Omiclops
06-14-2007, 03:44 PM
Windows Vista Final Full Review V1.0
Index:
Initial Thoughts
Installation
Initialization and Interface
Performance
Programs
Games
Dos
Final Thoughts
Initial Thoughts:
Microsoft is notorious for pushing out OSes that are not ready for release, and/or hybrids that should never have hit the shelves (think ME). It is well-known within the computer world that installing a Windows OS before SP1 for anything but testing is nigh suicidal, and even before SP2 is risky. In addition to the obvious stability issues inherent in a new OS, driver support and application availability are serious issues.
In Vista's case, Microsoft has made the biggest push to new technology in a long time. Certainly since 2k, and arguably since 95. Vista is much more restrictive than prior Windows versions, and this is supposed to translate to more security and stability. They certainly took a good step in the right direction with their long and very public pre-release testing. It did, however, hurt them since many people saw Alpha, Beta, RC1, and RC2, and their many problems, and predicted similar issues for the final release version. Microsoft has made many claims about performance, compatibility, stability, and security regarding Vista, and in this review I will examine all of these issues.
Installation:
Vista installation is what the much-touted “XP installation experience” was supposed to be. While I did not time it, it seemed to be a bit faster, but is more or less in the same range as the XP installation, impressive considering that Vista is considerably larger (~7GB), and it was installed on an IDE drive. There are less dialogs, which makes it easier to simply set it up and let it run; the install is practically unattended after the first few choices. All of the localization settings that you are used to in XP are there, and you do not get the feeling that they have stripped out options, but that they have merely streamlined them. Installing with XP already present results in a very nice screen when you boot where you can choose which OS to run, although it simply lists XP as an older windows system, and not XP by name. You can also choose which flavor to run during installation, so separate home and corporate discs are not required.
Initialization and Interface:
Assuming you have modern equipment, Vista should auto detect and install drivers for all hardware. These drivers may be generic ones, however, so you should still get up-to-date drivers from your vendors. Most major companies already have Vista drivers available, so unless you use a random third-party company, you should be fine, and even if you do, the generic drivers should work ok. Even my ATI HDTV Wonder, which is a pain to get working in XP even after you have downloaded the 5 files neccesary, was automatically detected and installed, without even a reboot neccesary.
Appearance options are a bit more complicated than in XP; you have the choice to use a 98-esque scheme, a mid-level scheme that is more or less on the same level as XP's default scheme, and the Aero scheme, which has all the bells and whistles modern hardware can accommodate. The mid-level scheme is default, and prettier than XP, but the Aero scheme is simply breathtaking. Both in beauty and the resources it requires.
Most of the other options are straight from XP; folder options in windows explorer, the taskbar and start menu options (although XP-style start menu is unavailable, only 98 and Vista), and other things. The sidebar is a very nice addition, allowing you to keep a clock, notes, calendar, weather, rss feeds, etc, on something similar to a taskbar along the right side of the screen. Just like the taskbar, it can be set to stay on top of other windows, or go under them.
The whole “Windows is secure now!” thing is supremely annoying. Don't get me wrong, I understand Microsoft's pain. People complain that Windows is too vulnerable, so they make it secure, and now people complain about the security being annoying. There are, however, ways to make it secure without being quite so overboard. Many programs (like WinRar for example) pop up a dialog that you have to click ok to EVERY TIME you run it. The dialog says “An unidentified program wants access to your computer. Don't run the program unless you know where it's from or have used it before.” Yes, i just used it 5 minutes ago!!! There needs to be a “trust this program” setting at minimum, and a “turn program security off” would be nice for those of us who get really annoyed by it. It even pops one up when you try to *populate the volumes of a hard drive*. Yes Bill, a 1337 h4xx0r broke into my box so he could populate my volumes. I thank you eternally for preventing him from discovering how large my partitions are. Now the Mac users see the errors of their ways, and will spend 400$ (!) to buy Windows Vista Premium. All because my volumes are safe from population. You'd think that, as smart as Windows is, it would be able to tell that YOU'RE the one who clicked the smegging button. [edit: see later in the thread for how to fix this. the fix also fixes the no context menu problem for winrar, etc.]
