Windows Vista: A Review

Here's my quick take on Vista... enjoy.


Installation

I was actually pretty satisfied as far as installation went. I expected it to be a repeat of my XP installation, which had taken 3 hours to complete. Instead, I was treated with a decent 45 minute installation. I should mention that I installed an upgrade, not a full version. Whether or not that would affect the wait time is beyond me.

During the upgrade, my computer restarted about 10 times. Quite frustrating, but nothing worse than XP. Other than that, installing Vista went smoothly and I was booting Vista for the first time about 1 hour after opening my Vista Express CD in the mail. Not too bad.


First Usage Experience

First impressions are the most important, right? If so, Vista did well. Unfortunately, at those initial impressions, I was left alone in the dark with a pile of incompatible drivers. Fun, eh?

Anyway, I booted up Vista for the first time and was surprised to see the two users I had set up in my XP installation were ready to go. I don’t know why I was surprised, but, I was, and it was a pleasant surprise. So, I logged in and was eaten to death by ten million pop-ups. Of course, each pop-up felt the need to dim out the entire screen and demand immediate attention. So, to my dismay, I spent the next ten minutes answering pop-ups. So fun and exciting!

After I had answered all the demanding pop-ups, I was greeted by Windows Aero. Quite a pleasant experience I must say. Certainly the most elegant Windows experience I’ve had out of the box. However, this time, I had no problem with how things looked out of the box, and I have still not changed a thing. I know, it’s amazing! A version of Windows that doesn’t look like absolute ****! Just kidding.


Vista Doesn’t Remember Me From Yesterday?

I rebooted my computer after configuring some settings and was disappointed and well… insulted that Vista didn’t remember one damn answer I had given it yesterday. I logged in and Vista said, “Have we met?”. I was pissed. So guess what? I spent the next ten minutes answering infuriating questions…. Again! :twitcy:


Most XP Applications Are Good To Go

To be honest, I was amazed when most of my applications were, not only working, but also exactly how I left them in XP. Most, except for all of my ThinkVantage software that is. For those of you who have no idea what I just said… “think-wha?”. ThinkVantage is the name of the software Lenovo provides for its ThinkPads.

Lucky for me, I only needed to reinstall the ThinkVantage system updater and it took care of it from there… no thanks to Vista. Once I had finally gotten everything working, I was ready to test out this new operating system I had heard so much about.


Directory Concepts and More

I was extremely pleased that Microsoft finally wised up and quite this Documents and Settings crap. Finally, something logical. On the drive you install Vista on, you’ll see a Users folder. Self-explanatory? No! It’s new technology that no one had thought of before Vista! I was also pleased that the My Pictures, My Videos, My ****, etc. folders that had haunted the lives of 95-XP users is no longer existent. I hated the “My” folders. Of course it’s mine! I own the hard drive do I not?! Dumb asses… Also, why would you put a "My Pictures" folder in My Documents?! Is in my documents or my pictures? Instead, the user directory for each individual user has the following folders:

Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Music, Pictures, Contact, Videos, etc.

Much more logic is involved here... I like logic. I know, it’s weird.


New Control Panel and Windows Mobility Center

I love the new Control Panel. Things are organized much better. As for the Mobility Center, it’s great. They finally created an easily accessible center for all of the common tasks a notebook user performs. (For instance, changing the screen brightness.)

One of the best parts about it is that you can bring it up by simply pressing Win+X. Quite, intuitive.


Battery Life: I am Losing It?

I could be going crazy, but it seems like my battery life is 15-20 minutes better than it was in XP… hmm…


Long Delay On Sleep Mode

When putting my notebook into sleep/standby mode, I notice some serious lag. We’re talking 15 seconds to go into sleep mode. In XP, it took 3 max. I just love how we’re progressing and not creating new problems. So, logically, I request help from Microsoft on this issue. Their response? This line pretty much sums it up:

“That is a problem… and we are working on it.” – Verizon Wireless commercial anyone?


Conclusion

I know this is not a very thorough review, and that is unlike me. However, my thoughts and experiences with Vista are endless. I just wanted to give a general feel for what I think about it. So if you read anything from this review, read the following.

