Disappointing Vista

[PriceChild]

So i just installed the latest version of Vista and wanted to give my verdict :) Please take note that it is not finished, so some issues outlined below may be ironed out :)

In my mind I'll be comparing it to my Edgy install with Beryl.

Instillation.
Wow... very pretty... but sluggish. Everything in it took 10 seconds to acknowledge i'd pressed a button and move ont o the next loading screen.

I couldn't even install with my Ubuntu drive there, i had to remove the power from ubuntu and my spare cdrom, leaving just the install dvdrom and blank harddrive for it to even think about installing.

Soooooo slow.... I didn't time it exactly, but after installs of Edgy taking far less than half an hour, this was well over an hour - enough to let me make a meal, eat it, and coverse with a few house mates.

Near the end, it mentions it is testing the capabilities of my computer... i don't know why... it didn't seem to end up with a smoother result, just a little computer rating of "2.8" in the control panel later on.

The install just seemed to be reconfiguring everything over and over again... why does it need this? And then every time you thought you were there... you enter your username and password and it starts configuring more things!

The actual OS
Aero Glass.... hmm ok... the window borders are translucent and blurred... wow.
The only way i could figure out how to use the 3d switcher was with an annoyingly placed button near the start menu... alt+tab did the same thing. Personally i prefer beryl's switcher, much more useful seen as you can actually see everything on the window you're switching to.
Can't see any other way that the latest leaps in technology for eye candy are being used... and how jerky is that window movement!

The start menu was extremely cluttered for me, with way too much too small going on everywhere.

I did very much like their new control panel type area. Very nice looking, good the way you click something and get info at the top.

I also love their media center... it is well thought out and great looking :)

The new permissions control type pop up... what's that about?!

"press yes".... How on earth is that secure? anyone could do that if you left your station unattended, nevermind the possibilities of malicious software doing it for you.

The whole thing was just so slow to respond... I heard a figure MS are saying that it'll be 15% slower for gamers! What? Why? Where is this 15% going?

Verdict?
Xp extremely polished up with several new shiny bits.

I've formatted the drive with a nice clean ext3 partition and sticking to Ubuntu :)

The one good thing that i can see has come out of this... is that my Xp partition was finally gotten rid of :)

[meng]

Thanks for the review. My opinion has changed from "wouldn't touch Vista with a 10-foot pole" to "would rather have my genitals poked at with sharp sticks than use it".

[igknighted]

It isn't linux, that's for sure. However it runs like a charm on my system (way better than XP, which I only had home and it always had issues). Anyway, I'll post my own review for shits and giggles:

Install: The install is way better than XP. It is a little slow, but I suppose that is to be expected. The linux live cd's are almost as slow but windows is a heavier WM, oh well. The xp install was slow, required several reboots, and had a crappy text base stage which included the only important selections you can make (ie partitioning). Vista installed nearly as quick as XP, despite being WAY bigger, so I was impressed there (with the speed, not the size :???: ). Anyways, I'll give the install a B.

Daily Tasks: This is one area where Vista impressed me. I installed the 64bit version (if compatability is already gonna be an issue with the new OS, why not go all out and go 64bit too, right?) and the system is actually incredibly responsive. Having used Xubuntu, obviously Vista was slow to me at first, but it ran around the same as XP used to (and it actually looks good doing it... I think XP was one of the ugliest OS themes ever). It sometimes struggled when trying to fade the screen for the permissions pop-up, but I feel like if I was compelled to give the ATI drivers a try then this would improve. I tried the ATI drivers back in Beta2 and they ruined my system, and I'd rather not install again. Java works, flash works, the new iTunes 7 works, as does my subscription music service. Also my iPod work flawlessly, something I cannot say about linux (where it works, but barely). Overall, I say general day to day use gets a B+ because it does everything I ask smoothly, looking good, but not quite as fast as linux.

Special Features: This is where I start to become disappointed. The widgets clone (I forget what they call it) is a memory hog and a pain in the rear. It provides very little usefulness (the only ones I use are weather and the system monitor so I can see how much memory it is using lol) and slows down performance. The SpeedBoost flashdrive RAM thing sounds great, but theres hardly a USB drive out there that runs fast enough to pass Vista's hardware checks, so it's pretty much worthless. Vista's permission checkbox adds the annoyance of linux asking for root password for everything, without the password to really make it secure. I know ZoneAlarm used to have a similar function w/out a password, and to my knowledge that was never exploited, so maybe this is ok, but I am skeptical. Only AeroGlass works as advertised, and even that isn't terribly impressive after using XGL/Compiz. D for this category.

