I’ve never been a loyal customer when it comes to graphic cards in my PC. If I remember correctly I went from an S3 card to a Matrox G100, a G200, a nVidia geForce 256, a cheap ATI card and now I’m back with nVidia. During all this the only real driver trouble I’ve had was with the Matrox cards, which could not render OpenGL games. But today I found out that nVidia’s Vista drivers do not feature nView.
nView is a set of tools that makes working with more than one display very convenient. It’s been part of nVidia’s drivers for ages, and allows you to quickly move an application to the other screen without having to restore down, drag and maximize the window. Also, nView allows you to zoom in, create multiple virtual desktops and tons of other great features. But not under Vista.
The main alternative is to use UltraMon. Although admittedly a great tool, I’d rather not pay $40 to get features that I would already have if I was still using XP. In fact, my entire dual-DVI display adapter cost me less than double what this small utility would set me back. If you’re using two displays with the same resolution, a free tool called MultiMon might work for you, but for me that’s not the case.
I’ve been scouring forums and such and it seems there no info on whether, and if so when, nView will return as part of nVidia’s driver package. I hope it will, and the sooner the better. Until then, and especially considering how ATI’s competing Hydravision utility also appears to be XP-only, this might be yet another reason to not upgrade to Vista just yet. In case you haven’t already.
Yeah, nView is very useful.
Since Vista dosn’t support it, lets stay on XP for some time.
Comment by DeeJay - Dance Music Blog — February 2, 2008 @ 5:59 am
I feel your pain on this. I just bought a pre-built gaming system a couple days ago from Newegg, and of course it came loaded up with Vista. I set up my twin monitors, went to change the wallpaper on the right-hand - and found out that nView is not included nor supported under Vista.
I hope nVidia corrects this soon. It’s just one more thing to tempt me towards pulling XP off the old system and loading t up on the new box… ><
Comment by Eric in Salt Lake — February 9, 2008 @ 8:50 pm
check out XNeat at http://www.xneat.com/ it has most of the features as nView.
and even if you didn’t find what you are looking at. and you know a little bit about VBScript or JScript you can write what you want using XNeat’s Script
Regards
Comment by nview alternative — March 3, 2008 @ 6:03 am
Nvidia has upset a lot of Vista users with this Nview deal. I use Vista at work with a duel display setup, a 22″ 1650×1080 and a 19″ 1280×1024. At home I have the exact type of setup only on XP Pro. I dread having to go to work on the Vista computer now. I will not switch to Vista at home until Nvidia clears this mess up. Some companies tend to lose sight of their customer base at times. It’s not just about the hottest cards to play to hottest games. Nview became a very important part of my work flow over the years and now, where I need it the most, I can’t use it. Poor decision by Nvidia.
Comment by Kitt — June 3, 2008 @ 9:05 pm
my my. this is a dated entry, but the point is soooooo valid.
i just went through a re-format/re-install of my xp mce (which for some reason, also made me have to re-activate my windows vista ultimate and fix the janked up the dual-boot setup on the other partition- damn you microsoft!!- but i digress.)
when finished i realized that the newest nvidia drivers i had installed have no nView functionality whatsoever. and over on the ‘cutting-edge’ vista ultimate system, same lame no-nview and a crappy control panel add-in deal. which is a f**kn rip.
even tho i’m no longer using the dual monitor setup (dvi to the sony lcd and s-vid to the TV) i would still like the features i’ve grown to know and love.. like the gestures, and the ability to set the options for the right-click menu (always on top and transparent are musts, you see!!)… what the hell to nvidia for jacking its customers.
Comment by irate n8 - san diego — July 13, 2008 @ 3:49 am
I keep checking on this as well. This is so important that it has remained the single reason I keep wanting to go back to XP. For my home theater system, Vista looks nice, but nothing can handle changing between my displays with a keystroke. This includes UltraMon, which I actually bought. In my case, my card is driving an LCD (DVI), Plasma (VGA), and separate (upstairs) HDTV using component video. UltraMon only sees two of the three displays at any given time, meaning that I must use Profiles through the nVidia Control Panel. At times, applying the profile results in a message stating that the control panel has stopped functioning - once I get this, the only way to use the profiles again requires rebooting my system. As I write this, I wonder now why I haven’t switched back to XP. I guess just the work of setting everything back up again. And Aero is pretty on the plasma.
And who woulda thought… nVidia, and not Microsoft, would be the reason I give up after all this time.
Comment by DP — July 18, 2008 @ 6:31 pm
I’m sorry to say but officially nView desktop manager will no longer be included in GeForce drivers. I’m trying out Vista x64 SP1 to see if I can get to like it, downloaded the latest Nvidia driver (175.19) and also the release notes PDF to find out where the f**k nView was and read the following on page 22
“The nView Desktop Manager will not be included in drivers for GeForce products”
So that’s XP and Vista then!
Persoanlly on XP I run 74.12 drivers as they have been the most stable and they include nView desktop manager.
I’m trying out Ultramon and Multimon but Multimon has the following:-
“Vista use hardware acceleration for its aero theme with direct writing to the display buffer. It would be therefore risky to add arrow buttons to the aero application bar. However the “secret” hotspots for the arrow buttons (visibly pictured on the XP theme above) are still there and fully functional.”
Which probably means we are never likely to see nView features again on anything past XP
Comment by Dave — August 15, 2008 @ 8:07 pm