Zac Garrett

Update 12-17-2007: I Switched to XP

It has been over a year since I first reviewed Windows Vista and it is time to look at Vista seriously again.

My main reason for installing Vista this time around is for gaming. I haven’t played many computer games in a few years now and got the urge to play Portal. By going with Vista it gives me DirectX 10 which should give the best results in games.

Test Subject

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+

BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB

2GB OCZ Memory

76GB 10k RPM Raptor Hard Drive

This computer is fairly high end today and should be able to handle almost anything that is available today. I did upgrade the graphics card to the 8800 to be able to play Crysis without a struggle, but was proven to be incorrect in that theory. That game is a massive resource hog, beautiful, but sheesh.

Installation

Installing Vista is the least painful of any Microsoft product. I had a few challeneges due to other hard drives being in the computer formatted with reiserfs. The installer was fairly easy to delete some of these partitions to make room for Vista. It was unable to move anything around, just delete non-NTFS partitions. No big surprise.

Once the installer was satisfied with my answers it then uncompressed the disk image on the DVD and began the install process. The install was fairly quick, it was not as fast as installing Debian, but not as slow as SUSE or Fedora. Seeing that Debian is a single CD and the rest are DVDs Vista wins at the install speed test.

First Boot

One of the first things you notice on Vista is the stupid sidebar. The thing is useless in my eyes. it is trying to replicate gkrellm and failed horribly. it might look pretty but lacks any functionality for me. Disabled within 30 seconds of the first boot.

I’ve been running Vista in VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro on and off for the past year. This means that I’ve become familiar with the OS. Many of my original complaints about items being moved around I’ve grown accustomed to. I no longer look for anything, I search for it.

Vista’s search is the best part about the entire OS in my eyes. It is the fastest desktop search I have ever seen without a massive index (google desktop is around 4-5gb on my work computer). To adjust the screen resolution I just search for screen. Simple.

Software and Drivers

One of the biggest complaint’s I’ve heard about Vista past is incomparability with software, especially drivers. I have no complaints in this department.

Every piece of software I’ve installed worked like a charm. I’ve yet to find a piece of software that did not work. I am not seeking out software to test it, just using my normal applications. Firefox, Abiword, Pidgin, and VLC all work like a charm. When I tried to use some of this software in my previous usage of Vista I would sometimes get crashes. These bugs seem to be worked out at this point in time.

One of the biggest issues in the past with Vista has been drivers, especially graphics drivers. I am running the drivers from nvidia’s web site and they work like a charm. The drivers for all of my other hardware also work without a hitch. Kind of surprising, but wonderful.

GUI

In the past I called Vista the Playskool of OSs and I still feel the same way. The GUI itself was designed to look pretty and hide most advanced functions. To get around this you have to learn to search for everything. You can just go mindlessly clicking to find what you are looking for, you will get lost.

Aero looks kinda pretty, but lacks something. I am not exactly sure what it is missing though. It seems the GUI was added just to make everything soft and cooshie. This might be good for people on the lower end of the technical scale but for those of us who know how to use a computer it leaves something to be desired.

Should I upgrade?

No. If you should upgrade you would have already done so without needing to ask. If you are running XP fairly happily then you should not upgrade, there is no real reason.

However, if you do get a new computer with at least two gigs of ram and have to choose between XP and Vista I would suggest Vista for the home user. I think that Vista would be a good choice in a home as it has some very good security measures to protect you from badware.

For a business there is no reason to upgrade. I do not see a reason to upgrade for a business. I just do not see a ROI (return on investment). Vista is not a smart business move seeing that XP today provides nearly all of the same functionality for a business without needing to retrain your entire staff.

Conclusion

Vista is going to stick around for a long time whether we like it or not. I’ve grown to not hate it, which is a huge difference from a year ago. At this point I suggest everyone to take a serious look at this OS, especially when service pack one comes out. This will not be a magic bullet, but will mark the stablity of the OS.