Windows Vista Aero interface

[Anonymous]

I've been using Windows Vista RC2 for a few days now and it works very well with ArchiCAD apart from a couple of small issues.

First of all the Ayumi PDF printer driver refuses to install, and the installer says you should get an updated driver from the vendor. This is okay in my case as I don't want that driver installed anyway as I have Acrobat Pro.

Also the nice Aero Glass interface switches off when using ArchiCAD (or even when just using the installer). This is a bit of a shame and as Vista is finally being released in January, I was wondering if this will get resolved before ArchiCAD 11 is released. Probably not.

[Rob]

seeing the recommended spec for (just) running the aero interface I am amazed how much resources it would cost you. why I should waste a half of my comp grunt on fancy-shmancy gadgets? I like a nice UI but not for this price.

[Anonymous]

That's exactly what people said about XP and said that Win2000 was fine without the horrible new GUI. But the reasons to upgrade to Vista are a lot more appealing than that.

You just need a DirectX9 capable graphics card for the Aero interface, and apparently even contemporary onboard graphics works fine if you aren't using 3D apps, like we are. You need a relatively recent CPU and at least 1GB of RAM as well.

While I have noticed that a lot more RAM is being used even when nothing else is running, everything does still seem to run faster than it does in XP with the same hardware. This is most noticeable with big apps like ArchiCAD and Photoshop. They load very fast and things just feel to flow better. The look and feel is very slick and it's a joy to use.

But as more RAM is being used, it may be required to get even more RAM than you would have otherwise when you are using lots of apps at the same time or are dealing with very large files, But I haven't got to that stage yet, and I doubt I will for some time with 2GB of RAM.

With your 3.25GB of RAM I doubt you would have anything to worry about at all. What is the point of having all that RAM if your memory usage in Task Manager always stays low? Vista seems to be using the RAM to make things a lot faster and I think that the way it pages to virtual memory (pagefile) has been much improved.

There are some bad things about Vista in my opinion. The new Start Menu is rubbish in the way All Programs no longer breaks out and cascades. It makes navigating lots of installed apps a pain. It has a search box which is nice to find apps, but the new menu is a bad move.

The User Account Protection thing is a big nuisance. It stops and warns you from doing potentially risky things from a security perspective. This might help all those people that got a lot of security problems with XP, but I've turned it off.

There are a lot more settings, and the way that they are arranged in the Control Panel applets makes no sense at all and a lot of things are hard to find.

Other than these points Vista is a big improvement over XP for a lot of reasons that I haven't mentioned.

[__archiben]

it always amuses me to see windows users discussing new system features. the hungriest kids in the candy store. but anyway....

SuperJasE wrote:
Also the nice Aero Glass interface switches off when using ArchiCAD (or even when just using the installer). This is a bit of a shame and as Vista is finally being released in January, I was wondering if this will get resolved before ArchiCAD 11 is released. Probably not.

i was intrigued so went to the website to take a look. it says the aero interface is scalable dependent on hardware capabilities . . . does that mean as soon as a graphics hungry application begins to work with your card, the hardware no longer "meets the minimum requirements" and it switches itself off?

looks very 'sophisticated' too, eh?

~/archiben

[Piotr Dobrowolski]

SuperJasE wrote:
That's exactly what people said about XP and said that Win2000 was fine without the horrible new GUI. But the reasons to upgrade to Vista are a lot more appealing than that.

Maybe I am weired...but first thing I did after finishing XP install was removing unneded services and removed the ugly childish Aqua interface 😉

So if only I am forced to upgrade to Vista eventually - I hope the same thing can be done inside this new OS too. (if not probably someone third party will make such thing possible)

Probably You can see it for Yourself - if switching off the "gadgets" is possible - how the OS speed changes when they are on or off...

Best Regards,
Piotr

[stefan]

In RC1 I could switch Aero off and go to a clean Windows 2000 look.

Have reinstalled XP and cannot boot in Vista anymore. Will repair when the need is there.

But I must admit I tried the 64-bit version and that was a lot of trouble! Drivers for the Wibu key are not available for 64-bit (they are not digitally signed), so ArchiCAD ran but only as the student version.

Well, Revit and VIZ didn't even pass the installation.

AutoCAD 2007 worked but not with hardware acceleration.

[Anonymous]

Funny thing about interfaces - the new Artlantis Studio actually asks you to turn on the XP interface instead of the Win2k one! Even if you want to (quote) save resources.....

[Piotr Dobrowolski]

rwallis wrote:
Funny thing about interfaces - the new Artlantis Studio actually asks you to turn on the XP interface instead of the Win2k one! Even if you want to (quote) save resources.....

So what? - it does not stop working with the W2K interface (I use it all the time this way) - I keep asking Abvent to do something about it - when using the W2k interface Artlantis is just ugly - and there are a lot of "unused space" in the interface and I do not like such thing....

BTW this dialog was the only thing the devlopers did after my posts on the interface messup when w2k interface is used 😉

Best Regards,
Piotr