4.  I figured vista could at least do better than xp pro in that regard. 

My understanding is that the machine can see it, but can not use more than 3GB, It has something to do with the binary math of a 32 bit processor....

[mmadd29]

I just found this:

the “4GB” maximum memory limit of 32-bit Windows is purely theoretical. In practice, the max memory is something significantly less, equal to 4GB minus your video card memory and the address space allocated to a couple other hardware resourcse. Typically, the realistic maximum memory is somewhere betwee 2.5GB and 3.5GB.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are discovering this AFTER they pay for 4GB of RAM. For the record, this limitation has always been there, including in Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows. However, nowadays, more computer hardware is designed to support 4GB or more of RAM, and memory is getting cheap enough that more people can afford the full 4GB.

So you might be using 3.5, I thought the limit was 3GB, but looks like it is 4GB

Here is an explaination:

By definition, a 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB).

A full article is here:

http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2004/02/19/the-4gb-windows-memory-limit-what-does-it-really-mean.aspx

[OFOTD]

Just to make one little comment on RAM and 32/64 bit OSes.  One thing to consider is that alot of software only allocates a defined chunk of RAM.   So just because you have a 32bit OS with 4GB of RAM doesn't mean that any given program will use as much as it can.   It could use 1GB or 3GB depending on the allocation size.

On my 64bit machine (Win 7) I have 16GB of RAM and have never seen more than about 8GB used at any one time.   

[mmadd29]

Just to make one little comment on RAM and 32/64 bit OSes.  One thing to consider is that alot of software only allocates a defined chunk of RAM.   So just because you have a 32bit OS with 4GB of RAM doesn't mean that any given program will use as much as it can.   It could use 1GB or 3GB depending on the allocation size.

On my 64bit machine (Win 7) I have 16GB of RAM and have never seen more than about 8GB used at any one time.   

Good point......

Hopefully by the time Win 7 arrives, software manufactures will have caught up and allow 64 bit versions to allocate more RAM.

[RobertNC]

How much RAM do you have in your machine?

I know 64bit can access 16GB, against only 3GB that 32 bit can.

I have 6 GB RAM, but I am not sure how many applications are out there yet that are actually built to be able to use it.  I don't game, I would guess those guys are further on the 64bit curve than most.  A DAW would really benefit from it doing 24/96 work, but I have not had an opportunity to look into whether one is out.

SQL Server is the main thing I run that needs and can actually use all the features - 64bit, higher memory addresses and run multiple true concurrent threads.  Since I am doing development work, 6 GB is plenty, I'm not actually trying to use the machine as a server.  But it is a noticeable improvement.  My previous job our dev machines had two CPUs, 4 GB RAM, and XP.  SQL Server 2005 even doing dev work would really grind on those machines, my new laptop feels light years better.

It's pretty sweet.  Amazing how much power you can get from an upper range consumer machine.  

Now if only someone would make a genuinely decent high capacity consumer level hard drive.  I made the mistake of buying a 1TB Seagate external.  They used to be the industry leader, now they make Chinese shit.  The first one failed within 60 days.  I did an RMA and the replacement failed in 20 days.  Unbelievable.  And the rest are not much better.   I am just going to forget the notion of high density consumer drives until someone can maybe get it at least sort of right, and when I can find some time I'm gonna put together a DIY enclosure and just load a whole stack of lower capacity proven drives in it.

[mmadd29]

SQL Server is the main thing I run that needs and can actually use all the features - 64bit, higher memory addresses and run multiple true concurrent threads.  Since I am doing development work, 6 GB is plenty, I'm not actually trying to use the machine as a server.  But it is a noticeable improvement.  My previous job our dev machines had two CPUs, 4 GB RAM, and XP.  SQL Server 2005 even doing dev work would really grind on those machines, my new laptop feels light years better.

It's pretty sweet.  Amazing how much power you can get from an upper range consumer machine.  

I have Exchange 2007 which is 64 bit on 2003 Server x64.  I upgrdaed from 4GB to 16GB, and there is a huge difference in speed.  To open the management console would take a couple minutes before, now it's like 10 seconds.