Gaming: I do a little gaming, though not much. All I have tried on RC2 is Counter Strike:Source. I have not noticed any issues or performance letdowns from XP, framerates stayed about the same (don't know the exact numbers, sorry). Again, the only issue I had here was ATI can't make decent drivers (but us linux folk know that already ;) ). I just run my card as is and have never had an issue. I'll give gaming an A- because I haven't noticed any change from XP

Taken as a whole, I have been pleased with Vista. It is a truely usable 64bit system. Overall, I think it is a fine OS. Because I haven't had time to adequately test stability (though have never had an issue not related to ATI's worthless drivers), I must give the OS a B- overall, but if the system stays stable I would bump the grade to a B, which for M$ is better than I thought I could give. I didn't factor price in, but lets be real, Windows is always overpriced, this is no better and not really any worse either.

[kopilo]

Vista Parental Controls are awesome, I haven't seen anything like them in Linux (unless someone would like to fix that).

[meng]

When it comes to parental controls (TV, computer or other), I'd advocate more for the active involvement of the parent rather than relying on a software solution. But hey, what would I know? My kid's only one and a half.

[Reshin]

Question: does it really take that 15 gigabytes? :???:

[kopilo]

When it comes to parental controls (TV, computer or other), I'd advocate more for the active involvement of the parent rather than relying on a software solution. But hey, what would I know? My kid's only one and a half.
Well, I'm not advocating for parental controls to be a subsitute nanny. It's the issue where you get someone who may not be technically minded watching a technically minded child on the computer, they may try something just to see what it does and if it is something which they shouldn't see it is too late for the parent to do anything more then cut it off at that point.

[kopilo]

Question: does it really take that 15 gigabytes? :???:
Looks like it.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/capable.mspx

[Shed]

40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
What do they put in there?!

[man-man]

What do they put in there?!
Lots of very pretty graphics which is how you can tell its a better OS :mrgreen:

[Almighty]

I installed Vista on one of my test machines and ran it for a good 3 weeks before I finally formualated an opinion.

My first impression was WOW.

The installer was more refined as far as eye candy goes. Of course there were no hiccups on installation,of course what else to you expect from windows. Of course the boot loader wants to erradicate anything in its way to insure windows is the primary OS, so unfortunately my SuSE had issues.

When I was actually using Vista my first impression was WOW. It looked GREAT. a very slick and full featured theme and desktop had me smiling. After a little playing around I was really liking the experience. It reminded me of a well put together Unix desktop with the widgets and what not. I true liked this MS product.

__________________________________________________ _______________

With that said I began to run into problems. Now I know its still beta and alot of the problems will hopefully be worked out but its still aggrevating.

Common antivirus software didnt work. Apparently Vista has a new API so some software isnt compatible.

I also had driver issues. WTF? same as above... some drivers just didnt work for me.

The new IE was good, reminded me alot of a bloated Opera or Firefox.

Now the navigation of the OS was AWESOME all the way up to the point I clicked the start button. Simply they have tried to put too much info in a small confined area. The new menus are well place and easy to use.
__________________________________________________ _______________

After a few weeks of this, I could not keep using it. I honestly missed Linux too much. To me its still ahead of the best product MS has to offer. I know once they fix all the bugs it will be a good product for alot of people, but I dont think it will convert any Linux users.


Ubuntu, Mandriva 2007, Fedora Core 5, and SuSE 10.1 in my opinion are FAR better than Vista at this point.

[denad]

Install: (9/10) A HUGE step forward from XP. Installer looked quite pretty. It asked me a few questions, copied the files and did a few reboots. 30min total, from first starting the installer until I was as my desktop. I'm not sure how long XP took to install on my comp, but I think that was longer. My soundcard is not detected, but it found an update for me that fixed that.

Daily Tasks: (7/10) Looking around my UI I see the famous Aero. they have done a quite nice implementation of the transparency. Does run even without a nVidia driver, which is the first thing i install. Start menu looks a bit cluttered, especially the programs part(not terribly right now, but its gonna be), but also the categories to the right. Start Search is brilliant, the best part of Vista so far. The "turn off" and "lock" buttons, very useful.
One major issue is the annoying security pop-ups, and the way they are implemented.

