Windows Vista

[ejoiner 21]

I wonder if anyone has done a serious analysis of how FS9 and FSX work with windows Vista? I am interested as a mid range PC user, if I should leave my XP install alone or upgrade. Would be great if somebody would write an article on upgrade/migrating to Vista and how and why one should do it.I have 5 PC's on a network in my house and mine of course is the mother ship. Am interested also in the network capabilities of Vista with other Windows OS's. As always, I will probably hold off on Vista til I see some tangible benefit. I've already upgraded my PC to 2 gb of SDRAM and a new video card capable of latest shaders etc for the Vista OS...but will see if I have to do that for all my PC's now.Eric

[Mike T 208]

Eric:There is a performance hit with Vista in FS9 on the order of about 5% - 15%. This can be expected +- across the board with all 3D games.If you want to find out how your computer will perform, you should download the Vista Ready utility from Microsoft. This will give you a rating and compatibility check.Networking is networking and since Vista is simply a node it brings very little new to the table in that department. Vista natively supports IPv6 (which is of no use right now), and there are some collaboration tools built in. Of course, Vista is not a server application so you get none of those apps. You still have file and printer sharing if you are running a workgroup at home.Vista comes with DX10 natively. If you have a Nvidia 8800 (the only DX10 card right now) then it will run DX10 with the latest Vista drivers. MSFS will run on DX 9L compatibility mode and I can't comment on that since I don't have a DX10 compatible card. I've been running Vista since early 2006 and I've upgraded all 5 computers on my home Domain as well as my mom's computer which connection to my domain via VPN and have had no problems. I am running Windows 2003 R2, Exchange 2003, Live Communications Server, plus IIS and have absolutely no problems connect Vista nodes to the Win 2003 domain or accessing domain services. I plan to upgrade to Longhorn Server when that comes out though.Hope this helps.Mike T.

[tunnelcat 1]

Eric,If you want to read about Vista and upgrading, get the February 2007 issue of Maximum PC and the January 2007 issue of PC Magazine. It sounds like you don't want to upgrade unless you have a very fast machine, a lot of memory (2 gigs at least) and a Direct X10 graphics card. Also there is a rumor out there that Vista may already have a security hole, so personally I'm going to wait for at least a year for debugging and all the other people out there to beta test it first, LOL. When buying software this expensive, never buy the first version.Kim