Performance:
So far, everything has been positive about Vista. Here is where the road gets rocky. Assuming you have a 3ghz+ dual core, a 200$+ graphics card, and a minimum of 2GB of ram, Vista will generally run faster than XP. Vista even shares system memory with the video card, so that my 256 mb card now has 512 mb. There are plenty of benchmark comparisons out there, and while it varies from program to program, if you look at the final version tests with current drivers, Vista overall beats XP. Most of us, however, do not have this kind of a system, and for those that don't, you will run into problems. With 1GB of ram, and a stripped for performance system (tweaking every setting Vista has for performance), I have 90% ram used with only OpenOffice and Internet Explorer open.
The shared ram with the video card, as far as I have been able to look up, is only used when needed by the video card, and is therefore not causing this. You can't turn that option off anyways, so it's a moot point. If you seriously want to run Vista, you need 2gb ram, minimum. CPU strain isn't too bad. On idle, it typically pulls from 1-5% on my system, with the average around 2.5. File transfer is a good-bad scenario. The good is that Vista blazes when transferring files. 50 MB is the average transfer between IDE drives, and SATA and Raid drives go even faster. The bad news is that this takes immense amounts of system resources. Transfers use 5-10% of my cpu, and some ram, but more importantly, they essentially lock the drive(s) involved. If watching a video from a drive being copied to or from, you can even get slowdown just from the file transfer strain. On the other hand, you won't have to worry for long, because at 50MB/sec, you can transfer an entire 500GB drive in 10,000 seconds, or 2.78 hours. 80 gig drives can be fully transferred in a mere 26.7 mins.
Several things, like in XP, are automated, but can be turned off: updates, firewall, windows defender, and even disk defragmentation. I cannot try SuperBoost, or ReadyDrive or specifically isolate SuperFetch's benefit, but i can explain them. SuperBoost uses a flash drive as a pagefile for random memory access. Sequential access will still go to hard drive page files, as they are faster for this method. ReadyDrive simply saves battery power on laptops and makes booting from sleep mode faster. SuperFetch is the evolution of PreFetch technology, and just improves on it. Users who follow regular usage patterns will benefit more from SuperFetch than those who are random in their usage. Certainly Superboost and Superfetch will improve the performance of your system. Most likely, however, the improvement will not be huge. If you have plenty of ram, pagefile usage is minimized and therefore SuperFetch becomes practically useless, and SuperBoost will make as much as a difference as PreFetch did. How many people other than me around here know what PreFetch is, or how much it helps? I thought so.
Programs:
While Microsoft claims that Vista has all the programs you need, and would like nothing more than for you to never install another one (except more of theirs), and it is true that Vista comes with quite a few nice productivity tools (it even has a built-in ftp server you can enable), most of us have a few progs we want to add in. All of the mainstays of pirates the world over work just fine. OpenOffice, Daemon Tools, Nero, uTorrent, Opera, VLC, and WinRar (except the context menus) are 100% good to go. You do, however, have to set file associations manually. Most programs that work in Xp will work in Vista, even without the compatiblity options, but some won't. Nothing is perfect.
For those of you who hate IE7 and love IE6 (for some strange reason; forget em both and use Opera), tough luck. IE7 comes with Vista, and afaik, there is no way to get 6 on it.
Games:
I have a game compatibility thread elsewhere, so this is just general info. I have not personally had a game that would not work in Vista yet. Most of the time, compatibility options are not necessary, so try it without em first, and then use em if you have to. Win 95, 98, and XP compatibility, as well as all the other options you're used to, are here. The rumours of Vista's compatibility issues are blown WAY OUT OF PROPORTION. Yes, you should still dualboot XP for those few that don't work, but then I also say you should dualboot 98, 95, and Dos for the few games that don't work in other OSes.
