The forum is a ghost town.......

Well.....at least we don't have to worry about answering too many posts....

I'm wondering if the Vista release will spark some interest in the forums again but considering that the betas have been out for quite some time....and there hasn't been any posts here, I don't think the Vista release will do anything except for mabye a minor surge of people who post asking for help and then leave again.

I also haven't been too turned on by Vista anyways since I've mostly been working and Ubuntu has got me more excited than yet another retread of the same old NT....


These forums are geared more towards getting applications/games to work in Windows/Linux which like most such sites doesn't lend itself well to alot of posters....so perhaps there should be a general gaming forum or.....something?

I can't be bothered spending the $10,457 required to upgrade my machine enough to run the OS and any game within it. My machine already struggles with AoE3 on minimal settings.

I downloaded the RC1 ISO from MS for a couple of mates who's computers resemble Mini Coopers and cause I have 30gb free off-peak downloads every month I have a urge to burn through.

Sadly, the IT overlord here at work (I'm only a standard lord) says I can't, he called it a "distraction" or similar.

I've been testing Vista since the first public BETA, I like some things and hate other parts of this OS, but that's to be expected.

However, I'm more concerned that ATi can't seem to get their act together with their latest RC1 Vista Drivers, the desktop is too herky jerky for me without proper drivers so I'm glad I dual-booted with my Win 2k install

Just wait for the Vista and Sims 2 threads.
Agreed, there have not been much activity here in couple months.


I have the Vista Beta 2 CPP DVD, tested it for couple days and switched back to XP. Perhaps should now test the RC1 and see improvements...

I hate to say it, but XP may have become robust enough to survive standard operating glitches, and games not designed for it is all that seem to keep choking it up. I have no empirical basis for this judgment - it is just that there is no traffic on the site.

Actually, I would be much more interested in what DosFreak says about Ubuntu than any news about Vista.

I've just been looking through alot of the old posts and when 2000 came out the forums were jumping all over that....same thing with XP and to a small degree 2003........Visa....almost nothing. WTF? Come on people it's New, Bright and Shiny! You should be all over it people! Hello?


Sadly I'll be using Vista since I'm a Network Administrator and I have to use it to support my users. (Thankfully we won't be deploying it to our users for another 2 years!! Woohoo!).

For personal use I'll be using it as I've been using Windows for quite awhile.....just for gaming/testing for my users/ and for application compatibility testing. For Home/work desktop it'll be Linux when I can and Windows when I have to. It's a good thing I have MSDN because I personally like the last Windows releases will not be buying it. (Last Windows release I actually bought was 98SE....All Windows releases since then have been work copies).

Two major updates are planned for near future. I am sure both will increase the traffic a bit


I don't know. I tried multiple builds of Vista but each build was a huge disappointment for me. I personal think that Vista's hardware requirements are way to high for the feature that it offers. I had yesterday the pleasure to try Novell's new SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 on an AOpen EZ18 Athlon 3000+ system with GeForce 4 MX 64MB. What can I say? It runs beautiful. The new Compiz/Xgl based 3D desktop looks terrific and all visual effects are running smooth on that machine. Windows Vista on the same machine won't even support the networking card nor support any 3D visual effects

LOL, yeah I have been quite myself lately on here also. I could answer only so many SIMS 2 questions before getting burnt out!
I tried the first beta build of Vista but am waiting for the final (as final as MS can make anything that is) release before commenting.
but seeing as I have 3 computers at home I don't think Vista is something I am going to jump on right away. After all I'm not about to spend over $1,000 just for OS's!
S

Hmmm, I've noticed the home licensing issue come up in a couple of blogs. Alot of people have suggested to MS to offer discounts and such for home users but it doesn't look like they are going to go through with it.

Latest conspiracy rumour is that PC manufacturers want to sell PC's....which come with Vista, so they are trying to get people to buy new PC's. Sounds pretty weak to me, it's probably just the usual MS oversight.

I would use Vista more if ATi would release stable drivers for their cards, perhaps a release that actually installs properly and doesn't corrupt the screen while installing and forcing users to press the reset button, go into safe mode and uninstall their so-called Vista RC1 drivers

Hi DosFreak,

It's my opinion, that the way the forum has been nested within the main website, makes it more difficult to use. It seems like it's better now, but I too have more or less quit using it.

