My First Month with Vista

I have been using Vista on my Dell 1505 for just over a month. It has taken some getting used to and there have been a couple of headaches, but for me, Vista is here to stay.

Installing Vista
I upgraded to Vista HP from XPMCE through the Dell Express Upgrade Program. When I received the disks, I decided not to use Dell’s Upgrade Assistant because I wanted to do a clean install of Vista. I used the directions for a clean install from an upgrade DVD. I followed the directions almost perfectly, but I got distracted while I was doing the installation, ended up hitting a wrong option somewhere along the way and had to restart the process. Everything seemed to install just fine and I was getting my first Vista experience – not blown away, but not disappointed.

After a day or two I realized that my System Restore function was not working. After some searching around here, I wasn’t able to find an answer and wondered if my mistake during the install process could have caused this problem. I decided to do another clean install. This did the trick for me.

One thing that I learned by having to do a second clean install of Vista with my Upgrade DVD was that I didn’t have to follow the directions for the workaround. Once Vista is on your system you can easily do a clean install by booting from the Upgrade DVD and it only takes about 30 minutes. When I was on XP I would reinstall my OS every 6 to 12 months. This process will be much less painful in Vista.

Once the OS was in place I installed a handful of critical drivers, Dell NSS, Intel Chipset, Synaptics Touchpad, ATI. I decided to wait and see how the standard Vista drivers would handle everything else.

First Impressions of Vista

I do not consider myself a power user. I like to know how my computer works and I like for my computer to run cleanly and efficiently for my purposes; but, I don’t have any really specific demands that are out of the ordinary for a typical home laptop user.

I would have to say that at first glance, I wasn’t particularly excited about the new look of vista. Maybe it was the default settings, but I just didn’t think that it looked “professional.” I also found that even though the highly advertised win-tab Flip 3D function was pretty neat, it was also pretty useless.

Within the first couple of hours of use, I also found that my Vista wasn’t noticeably slowing down the computer. Programs opened quickly and switching between open windows was even quicker than in XP. This had been one of my main concerns about going to Vista, so I was relieved to see the my 1505 hadn’t lost any of its snappiness.

One of the first differences in the UI that I noticed was the Start Search line in the Start Menu. Right off the bat I was psyched with this feature. When I wanted to find the device manager, typing “device” into the search bar brought up a couple of choices instantly. When I wanted to change my sound settings, typing “sound” brought up the proper choice. I might never have to use the control panel again.

During the first two days, Vista was awfully busy with my hard drive. I think that this is primarily due to the indexing function. Hard drive use dropped back to normal after a day or two.

I have my hard drive set up with a partition for Vista and a D: partition for data. (this really came in handy when I had to reinstall Vista for a second time) Vista uses a slightly different folder structure than XP did. I can basically force Vista to work the way that XP did, but I feel like I must be missing something in the functionality of the Vista System. It will take some time for me to figure out how to best organize my data. I know that it doesn’t really matter where I keep everything because Vista will find it no matter where it is, but I still feel like I’d like to know exactly where my files are getting saved.

Problems with Vista

Since I have installed Vista, I have been fortunate enough to have very few problems. Two of them have been slight annoyances that will further improve with driver updates, but one of them was a complete hardware incompatibility.

After I installed Vista I found that my Bluetooth would no longer turn on using fn+f2. I checked in the BIOS and saw that the Bluetooth module was installed and enabled. But, it didn’t show up in the device manager. Because it wasn’t recognized by the OS, I wasn’t able to install the drivers. One chat with Dell followed by a phone call from them and it was determined that my Bluetooth module was bad. They overnighted a new Bluetooth module that was identified specifically as Vista compliant, I plugged it in, and it works completely.

One fairly major annoyance with my new setup was a skipping and popping during sound playback. After lots of searching around here and the Dell forums, I learned that there is some sort of driver incompatibility with the wireless card. As long as I disable the –a band on my wireless card, I get almost perfect performance. I also find that I get smoother sound operations if I disable sound enhancements. All-in-all I find this to be an acceptable workaround.

The other minor annoyance I have had is with ITunes. I guess that it works ok, but they way that it manages its windows doesn’t take advantage of aero, so it looks really out of place on the desktop. Also, it is a real resource pig. If I didn’t have an IPod I wouldn’t be using ITunes. In fact, I am even considering selling my iPod to get a player that’s compatible with WMP.

That’s it. Those are the only problems that I’ve had since I installed Vista a month ago.

Vista After 30 Days

As I stated at the opening of this, I won’t be going back to XP. For me, on my machine, Vista does everything that XP did, but it looks and feels a little better doing it.