Dos:
Dos command prompts are still included in Vista. They, in my opinion, work better than the XP dos prompts, with two caveats. First, you need to run the command prompt with administrator privileges. This is easy to do, just right click the command prompt shortcut and tell it to do so. Second, you will need a workaround to run dos in full-screen mode. Why they did this, i have no clue. There are several methods floating around the net already, pick one and the problem is fixed.
Final Thoughts:
Vista is possibly the best OS in the best shape Microsoft has released in a very long time. Yes, there are occasional errors, but all that I have encountered have been fixed by forcecrashing explorer.exe and reloading it. I have not had to reboot or had the entire OS crash to date, and let's face it, the reason i knew about forcecrashing explorer.exe was because I had to do it so often in XP. Imho, Vista is already more stable than XP SP2 is. Unless you just bought one within the past year, you will need a new computer to run Vista well. Yes, you can run it with a 800Mhz and 768 mb ram and a 50$ graphics card, but it will be so slow you will think it is a stopmotion animation. Compatibility is top-notch, but that does not mean it is perfect. It will likely get even better over time. Whether you like it or not, even if you prefer Linux, Unix, or Mac, if you want to game, you have to get Windows. Wine simply cannot run Splinter Cell: Double Agent even on a quad-core with 10 gb ram and a geforce 8800 SLI. Vista is the future of windows. Therefore, the sooner you start getting comfortable with it, the sooner you will be in the future. And, for now, you can still keep XP around to comfort you when you're feeling sad. ;-P
Index:
Initial Thoughts
Installation
Initialization and Interface
Performance
Programs
Games
Dos
Final Thoughts
Initial Thoughts:
Microsoft is notorious for pushing out OSes that are not ready for release, and/or hybrids that should never have hit the shelves (think ME). It is well-known within the computer world that installing a Windows OS before SP1 for anything but testing is nigh suicidal, and even before SP2 is risky. In addition to the obvious stability issues inherent in a new OS, driver support and application availability are serious issues.
In Vista's case, Microsoft has made the biggest push to new technology in a long time. Certainly since 2k, and arguably since 95. Vista is much more restrictive than prior Windows versions, and this is supposed to translate to more security and stability. They certainly took a good step in the right direction with their long and very public pre-release testing. It did, however, hurt them since many people saw Alpha, Beta, RC1, and RC2, and their many problems, and predicted similar issues for the final release version. Microsoft has made many claims about performance, compatibility, stability, and security regarding Vista, and in this review I will examine all of these issues.
Installation:
Vista installation is what the much-touted “XP installation experience” was supposed to be. While I did not time it, it seemed to be a bit faster, but is more or less in the same range as the XP installation, impressive considering that Vista is considerably larger (~7GB), and it was installed on an IDE drive. There are less dialogs, which makes it easier to simply set it up and let it run; the install is practically unattended after the first few choices. All of the localization settings that you are used to in XP are there, and you do not get the feeling that they have stripped out options, but that they have merely streamlined them. Installing with XP already present results in a very nice screen when you boot where you can choose which OS to run, although it simply lists XP as an older windows system, and not XP by name. You can also choose which flavor to run during installation, so separate home and corporate discs are not required.
Initialization and Interface:
Assuming you have modern equipment, Vista should auto detect and install drivers for all hardware. These drivers may be generic ones, however, so you should still get up-to-date drivers from your vendors. Most major companies already have Vista drivers available, so unless you use a random third-party company, you should be fine, and even if you do, the generic drivers should work ok. Even my ATI HDTV Wonder, which is a pain to get working in XP even after you have downloaded the 5 files neccesary, was automatically detected and installed, without even a reboot neccesary.
Appearance options are a bit more complicated than in XP; you have the choice to use a 98-esque scheme, a mid-level scheme that is more or less on the same level as XP's default scheme, and the Aero scheme, which has all the bells and whistles modern hardware can accommodate. The mid-level scheme is default, and prettier than XP, but the Aero scheme is simply breathtaking. Both in beauty and the resources it requires.
