Recently (Monday night) upgraded the rig from XP Pro with Beyond Media (hereafter known as BM, as in bowel movement…..) to Vista Ultimate.
HOLY CRAP….kicking myself for not having done this earlier. Why, you ask?
1. DVD’s played without having to hunt down 3rd party programs (AnyDVD, etc)
2. Vista actually recognized and decoded the optical sound out from my MOBO. I’m no audiophile, but I didn’t know what I was missing! And it’s just in 5.1 DTS!
3. Driver update (vid card/mobo) was surprisingly easy. This is where I think that if I HADN’T waited this long (the copy of Vista has been on my desk since Feb of this year) I may have had more problems.
4. No strange setup problems with which program to play DVD’s, which program decodes audio, interlace/de-interlace/blah blah blah etc.
5. XP Pro has this funky networking setup where if certain passwords don’t match, it doesn’t recognize network drives. Spent hours and several fixes trying to get it to work. No Joy. Vista’s was a little weird to set up, but once I figured it out, IT JUST WORKED.
6. Have not seen one BSOD since moving over. Would see, on average, one per day with the old setup.
7. Now that it JUST WORKS, WAF is through the roof. Couldn’t wrestle the remote away from her last night as we watched King of the Hill recordings (at least it wasn’t Greys Anatomy!)
8. ONE SIMPLE PLUGIN to play my .ifo files.
I used to be kind of a “Damn the Man” when it came to media center/PVR software, but at the end of the day, as an average, non-videophile, non-audiophile who wants to enjoy his movies, Vista MCE has been as refreshing to me as the lime after a harsh tequila shot.
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