When XP first came out, I tried to install it on my desktop. It lasted about 3 days. When XP SP1 came out, I tried it and uninstalled it within a week. It wasn’t until XP SP2 came out that I had acceptable performance on that machine. So far, the transition to Vista has been a dream as compared to the transition to XP.

The more that I use the aero glass desktop, the more I like it. I adjusted the settings to my liking and I just find that it looks and feels better than XP. I know this is totally subjective, but I just like it.

I really, really like the Start Search line and indexed searching. I know that indexed desktop searching has been available as an ad-on in XP, but it always seemed to slow down the system. The fact that it is integrated into Vista makes it seem like it is not using any additional system resources. I still need to figure out how to best keep all of my folders organized, but I never have any problems finding exactly what I am looking for on my computer.

I am sort of shocked to find that I am getting about 10-15% better battery life since I switched to Vista. I think that this is primarily due to having better power management options that make it easier to maximize the battery life, not that Vista is inherently more energy efficient.

Vista also does a better job of handling sleep and hibernate. When plugged in, my machine will sleep and wake almost instantly. When on battery power, I have my system setup for hybrid sleep. In hybrid sleep, all current information is written to the hdd before going to sleep. This protects any work or data in case of a power interruption, but it does take 30 seconds to go to sleep. I also have total confidence that when I put my machine to sleep, I know it’s going to sleep. I don’t have to worry that I’m going to pull it out of its case two hours from now and find that it has been cooking my lunch all morning.

I had some concerns because of all of the noise about the DRM built into Vista. At this point I can say that it’s a total non-issue for me. My copy of Vista is legal and validated and I haven’t thought about it since I typed in my COA the day I installed it. As far as media content goes, I have always refused to buy DRM’d content. All of the music on my computer came from CD’s that I bought. I can still do anything that I want with it.

Vista Going Forward

I bought my laptop at the end of last year specifically because I wanted to get XP. I also knew that I’d want to check out Vista when it was released. The upgrade program allowed me to do just that. I had more than half expected to go back to XP within a month, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.

I think that it is very important to stress that this review has been based only on my experiences. My 1505 is essentially the exact same machine that Dell is now shipping with Vista preinstalled. I would expect that the older your machine is (and by older I’m talking months, not years) the more hardware and driver issues you would expect.

I figure that if Vista works this well for me at this point, it will only get better. I am pretty sure that driver support will improve and make everything run a little smoother. I am not a programmer, but I would guess that using Vista as a platform will allow development of more interesting and useful interfaces on all applications.

 

Interesting and detailed post. Thanks!

I am also using Vista. The Business Edition and have had a few problems with drivers, but they are all easily fixed.

Other than that, it seems to be as good as XP.

 

Glad you had good luck with it. Although personally, I don't think having to install an OS twice in one day is really good luck, but if you're happy, that's all that matters.

 

interesting reading.

One thing I've been somewhat impressed with is Window Media Player's new "Library" interface, its actually better than iTunes. the big downside is that you apparently cant add in iTunes music files (i got a plugin that plays them but they wont go in the library, arggh).

I hear you on iTunes being a resource pig... its kind of a shame, becuasue usually Apple makes non-hassle simple things, yet iTunes has inexplicably become a pain.

 

Very nicely put, robbirzell. I enjoyed reading your brief review. I'm glad to hear a Vista success story, because most Vista storied I've heard, have not ended as well as your's. Good luck.

Matt

 

Yeah. With WMP11 I have definitely been converted. The search line in WMP is awesome and it is so much lighter than ITunes.

In fact, over the past month I have found that all of the Windows multimedia programs in Vista are great. For me, WMP and Windows Photo Gallery, have replaced Itunes and Irfanview for day to day music, video and picture playback.

 

Nice to hear another happy Vista user, since it seems the only people who make noise about it have negative things to say.

I also think this is the best Windows version I have used, and this is a very early release. I had the same issues with XP as you did, and I still am not pleased with my Machine that uses XP Media Center (SP2, July '06 build), as it is very unstable to this day. My XP Pro rig is solid, now, but it took untill SP2 to be worth a da**.

Outside of the issue I had with NHC, I have had almost no issues with compatibility (some older programs don't have a Vista functional "help" feature), or any crashes at all. Even my Cruzer with U3 did not state it was Vista Capable, but it worked PERFECTLY with Vista.

The look is clean, finding anything is a snap, speeds are all as good as if better then XP.... and this is the initial release? C'mon... Microsoft got this right, and I am looking forward to SP1 and so on.

My disappointments lie in driver issues. A friend of mine writes programs and he said the reason so many manufacturers are so behind with their drivers is because the final release was not delivered to the writers untill 3 months prior to the public release. But I figure in due time it will all be straightened out. My rig came with Vista preinstalled, so I have not had any issues with drivers (however I am hoping for a bit better functionality in the near future!)... it has all been plug and play for me, and I am completely satisfied!

