big surprise: vista issues

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So my school started carrying Windows Vista, and I figured I would at least try it out since I need to be able to provide tech support to vista users. So I set out to do a clean install on one of my machines. And the bloody thing won't install... it just hangs when trying to load the installation software when I boot to it.

My already low opinion of vista sunk even further.


PS: the school's image of vista is 32-bit business SP1...

Why are they downgrading to Vista? Do they need to justify a large IT/tech support budget or something?

I'll take their IT budget if they'll stick with XP... ><

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

Not so much maintaining a business... this is me trying to provide tech support for my mother and friends of hers, who get laptops that have vista pre-installed on them. I've already given up on trying to show them linux, so don't ask about that...

Show them Ubuntu.

Honestly, the majority of the people I've met with Vista pre-loaded on their computer got loads of problems with it, often to the point of their machine simply not even booting up. It's crap. XP is probably better, but I've yet to run that one natively. Linux is the way to go, or, if that's too scary for some reason (Ubuntu seems easier on n00bs than Windows...) there's always Mac.

That's the distro I was trying to show them but they freaked out. My mother, in particular, is semi-literate with computers, but has been using windoze since at least 3.1 (back when it was a good non-bloated OS), and most of the other people have gotten accustomed to windoze since about 2000 or so with their workplace.


Believe me, I know. Like I said earlier, I can't even get it to install (though the disk loaded up on my laptop, so it's most likely something with my motherboard Vista doesn't like...)


I've been able to, but I don't want to run through my one license of XP, only to not be able to get another one... I need to keep XP for myself, after all... at least until windoze 7 comes out... I've heard that msft is starting to ramp up development on that because of the hatred of Vista, kind of like what they did on XP when ME failed miserably...


Only if someone is a complete noob and doesn't have any pre-existing small amount of computer literacy...


Not touching Apple with a 10-foot pole. I'm not a big fan of the "we know what's good for you" smarminess their corporate policy contains... it reminds me too much of my parents when I was little...

Even if I would be willing to use it, I don't have the kind of money to get a mac anyway. Most of my machines, aside from my thinkpad T60 and my custom-build gaming machine (which the parts cost about $500) are old Pentium 3 machines that the church I work at was going to throw away.

Funny thing is Ive been having similar problems trying to get Ubuntu to work, using Wubi to install. Unable to find HDD drivers or something like that, I only really gave it one good attempt before I moved on to other things.

My mom is taking well to ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop. Shes got xp on her work machine, but shes hogging my unused laptop! She wanted to look something up and shes had it ever since! Shes got an ignored xp desktop upstairs in her house as well.

I didnt try sell the idea to her. I just let her use it and she fell comfortably into it.

Shes 61. Linux is polished. Its just going to take some time to propagate.

But linux is exploding into the embedded system market, such as phones, mp3 players game consoles, and there are a host of open source consoles out there as well now. People cling to whats familiar, and linux is going to get darn familiar.

Why do people always consider Vista as an upgrade. I mention, "You might want to upgrade to XP" then they always say, "no Vista is the upgrade" but someting better is supposed to be the upgrade...

I've installed Vista on 2 of my computers with complete success, but my computers always had the minimum requirements and no major issues

I'm well over the minimum requirements and Vista is still garbage.

Plus, it's not even as polished as XP. The Aero theme is way too overdone and tacky.

I like some of the theme, transparency looks good - but. How are you supposed to get that 3D view of widow swapping? Only way I saw was a icon in "Quick Launch" I thought it was attached to Alt-Tab...Grrr

Dunno why I'm still using Vista to be honest. I think my main reasons for it are:
If someone is using Vista and refuses to upgrade to Windows XP, I'll need to know where to find stuff.
I can't be arsed to sort out another partition with another installation.

Depends with the certain hardware with Vista. ATI video works a lot better than Nvidia under Vista and so-on.

Does it? I shouldnt have swapped my brothers cards for nvidia perhaps. We swapped out ati 1650 pros for geforce 8600 GTs.