Vista First Impressions

I just installed Vista Business on my E1705 and there are a few things I didn't expect:

I didn't have to manually install a a single driver: everything just works. In XP I had to install at least half a dozen drivers (NIC and Wireless included, which made it a huge chore to even get the drivers on the computer).

I didn't expect to be interrogated every time I try to run an executable or try to change even the most minute system setting. It probably makes sense from a secuity standpoint, but it is definitely irritating.

The change from "My Computer" to just "Computer" and "My Documents" to just "Documents" is oh so satisfying.

The "Switch between windows" feature that is so heavily toted in all of the promotion videos is completely under utilized. I expected it to be much more accessible. On the other hand, the window previews are surprisingly helpful.

At times, there is a ridiculus level of hard disk activity. Vista itself boots as fast as XP ever did, but there is at least a ten minute period afterwards when the hard drive is just going nuts.

The Sidebar isn't nearly as intrusive as I imagined, nor is it as useful as I had hoped (although I'm sure it will get better as more Gadgets become available). Also, some full screen apps seem to be competing with the Sidebar. It will intermittently flicker into the screen.

While gaming does take a hit, it's not nearly as big as I've seen documented. Not only that, but some games (such as Oblivion) that suffered from performance hits or stuttering caused by components other than the video card (e.g. lousy sound card, hard drive loading) run much smoother now.

MediaDirect doesn't work from a fresh install, but no surprise there.

All in all, installation was smooth like butta', much better than XP. The OS itself is no big change, although the slick graphics make it feel much more sophisticated. It has its annoyances, though, particularily the excessive Authorization procedures.

 

I agree that UAC is a bit excessive. You can disable it in User Accounts to make life a little easier.

 

I've been debating on buying me a copy of Vista and trying it out... but it sounds like to much money and work. I'll probably end up waiting a while longer to see how it blows over.

 

You'll want to turn off user accounts,having to confim nearly every mouse click gets tiresome real quick. You will get a warning on your taskbar every time you boot though, a minor annoyance, much less so than having them on.

 

I've been running Vista since beta. UAC is nowhere near the level of annoyance it is being portrayed here. UAC looks for the password (or confirm) only when you are runnig certain types of executables or performing disk operations that are dangerous. It is very similar to how security works in the Unix world.

 

Actually it can be more compared to specific distros like Ubuntu where it asks for an administrator password when you do something that needs administrator rights. In the case with Vista you are never a true Administrator. It just doesn't ask for a password. What this does is prevent spyware from running with full rights even when you are logged as an Administrator. The only user with true rights is the account actually named "Administrator" and that one is disabled by default. In fact it is only enabled in certain cases which we will not likely see too often. UAC while it can be annoying to some is also necessary.

Oh and in the Unix world. If you logged in as root then it would allow it without prompting. As a user you would just be flat out denied saying it needed root level access. You could then run "su" and be root temporarily or depending on how the system was setup you could do "sudo" for just that one command.

 

I would wait I jumped on the bandwagon the first day it came out and I still can't get everything set up correctly