Windows XP was/is a great operating system. It’s decently stable and it’s more than capable of doing what most users are looking for. However, since we do want technology to progress, a new version of Windows was in order. What did we end up getting in this whole mix up with Vista and Vienna? A service pack? An XP theme? I’ve heard many people say things like this - “Vista is just a SP for XP” or “Vista is just a good looking, BSOD causing XP theme” – and while they do have a reason to be saying these things, they aren’t true.

Vista has problems. *Waits for laughing to stop, before continuing.* Most of its problems are somehow related to incompatible drivers or software. These sort of problems… aren’t really problems. Can you expect an XP driver to work on Vista? Why should it? It’s a new operating system. Things are bound to change. If you have patience, then you realize that Vista drivers are on there way, despite the fact that they should have been finished and tested before Vista was released. I expect that after SP1, Vista will be a much more stable, usable OS. I agree that in its current state, I would be too embarrassed to release it as a release candidate. However, that’s Microsoft’s fault, not Vista’s. Just wait for some support driver support to show up and possibly SP1, then give it a shot.



Just my…. 3 cents…

Matt

 

good review Matt!!!
though i have not yet gotten Vista, i plan on upgrading to from Xp Pro to Vista Ultimate when they release some service pack or something, until then its Xp for me!

Brief, yet excellent Review !!!

 

Thanks. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

 

did you played games in vista? doom3, hlf, fear, halo, quake? please post your experience.

 

Yes. Battlefield 2. Everything went fine. Unfortunately, I don't own many other games...

 

thats good to hear...i heard that ATI has better vista drivers than nVidia????

 

Thanks for your opinion. Nice to always read a few different experiences with different biases.

That's really interesting for a few reasons. When I used RC1, I was getting two, three hour clean installs. Microsoft must have really improved the install process before their final release.

To put things in perspective...an Ubuntu install takes 15 minutes and 10 minutes for Beryl.

 

Yeah, I had the pleasure of experiencing installing Ubuntu from a Live CD. Great idea. Microsoft should wake up and smell the Starbucks.

 

Let's just hope the Vienna/Seven that will be release in early 2009 is the SP1 for Vista and not another Windows... that would screw us up pretty badly...

 

Yeah, no kidding. But I doubt it. Why wouldn't Microsoft take another chance to squeeze money out of us?

Matt

 

A monkey could have made better original vista nvidia drivers.

Nice comments made though. Once you get over the driver hill (*mountain) you truly never want to go back to XP. Mac OS tiger made me appreciate what a GOOD operating system GUI is worth and how much easier everything is when it is organized.

 

You Windows mob are finally getting just a taste of what the GPU manufacturers have been doing to the Linux community for years.

 

My Vista Ultimate full install went well without a hitch. I tried the x64 but my favs progs don't play with it well yet. I installed the x32 and it's much better. Some progs are not Vista compatable yet but I'll wait. Suprisingly the hardware drivers automatic upgrades are accurate, didn't even know there were new ones available!

Love the games with the 3D effects, much much better that 2D XP.

Dunno why people keep mentioning Linux in every dang forums! Tried Linux (Ubuntu) and it's not easy as it seems. The interface is complicated and drivers are not available yet for my hardware. You have to jump thru hoops just to make a hardware work. The GUI interface sucks. So please don't push Linux down our throats. I haven't had a crash on XP and expect the same with Vista. BTW if Vista warns you that a software is not compatable... believe it! One particular software is Notebook Hardware Control, Vista WILL crash.

 

Lysander, stop complaining. Linux is just a hobbyist's OS.
Like nVidia or ATI really want to pay people to make drivers for the 300 or so people that use Linux...and which version they use I don't know because apparently there are a multitude of versions.

 

I fail to see where I was complaining in my post. I was stating a fact.

And you sir, are a troll. I'm not even going to bother explaining the reasons why, they are obvious.

EDIT: Now that I am home, I can elaborate (sorry, was out troubleshooting a neighbours Windows XP machine).