*marks folder, presses delete*
- are you sure you want to move folder to recycle bin?
*yes*
- you will need to provide administrator permission to delete this folder.
*Continue*
Screen flashes black (only my comp that has this "bug"?)
Screen becomes gray, with a pop-up box:
-If you started this action press continue
*Continue*
Screen flashes black, folder is moved to recycle bin

A bit too much stuff to simply delete a simple folder?

Also, the 3d-application switcher is unusable. Mac OS X Expose does a better job at getting a overview of the windows. And also the tiny tiny button next to the tiny tiny "show desktop" button isn't worth the time searching for instead of alt+tab. This could be better in the future if the keyboards get a dedicated key for this function.

Internet explorer has been upgraded a lot, tabs! Actually, I like the idea with a close button for on each tab. The favourites manager was a bit out of place, and it couldn't import my old bookmarks from IE.(or maybe I'm just stupid) The toolbar is completely removed, which made me feel lost, so I installed FireFox instead. From what I heard they are going to stick with the standards more this time, so that sounds great. This could be a usable option once you get used to not having the usual toolbars.

Special Features: (3-9/10, need more time to be sure) Windows media center is completely broken for me. My screen starts to flash @ 10hz, the movie and music is also broken. Music also started to lag when i put some stress on the system with prime95. I have no opinion about the Gadgets, i didn't find any of them useful so i turned them off. I haven't found any really cool features yet, except that search bar.

Gaming: (4-7/10, not sure about DX10) I ran 3dmark03(-12.5% marks) and 3dmark05(-11% marks) So it looks like MS own comment about a 10-15% decrease in performance is correct. I'm not a programmer, so i don't know what this means. The news is this area is of course DirectX10 but I cant test that. Steam wouldn't run for me, tried a bit of morrowind, seemed to run fine.

As a whole: (7/10) I haven't had time to "check under the hood" just yet.

[3rdalbum]

Screen becomes gray, with a pop-up box:
-If you started this action press continue

Is that truly what it says? Oh my god.

User double-clicks on "anna kornakova NUDE OMGZ.exe".
Screen becomes grey with a pop-up box:
"If you started this action, press continue."
User thinks, "Yes, I double-clicked on the program. Now let's see some boobies!"
*continue*
*registry hosed*

[iLoVe.cF-]

hahaha..

I runned vista.. with like 2000 more score in 3d mark 2003, like.. CLEAN INSTALLS, just install drivers,then 3d mark.. but the really really fun thing..

IS THAT VISTA DONT RUN GAMES :: HAHAHA

and vista in like windows.. managing folders is like a 486 comp running win 98 ^^

I got a

Amd 64
2.6 GHZ
2GB pc3200 RAM
X850XT PE
4x 200 GB ide
2x 250 GB Sata

And it runned slow(Rc2 or something.. the newest out today)

The showoff comp they used.. had a index ready thing.. just planned everystep, and made it to run that stuff fast.. cuz i found that out, cuz the
the shutdown menu used like 7 seconds to come up xD

and like.. everything, that wasnt in showoff thing.. was slow xD
it was a mirror back of his monitor, and when the big screen was out, we saw that it was like slower at that time :D

HAHa PWNED MICROSOFT

[tubasoldier]

Thanks for the review. My opinion has changed from "wouldn't touch Vista with a 10-foot pole" to "would rather have my genitals poked at with sharp sticks than use it".

Rarely do I ever actually laugh out loud when I read a forum. But this statement is by far my attitude as well. Thanks for the laugh!

[anti-net]

I played around with Vista on a friends laptop, as someone whos used windows/DOS since I was a young child I was't holding my breath on Vista, It has a lot of eye candy which is fair enough but I question if that needed in the windows operating system or if an improvement in the way it deals with applications. My other dispointment was WGA which is serverly flawed and now locks you out of your machine if they think your a pirate.

From a security stand point, Theyre in too deep with this NT stuff, they need to re-think the registry and DLLs and adopt a UNIX like system, I think there will be another load of worms, patch tuesdays will come and ago and crackers will exploit that fact. all I want is MS to release patchs not when its the right tuesday, but when the patch is done.

I am disppointed yet? Nope, quite happy with it, Will I be? Depends on how the support works out, the RC1 I looked at was stable, I properly won't get a chance to play around on it in tell I buy a new Laptop in the new year tho.