Vista Final - Solitaire

[AmigaHeretic]

Ok I work at one of those "Big Box" computer stores.  We set up lots of new PC day in and day out.  (HP's, Gateways, etc.)  

Anyway, got a copy of Vista final to take home to play on.  Installed it on my system.  I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2gb of dual channel RAM, SATA HD, and an ATI 9200SE.  

Install Windows, goes through pretty quick.  Here I am at the new desktop.  What to try first?  IE - Yep can browse web pages. Nice.

Next, better try out Solitare, I know all the old ladies will be asking about that.  First I get a message that my graphics card is not "powerful" enough to run solitare so they will have to reduce the graphics features!!  

HA HA HA...

So it comes up and looks pretty much the same, but the cards move SOOOOOOOO slow.  They don't even slide, you just click on them and then click where you want to put them and it takes forever.  

I hate Windows! :-)

Everything else I've tested seems to work good so far though.

[AmigaHeretic]

Wow that must be an old radeon, because aero 3d and the new solitare in Vista works great on my old AGP 8X Radeon 9550 on my media center PC that I use for recording TV shows.. You really should update your graphics card man.

On the box for my ATI 9200 it says it's the "Best Graphics Card in the World!"  So why would I want to upgrade? ;-)


Seriously though this Aero thing is a scam by Microsoft I beleieve.  First, take my card for example.  I play Guild Wars on it for example and from my POV it looks awsome.

Areo only requires 64mb of RAM.  Mine has 128mb.  Most of the computers sold come with 'crappy' on-board graphics chipsets that don't support Aero.  Forcing the user to buy a new graphics card....
...UNLESS that is that their "BIOS" lets them enable Aero support & then some how magically Aero will all of a sudden work on unsupported hardware?  Sounds like Bill is forcing the computer manufactures to pay him for this "BIOS" trick so they don't have to through all the current Motherboard with the crap onboard graphics cards away.

So if I paid Microsoft a big amount of Money I could probably make my ATI 9200 work with Aero as well just fine.  Not a hardware issue here I'm affraid.

Aside from that, Solitaire should still be playable without an Aero supported graphics card.  What am I going to tell the old ladies that just bought a brand new PC today when they get a message that the computer isn't "good enough" (which is what they'll read in the message) to play their favorite game?  

Why force it to be so slow?  It doesn't make sense.

[AmigaHeretic]

so you are basing vista performance on how well solitare plays, interesting benchmark. Kind of like judging how well the amiga os is by testing its web browers, just plain silly and wrong. I guess you say it works well otherwise.    anyway, I won't be testing vista anytime soon as I have no need for it and have better things to do with my time. Since you claim to hate windows, here is an idea, stop using it! Linux packs quite a punch nowdays

No, not basing, but I found it amusing.  Had I paid several hundred dollars for it and not be given it free from work, well, I wouldn't have been so amused.

Stop using Windows?  I guess it's a love hate relationship.  All day at work I fix the damn things, but it does do everything I want at home and is very stable & I usually don't have to fix my own system.

I pretty much just use Opera anyway.  I run a tab for the web based MSN messenger, I use it as my email client, IRC client, radio (thanks to some awsome Opera widgets), download torrents in it, oh and I surf the internet with it too ;-)  Opera is pretty much the perfect app.  If Opera was the whole OS too, well, that would be awsome.  Opera on AmigaOS, well, I wouldn't have a reason to use Windows anymore.

So I have two more points of view on Vista after work today.  So slow.  Add/Remove programs sucks compared with XP.  Everything feels like molasses.  The machines with the Core2Duos and Aero support are a lot better though.  Not sure why the "non-aero" interface is so slow.

On my own system I have installed GuildWars and it runs pretty much the same.  I kinda like it.  Cool new stuff to explore.  Sure I feel like I have no idea what's going on in the OS and that I have no idea how to fix it or tweak it yet.  But it's pretty cool.

I did install 64bit Windows Vista Ultimate, but have all 64bit drivers.  I don't think this is the reason for solitare going slow.  Like I said, GuildWars runs great.

Anyway, I don' think it will be long before Vista takes over.  Every computer we sell now at work is Vista.  XP is gone.  

[AmigaHeretic]

I am just amazed anyone is benchmarking solitaire.

I guess you've never worked in retail PC sales.

There's 2 things 50 percent of the customer's ( most of them over 55) do with their computers.

Check email. (Never try to explain the difference of something like Outlook Express vs. Web based email)

and play Solitaire.

That's their first question when buying a computer.  "Does it have games on it like Solitaire."

That why I even bothered to check it out on my sytem.

[AmigaHeretic]

Ahhh, but can you remove all the DRM bull$hit???

Yeah.  Just install WinUAE and do everything in AmigaOS that you want ;-)