I have done evals of Win 7 and will probably switch when it comes out.  My thinking was doing 64bit, if the software we use can do it.  Eventually the software should catch up..

[OFOTD]

Here is a good 64bit software website that will help you figure out just how much you can get out of your software/RAM/CPU

http://www.start64.com


and here's a Tom's Hardware article on setting up your first 64bit DAW:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/digital-audio-64-bit,2336.html#xtor=RSS-182

[bugg100]

For what it's worth, my 1.5 tb started the click deal and I held onto it to rescue some audio files.  It is a firmware issue and the problem is acknowledged in the internals but not with external drives, even though they are stuffed with the very same drives that have the FW issues. At the least, I felt I could crack the case and update FW and have my files....

I used the drive with XP and it had problems there, on a whim I tried it on a 32 bit Vista machine, and I copied my files off succesfully. It may work for others on a different OS as well.  Still a raw deal for many, though.

YMMV,
Joe

I made the mistake of buying a 1TB Seagate external.  They used to be the industry leader, now they make Chinese shit.  The first one failed within 60 days.  I did an RMA and the replacement failed in 20 days.  Unbelievable.  And the rest are not much better.

[RobertNC]

There was a firmware issue with Seagate drives but mine were supposedly not affected.  Neither of my drives failed from a BSY state error, which is the firmware issue.  The first one was corrupting data and the partition information - I was able to recover most of the data from that one.  The replacement died and you could hear the spindle grinding.  I tried numerous things including pulling the drive out of the housing and connecting it up directly to a known good power supply and cables.  It was a mechanical failure, nothing worked.

Seagate is now manufacturing absolute shit.  I will never own another Seagate drive.

[terabyte23]

I agree about Seagate.  I was a loyal customer for 10 years, but I think their quality went downhill in the last couple of years.  I have had good luck recently with the WD 1TB "black" internal drives.  Time will tell if they have good performance over the long term.

On my Windows box I am running 64bit Vista and mostly like it.  Quad core machine with 8GB RAM.  I do some video editing and find the extra memory handy, and it's nice for audio editing too.  The thing I don't like about Vista is the weird layout and behavior in Windows Explorer - like when there are WAV files in a directory it gives me Genre and Artists columns, etc., rather than the regular Type and Size, etc.  I'm guessing I can customize it, just haven't bothered yet 

[RobertNC]

On my Windows box I am running 64bit Vista and mostly like it.  Quad core machine with 8GB RAM.  I do some video editing and find the extra memory handy, and it's nice for audio editing too.  The thing I don't like about Vista is the weird layout and behavior in Windows Explorer - like when there are WAV files in a directory it gives me Genre and Artists columns, etc., rather than the regular Type and Size, etc.  I'm guessing I can customize it, just haven't bothered yet 

I did some web searches and found that despite the much publicized Vista hating, most power users really like it, which makes sense.  Software developers, serious digital music enthusiasts, we tend to invest in machines that can really handle Vista, and everyday I am becoming more and more appreciative of how stable it is for my development tools than XP was.

But yes, Explorer seems to be the most common sticking point on adapting to Vista, and it is really the only aspect I have found moderately annoying.

It is easy to change the format to show you the more meaningful information you want like file sizes, dates and types.  Just go to Properties and click the Customize Tab.  Then change the folder type template to "Documents".  This will give you the key view parameters - size, type, date.  That is all you get with the standard Documents template, but for me at least it is all I really need.   That is enough info for me to dump a couple of days of masters off my 722, and be able to sort them into show folders based on the timestamp, delete wav tracks after encoding etc.

It is kind of irritating that you have to do it each time, but once you set up a main folder for a show, just go ahead and create all the subfolders even if you are not ready for them yet.  (I create a top level folder per show, then put masters, edits, and the final tracks in their own subfolders).  The top level folder will give you the option to apply the same style to all subfolders so at least you only do it once.

I would like to just turn off that whole "Media" template at the machine level once and for all, I consider it useless.  I know there is no option to just do it for the root drive but have not yet had the time to research if/how it can be done.