Windows Vista saga continues — I’m loving Vista!

 When we last left off, I’d set up a dual-boot partition for XP and Windows Vista.  It went pretty well, I was able to use both XP and Vista.  But no matter how hard I tried and using all the tips and tricks I found, I still couldn’t get the audio to work in the 64 bit version.  So I had a thought, maybe the 32 bit version would work better?  Now I was very lucky that the Vista fairies left the copy of 32 bit Vista for Business on my computer so I could give the shot.

I know I read this somewhere, but an absolutely awesome part of the whole Vista dual-boot thing is that when I boot into Vista the Vista partition is C and XP is D.  When I boot into XP it’s C and Vista D!  It’s automatic.  It’s slick and great for installing apps.

Well I have to say that it did the trick, the 32 bit version worked much better.  The audio drivers, after a quick update download, worked just fine and  the microphone works too!  The audio works, albeit, a little scratchy at times but still.  The funny thing is contrary to what you’d think, the 32 bit version of Vista is running a lot faster than the 64 bit version!  I have no idea why, and it any goes against computing rationale, but it’s true.  I was able to test both systems and compare them pretty well.  The basic things like switching windows installing applications, etc is was 32-bit that was still working much better.

I have to say that the whole Vista experience is left me scratching my head, because really the 64 bit version for 64 bit computers should do better. And there should have been more drivers available it seems that a lot of vendors are caught with their pants down.

All the above said, the dual-boot trick might not work for everyone.  If you bought an upgrade license, you might have to make a second partition, load XP on it, then Vista.  Not great, but you know jumping in with both feet into Vista, might not be great either.

As it stands at this moment, I’m running Vista most of the time.  I swtich to XP in the evenings so Carboniate can finish downloading some forgotten files.  Once that’s complete, I’ll move stuff around, and return to a single partition machine.

So to sum up this ordeal here are some key points:

• 64-bit Vista isn’t ready for primetime
• 32-bit Vista appears to faster on a 64-bit machine than the 64-bit version
• Try to dual-boot XP and Vista until you’re sure everything is ducky (Vista only needs about 20-30 gigs to be happy)
• Keep on top of updated drivers.
• If a driver is giving you problems (like my audio is still not 100%), Google is your friend