Well, firstly, times that "300" figure by about ten thousand, then you're in the same area code.

And the fantastic thing about all those multitude of versions? They all run on the same kernel! Wow, code for one and you code for all!

And Intel (the largest supplier of notebook graphics solutions) provide fantastic Linux drivers. All their graphics hardware is fully supported by their open-sourced drivers. They obviously see a market amongst those 300 users.

Linux/BSD programmers have volunteered to write drivers for ATi and nVidia hardware, if ATi and nVidia were to release the specifications for their hardware. The hardware manufacturers will not do this because of the third party code they've paid to have included in their drivers.

Because it's great?

Well, thats a matter of opinion. I happend to find the GNOME interface simpler than Windows, but thats my opinion. Plus, you could always install a different UI, one that more suits your taste...

Perhaps you should open up a thread in the Linux subforum and give us a chance to help you work out your hardware issues. Asking for help is allowed, afterall...

You said that already. Does your opinion mean more if you say it twice?

If only all of us were so lucky with our Windows installs.

And, I fail to see anyone shoving Linux down anyones throats. In the end it's up to you to go download the ISO and install it. In fact, the only throat shoving I see is Microsoft's strangling grasp on the OEM market.

 

Let's defect to Linux then lol.

 

Please guys, let's stay on topic.

 

I was trying to stay with the subject but then boom another "Linux is better" crap. Them followers are really gungho about it and though I do admire their support it's getting stale. Besides there are too many versions from free to fee and each one claims it's the best one. What do you want me to do? Try out each version and see which one I like best? You know what my answer is to that!

Windows is more stable and can find a program more readily. Remember the days when Microsoft was competing with other companies to see who had the best GUI? They started out small but won the game at the end. Tandy, IBM, Unix couldn't deliver a better GUI back then. Honestly I prefered the Tandy GUI myself.

 

True.

False.

I read somewhere that Microsoft stole the GUI idea from OS/2... it could be wrong though... it was a while ago, so I don't have a link or anything.

Anyway... now that I've contributed to the off-topicness...

Matt

 

Question - How big of a Ram hog is vista? Also, would basic be less of a ram hog?

 

Hmm... well... Vista seems less resource efficient. For instance, when idle, XP's CPU usage was about 3%. Vista's is 7%. After watching it for a good 30 seconds, I noticed it occasionally jumps to 22%... I'm not sure how you would calculate how much memory Vista itself consumes other than that the explorer.exe process is currently using 5,440 K.

I'm not sure if Basic would be any lighter... I can't see why other than less features to run in the background.

Matt

Edit: Then again, Basic doesn't have Aero Glass, so that'd help.

 

vista sucks period. thread close

 

It's impossible to compare Vista to XP if you're simply considering idle performance. Vista is doing more at once, so its "idle" is more than Vista's. To expect the same cpu usage with more overhead is silly.

As for less resource efficient, I couldn't disagree more. Vista's memory management is significntly better then XP. Plus they've added Superfetch and ReadyBoot.

I'm sorry if I sound like a jerk by the way, just trying to clear up some confusion.

 

There's a lot of confusing info in the preceding posts as ProntoR2 indicated, so lets clarify:

As I understand it, Vista offloads its GUI functions onto the computer's GPU, so the added CPU usage you see should not be as a result of Aero.

Also, Vista's memory management scheme is vastly different from that of the older Windows versions. In every OS up to XP, the idea was to keep RAM "free" of program information as much as possible. Although this sounds like a good idea, it's actually not: the loading times we experience for most programs comes from the fact that Windows has to load data from the HDD's to RAM.

In Vista, the idea is reversed: Vista will learn the users's program preferences and behavior and store the relevant programs into memory during idle times and startup. This probably contributes to the increased CPU usage some of you have observed, but the results are well worth it. Programs you often use will launch instantly, and the more you use Vista the more it learns about your patterns. And as you can probably guess, having more RAM will benefit this behavior much more because Vista will have more room to work with, thus being able to cache more information in the RAM.