 

The only difference between Vista and Xp is they moved a couple things around... Thats it... otherwise Vista is only a good way to slow down your computer. They came out it to fast and too soon and If they are trying to be like Mac they cant really compete, even thought I would never buy a Mac. Windows Vista is **** But since I have it its something im going to have to live with.

 

You're quite wrong.

The difference is much more than "a couple things moved around." Let's see if I can find a feature comparison list... one moment please...

-- Ok, here we are:
Features New to Windows Vista - Wikipedia
Learn About the Features - Microsoft

 

Matt covered the differences pretty well, but I have to mention something about your system being slow.

According to your specifications, you don't have enough RAM to run Vista properly. It carries a minimum requirement of 1GB of RAM, twice that of your rig. According to my RAM meter Vista uses about 33% of my RAM at idle, or roughly 682 MB, or 170 GB more ram then your system has (of course I run AERO), and I am not running a shared video card, mine is completely dedicated. So it seems rather obtuse for you to bash Vista's performance when you don't have the system resources to properly run it.

On my computer Vista is the fastest operating system I have run. XP, 2000, ME, and 9X could not compete, but with all that being said my current rig has more RAM then all my other rigs, save 1, my XP Media Center SP2 rig. However, it also cannot keep up with my Vista rig, and it is terribly unstable.

 

Well he was kind of right, it slowed HIS computer down

 

When I read threads like this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=116258

I think to myself, I am glad I use Windows.

 

Wow... a thorough, honest, and yet positive review of Vista. I think sooner or later all of us who are quite happy with it are going to come out of the shadows once we no longer being stoned for our OS choice.

And only a couple of Vista-bashing responses in the thread. Things are starting to look up.


Just for the record... there are A LOT of major, underlying changes in the OS code for Vista. It's nothing like XP was some icons moved around. Those comments are usually followed by the same person claiming that no software works with Vista. Neither is true, but it seems quite impossible for BOTH to be. If Vista was just XP with a prettier interface, then wouldn't ALL XP software work on it without modification. Oh, well.

 

Wow, you are so NOT a troll.

 

I would still prefer to use Linux, but Vista makes me pretty happy. I have an experience much like the original Poster, I plan to be in Vista for a long time.

 

No, actually I have been interested in trying to transition to a dual boot system. With all the Linux trolls I see in the Vista threads bashing MS and the "horrible problems" they have nowadays, I figured I would look at some of the Linux threads to see what it is all about. Low and behold, the first thread on the board was that. I look at all these names that sound like a remake of Starship Trooper planets (Klendathu, Umbuthutulu, or whatever the heck this stuff is) and driver compatibility issues out the yin-yang, 4 million programs required to perform simple tasks and I think to myself... who are these guys kidding? Not to mention the repair steps... Good Lord man, I'll take a quick windows point and click over the repairs i saw in that thread.

And talk about the pot calling the kettle black. If I was a troll I would climb in the Linux threads and start talking junk, or even simply start talking as you did. I never uttered a word amongst the Linux crowd, I just posted the obvious to a Linux Troll in the Windows section. So who is the troll?

 

Yeah, i love the neg rep, when you and your boyfriend come trolling in the Windows section and spout junk. Who is the troll?

 

I won't hold your ignorance against you too much, but that was pretty damn childish of you.

 

I neg repped you because I thought your post was flamebait. Seems I was right. If you have a problem with it, please take it to a moderator. I'd like to keep this thread as civil as possible.

 

Well, so much for my earlier point of the Vista-bashing and nonsense arguments in a thread like this being at an all time low. This thread deteriorated... it just took a few more posts than usual to do it.

 

I really didn't mean for my original post to set off some sort of flame war. I was just trying to provide one more data point for people to use in making their own assessment as to whether to upgrade to Vista. I'm certainly not here to evangelize.

We're all entitled to our opinions, but let's keep it civil.

 

Agreed. Venom and flamebait are unnecessary on both sides.

Some people have had excellent experiences with Vista, some have had difficult experiences with Vista.

Some people have had excellent experiences with Linux, some have had difficult experiences with Linux.

Use what you like.

linux is better

 

Running Vista here on my E1505. Running great. The only problem I've run in to was an error I was getting caused by Nero, afer upgrading to the newest version, the problem is gone. Programs open extremely fast (2GB ram and 1GB SD card set up for ReadyBoost.) I'm still not used to Vista caching most, if not all of the ram I'm not using. But I guess I have all of that ram, it might as well be put to good use. Also agree with iTunes being too bloated, I've seen it use up to 1.6GB of ram, sounds like CoverFlow wasn't designed too well. Turn it off and usage goes under 50MB. On another note, Vista seems to use both cores on my CPU a lot better than XP ever did.