As promised last week I have written a review for the new Windows OS called Vista. I have had the operating system installed for a couple of weeks now and have been testing all corners of the system.
First, the installation experience. I did not upgrade the XP version on the system. I did a completely fresh installation on two systems. The first was a Song Viao laptop with an intel processor m and 512 memory. Lets just say this machine saw more problems with the Vista operating system than I would have ever expected. When trying to use the AOL software on Vista, the terrible blue screen of death came up and restarted the machine. Although the nice thing was that Vista found the issue and provided me with the link to update the machine. End of the problem….no. I updated the system and that issue still had problems. Also connecting to a wireless network would bring the blue screen of death and restart the machine. The issue that ended testing of Vista on the Viao was after shutting down the machine and starting it up again a system file was deleted and windows would not start. I inserted the Vista DVD and fixed the issue with little trouble, but still stopped testing on that machine.
The Sony machine just couldn’t hack Vista., but keep in mind this is still a beta version of the OS.
The other machine that test Vista had tremendously better results. Believe it or not the machine is 6 years old running a 1.2 Celeron processor and initially had 256 ram but needed a 512 upgrade(which is the machine’s max) to even install the system. I know you are thinking how in the world did I get Vista running on such a machine? I honestly couldn’t tell you why it worked so well on an old Compaq and not on a brand new Viao. The installation on this computer was so-so. It was a little slow(but then again the computer is old), but ran smoothly.
The desktop experience was extremely different from the old XP desktop. Yes, on the taskbar it doesn’t say start on the start button anymore, but function has stayed the same. The search is in the “start” menu and is very similar to the spotlight technology Apple uses in Mac OS X already. It is an indexing search so the results show as you type. This is night and day if you use the search feature on XP. The Programs menu does not shoot across your screen anymore. You click programs and the next menu replaces the options before that on the same panel in the start button. It took a little getting used to since that has been a feature for the past 10 years. Window changing is really cool acutally. The windows scroll across the screen and show you screenshots of the windows instead of the application icon. Again, cool feature, but if you are running more than 512 memory. System gets cranky with small amounts of memory. The theme for this system is extremely glossy (aero-vista style). I like the glossy appeal of graphics. I think Apple has mastered the art of the glossy graphic, but Windows still has some learning to do. The glossy appeal of Vista is very over-powering. The glass like feel is all over the desktop. Multi-tasking was not all that bad believe it or not. Working with Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop CS2 did not actually dent my speed that much. Keep in mind I was not rendering big files in Photoshop, just web graphics. Dreamweaver only had 2 files open. The icons have also gone for a makeover, which actually came out nice. The icons I do like. The constant popping up of permission needed is extremely annoying. They did not seem to focus on cutting some of that feature.
Overall the system needs work. Vista has potential but still seems to me like 6+ months before a stable release could be sent out. Especially after what I saw on the Sony machine. If you get your hands on a Vista release DO NOT install it on your main computer unless you are fully aware and prepared for a major system failure. Applications like AIM are not supported as of yet on Vista. Anti-virus software is not recommended due to compatibility issue. PC-cillin offers free protection designed for Vista. Info is on the Vista page. Friday will be a review of Office 2007 Beta.
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