I took the plunge and bought Vista last week. I purchased the Home Premium Upgrade edition because I already had a legitimate copy of XP. The CompUSA near me is going out of business and they were offering 10% off all software. I also found a great trick to perform a clean install using the upgrade version. For some ridiculous reason, Microsoft removed the option to perform a clean install with an upgrade version. In previous releases you could pop in your previous OS disk to prove you were worthy of the upgrade. Not so anymore. I won’t cover the process since it’s already documented all over the internet.
Using the above mentioned install process took a little over an hour. However, the basic Vista install only takes about 20 minutes. I already backed up all of our old data using this tool. Getting our user accounts and documents back on Vista was extremely easy. This theme of “it just works” is something Mac enthusiasts have enjoyed for years. This is due in large part to the fact that Mac operating systems have always been tied to specific hardware. However, every function in Vista is amazingly intuitive. With only a few days under my belt, here are my thoughts.
For reference, here are my system specs:
Dell 4700 Frankenstein – Everything has been replaced, except the motherboard.
Pentium 4 32bit 3.6ghz
1gb DDR2 400 RAM
nVidia 7600GT 256mb
DVD-RW 16x
Acer 19″ Widescreen LCD
512mb Kingston DataTraveler USB Drive for ReadyBoost
1) Navigating Software and Files:
This is where Vista has gained the most ground. Finding files in XP was a disaster. If you didn’t know exactly where you put something, good luck finding it in a reasonable amount of time. Ever sit down with a computer illiterate person trying to find something they just downloaded? Vista’s instant search capability is amazing and long overdue. Want to run Photoshop? Just hit the Window button in the lower left and type Photoshop into the search box. You no longer have to wade through multiple menus to get to the shortcut. This one search box will find files, software, internet links, e-mail, almost anything! I could write an essay on the various improvement in this arena, but I will just say finding anything on your computer in Vista is very easy.
2) User-Interface Improvements:
Windows XP’s GUI made Windows 98 look like a monochrome mainframe display. This is how I feel about XP -> Vista. Vista’s GUI, Aero, is truly beautiful. Simple animations such as window minimization is elegant and lets you know where the window went. Nothing in the GUI is over the top or gaudy. The one area that disappoints me is the Welcome screen. I can’t quite put it into words yet, but it just leaves me feeling like it was an afterthought in the design process.
With my above system specs, applications are responsive and I have yet to experience the kind of system lag I had in XP. Vista seems to work much better when you push the limits of your CPU and memory. Jennifer and I always have both of our accounts logged in with programs open and Vista still feels snappy. Granted, I haven’t given the OS a chance to show signs of WinRot yet. WinRot is the inevitable system slowdown experienced in previous versions of Windows after a couple months. This is due to software remnants and registry bloating. Vista should be a little better in this area due to scheduled defrag and software pre-loading. Vista is smart enough to know what software you use during different times of the day and will load it into memory in the background at the right time.
3) Included Software & Services
Microsoft finally got it right with the bundled software and services in Vista. The photo organization software is easy to use and powerful. The games have received a much needed graphical makeover. System sounds have been redone and are subtle. No longer will the startup sound cause you to reach for the volume controls. One of my biggest gripes with XP was the inability to schedule a disk defrag. A fragmented hard drive is one of the worst performance offenders and Microsoft included a utility to fix it, but wouldn’t let you schedule it. For a service that can take hours to complete, manually running it was a real pain. This is fixed in Vista. Windows Defender is also included, which protects you from spyware and malware. The only omission was an anti-virus. I have mixed feelings on this one. On one hand, basic virus protection would be very useful for people that really don’t know any better. However, installing a third-party solution over one of Microsoft’s bundled apps has been difficult in the past so a bundled anti-virus may cause problems for people that want to use another solution. I personally have used AVG Free for years and haven’t been hit with a virus yet.
So you’re probably wondering about the negative aspects of Vista. The most obvious is the nagging prompts of the User Account Control. The default settings restrict almost any file related activity (moving, copying, installing) and throw up an approval prompt before the action will continue. I read an opinion somewhere else and I subscribe to the premise. Essentially every secure environment has these limitations, but Windows user have been spoiled to their demise by a lack of user action control. Vista changes this and in the coming months we will hear users across the world complaining about the nagging prompts. However, if we can get through the initial frustration we will find Vista is a much more secure environment and it’s for our own good.
The second negative is driver support. On my above system two pieces of hardware do not have drivers. One is an old Creative Live! soundcard. I looked at the Creative website and they have a very well written Vista driver map. Under Creative Live! they note a driver is not planned. I can understand the business reasons for this because the card is well over 10 years old. I simply removed the card and went back to onboard sound in the meantime. However, HP is a different story. Last year I picked up an open box PhotoSmart 7960 printer for a great price. It’s current generation tech and I expect a driver for it. On the HP website they say a driver is in the works, but not ready. They say I can use the DeskJet 5600 driver in the meantime for basic printing functions. HP has had plenty of time to write drivers for their printers and I’m seriously considering whether my next printer purchase will be an HP. They are certainly enjoying the increased printer sales along with new computers due to Vista’s release so they have no excuse.
so those are my initial thoughts. Hopefully Vista continues to glide along after months of use. Maybe I’ll throw up another review in a couple months after the OS has time to either rot or keep up with my use.