There's a lot more advantages to Vista such as the new and improved scheduler for dual core processors, but there are two serious disadvantages at this time: drivers and WGA. There are threads on those two topics already so I won't elaborate, but they do detract from the Vista experience quite a bit at this time.

 

Don't worry, nobody who knows what they're talking about is a jerk to me. In fact, I'd give you rep if I could (reached limit). Thanks for your help, though.

Matt

 

Nice concise review. But I'll pass... I ran it for a week and it's just not worth the hassle. As you say drivers are really a problem... Hmmm.. Why do we refer to using a new operating system as helping push the technology along. That sounds silly to me unless you use you computer just for the sake of using it... I have real world things I need to use mine for and I need it to work correctly. I'm sorry, but Vista is not much better than betaware. I'll wait till SP2 comes out and evaluate it again.

 

XP does have more compatible software but it didn't when it first came out. Vista is the same. Hope the software/hardware makers are deligently doing their job in updating their products. Overall Vista is cool looking. All the programs I need works with it, no complaints.

 

good review, Matt. looking forward to receiving my Vista upgrade for my Toshiba laptop...

 

I have installed Vista Ultimate 32bit on my nx9420.

1. Install was around 30 mins, with no problems at all. It took 8GB of my disk.
2. All drivers were installed and working well except the Texas instruments smartcard reader. I didn't have a sigle restart until I installed ATI driver from AMD.
3. It boots faster and works faster than xp on this machine.
4. HP ATI drivers are not good - I installed original ATI 7.2 - overclocked with Ati tray tools and got 4800 3dmark05. Much better than some people with the same hardware on XP.
5. Games run fast and stable - FEAR, CSS, STALKER
6. Disk transfer is better in Vista - smoother if you know what I mean. HD tune draws a graph and I can see the difference. Ofcourse I turned on the advanced cache in device manager.
7. It loves 2GB of RAM
8. WMP 11 is much faster than xp version.
9. ASIO drivers don't work. (people who need it will understand)
10. AERO is good. Fast and useful. I turned off transparency (not because of speed though)
11. side bar is so so
12. notebook features are much better than in xp. Mobility center is very good.
13. Sync center with Windows mobile center for PDA is great.
14. Windows Media Center is very good, as DVD creator (the fastest AVI->DVD software I have ever seen) and Photo Gallery is closer to Picasa (not so good though).
15. Vista uses ALL available RAM! Always. It has two technologies implemented: SuperFetch and REP (resource exhaustion prevention) - the first caches the most frequently used stuff to RAM. It uses the "empty RAM is wasted RAM" logic. Vista learns what you usually start and loads that (or just some dlls) before you actually start it. So whenever you check the Task manager it will say 0-10MB free physical memory. The second makes sure that when you start a game for example - it gets the resources (RAM, CPU, GPU) for itself. But it will not kill other things in the process because of the resource depletion. It will warn you and give you chance to see what is taking your system's resources and free some of it. Games run well on Vista with AERO and many programs in background. I have read reports of people defragmenting their drives while playing games with no big impact on the gameplay. It sounds insane right? Or logical? Try it for yourself.
13. NHC causes BSOD
14. Acronis True Image 7 causes BSOD and cannot be uninstaled because you get BSOD. Restorepoint fixed that. (don't ask why I installed version 7 - long story)
15. Most other programs work well.
16. Networking (wireless) is easier to set and you don't need any other client like Proset anymore.
17. ATI CCC is much faster than in XP. But takes 150MB on disk! Drivers for Vista are much bigger in size than for XP.

So that is what I can remember for now.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

On another note, got tired of the Vista's sidebar limited selections so I used Yahoo Widgets which has more useful doodads.

 

Thanks to everyone who has complimented my review.

kanehi, I've tried Yahoo before but they take up a good chunk of memory if I remember correctly. Certainly more options, though.

 

They're constantly adding more. As Vista's user base increases so will the number of sidebar gadgets. I know what you mean though, YWE definitely has a ton of widgets available. Although I all of the ones I used in Yahoo I've found comparable replacements in for the sidebar.