Cheers,
Christian Blackburn

I still lurk around from time to time, but really I haven't seen much of anything that's been brought up in the last couple years that wasn't already beat to death by 2003. Heh, in fact there is a bit of deja vu with this thread http://www.compatdb.org/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/139886/page/0/fpart/1

heh. That thread is really weird with all of the APK posts removed.

I miss APK, anybody seen or heard from Alex recently ?!?

I think I received a PM and/or email from him about 6~8 months ago and nothing since.

Hell, I've seen ChristianB post more often now then APK does

This isn't like the grand ol' days of NT4.0 where there was an effort to see what apps/games would run on it, and if there were any fixes or workarounds for the ones that didn't. W2k was a major upgrade from NT4.0, and thus left plenty to talk about. XP's release followed close on the heals of W2k, and gave plenty more to talk about for its problems and being the first NT-based OS marketed to the masses. Now, XP is much improved, and, given Microsoft's track record with XP's initial release, Vista might very well be freshly released flatulence in 2007.

Just how FRESH a gas bag release do you think Vista will be come 2007 ?!?

Hard to say myself if at all, however, I can see where Microsoft is trying to release a much more secure OS and they are trying things they have never done before, well like the WinFS they were hoping to deploy in this OS release.

Only time will tell how successful they will be with this OS and here's to hoping that they can get much better driver support from the third party vendors because both nVidia and ATi seem to be having driver issues even in RC1.

Hopefully not too fresh, but bad driver support isn't good.

I seriously do not like reviving old threads, but it has been a year or so since I last posted. I too miss the way these forums were, during the NT4/2000 days these forums were buzzing about getting things to work. With the emergence of XP2 and its maturity as the best OS even with Vista's release, the need for compatibility has just dived.

I tried Vista, and I don't like it, I just find it a memory pig, and the new effects are nice, but not needed right now. I will wait for SP1 but even then, I will probably only switch when a MUST HAVE DX10 game comes.

I have been putting my focus on Windows XP x64, and trying to figure out how to get stuff working on that. I think XP x64 is underrated. I mean its XP in a 64-bit shell, and it can use all 4 gigs of my RAM. Now....how to get 16-bit applications to work!

At Neowin.net, there seems to be user named "APK"... and judging from his writing style, I would say this is the same Alex...

I post alot over at the Sharky Extreme forums, and APK was over there too.....he went there after being banned here....eventually he got on people's nerves, and he was banished there as well.

"the need for compatibility has just dived."

I wouldn't say the need for compatibility is any different from when 2000 was released, if anything it's even worse with the release of Vista.

I think it's more of the case that people are just not using the older software or that the software they got working in 2000 the same tricks work in XP/Vista.

As for why it's slower around here it's a little bit of the above two reasons but mostly the fact that compatibility wise Vista isn't that drastically different from XP. Different enough to be annoying for gaming but not terribly so.


I frequent VOGONS more than NTCompatible due to more gaming/technical discussions. NTCompatible forums nowadays are basically new users posting their simple questions and then never coming back....therefore not building a community.


I'm still working on my compatibility list and I'd say that assuming you have all of the drivers that XP/2003 64bit is actually more compatibile overall than Vista 64bit. The same goes for XP/2003 32bit and Vista 32bit. XP/2003 32bit are overall more compatible.

As for 16-bit programs.

DOS programs work great in DosBox. For DOS/Windows applications that don't work in DosBox you can use VPC/Vmware/Qemu/VirtualBox of course.

(I use Windows 3.1 in DosBox for my old Windows 3.1 games)

Yeah I have been using DOSBox for the old DOS applications, its just 16-bit Windows games that don't work like Ski Free or Chip's Challenge...basically that 16-bit Entertainment Pack that came out for Windows 3.1. I can use the emulation layer with Virtual PC....I just don't see why the need, is there anyway to get 16-bit emulation working on x64? Or getting the NTVDM working somehow and then getting the program working on top it? If somebody ever did, that would be quite awesome, even some of those 16-bit installers annoy me because the actual program is 32-bit. Eg. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 (requires manual install)

So dosfreak, does Vogons also help troubleshoot issues with XP Pro 64-bit Edition ?!?