Most of the other options are straight from XP; folder options in windows explorer, the taskbar and start menu options (although XP-style start menu is unavailable, only 98 and Vista), and other things. The sidebar is a very nice addition, allowing you to keep a clock, notes, calendar, weather, rss feeds, etc, on something similar to a taskbar along the right side of the screen. Just like the taskbar, it can be set to stay on top of other windows, or go under them.
The whole “Windows is secure now!” thing is supremely annoying. Don't get me wrong, I understand Microsoft's pain. People complain that Windows is too vulnerable, so they make it secure, and now people complain about the security being annoying. There are, however, ways to make it secure without being quite so overboard. Many programs (like WinRar for example) pop up a dialog that you have to click ok to EVERY TIME you run it. The dialog says “An unidentified program wants access to your computer. Don't run the program unless you know where it's from or have used it before.” Yes, i just used it 5 minutes ago!!! There needs to be a “trust this program” setting at minimum, and a “turn program security off” would be nice for those of us who get really annoyed by it. It even pops one up when you try to *populate the volumes of a hard drive*. Yes Bill, a 1337 h4xx0r broke into my box so he could populate my volumes. I thank you eternally for preventing him from discovering how large my partitions are. Now the Mac users see the errors of their ways, and will spend 400$ (!) to buy Windows Vista Premium. All because my volumes are safe from population. You'd think that, as smart as Windows is, it would be able to tell that YOU'RE the one who clicked the smegging button. [edit: see later in the thread for how to fix this. the fix also fixes the no context menu problem for winrar, etc.]
Performance:
So far, everything has been positive about Vista. Here is where the road gets rocky. Assuming you have a 3ghz+ dual core, a 200$+ graphics card, and a minimum of 2GB of ram, Vista will generally run faster than XP. Vista even shares system memory with the video card, so that my 256 mb card now has 512 mb. There are plenty of benchmark comparisons out there, and while it varies from program to program, if you look at the final version tests with current drivers, Vista overall beats XP. Most of us, however, do not have this kind of a system, and for those that don't, you will run into problems. With 1GB of ram, and a stripped for performance system (tweaking every setting Vista has for performance), I have 90% ram used with only OpenOffice and Internet Explorer open.
The shared ram with the video card, as far as I have been able to look up, is only used when needed by the video card, and is therefore not causing this. You can't turn that option off anyways, so it's a moot point. If you seriously want to run Vista, you need 2gb ram, minimum. CPU strain isn't too bad. On idle, it typically pulls from 1-5% on my system, with the average around 2.5. File transfer is a good-bad scenario. The good is that Vista blazes when transferring files. 50 MB is the average transfer between IDE drives, and SATA and Raid drives go even faster. The bad news is that this takes immense amounts of system resources. Transfers use 5-10% of my cpu, and some ram, but more importantly, they essentially lock the drive(s) involved. If watching a video from a drive being copied to or from, you can even get slowdown just from the file transfer strain. On the other hand, you won't have to worry for long, because at 50MB/sec, you can transfer an entire 500GB drive in 10,000 seconds, or 2.78 hours. 80 gig drives can be fully transferred in a mere 26.7 mins.
Several things, like in XP, are automated, but can be turned off: updates, firewall, windows defender, and even disk defragmentation. I cannot try SuperBoost, or ReadyDrive or specifically isolate SuperFetch's benefit, but i can explain them. SuperBoost uses a flash drive as a pagefile for random memory access. Sequential access will still go to hard drive page files, as they are faster for this method. ReadyDrive simply saves battery power on laptops and makes booting from sleep mode faster. SuperFetch is the evolution of PreFetch technology, and just improves on it. Users who follow regular usage patterns will benefit more from SuperFetch than those who are random in their usage. Certainly Superboost and Superfetch will improve the performance of your system. Most likely, however, the improvement will not be huge. If you have plenty of ram, pagefile usage is minimized and therefore SuperFetch becomes practically useless, and SuperBoost will make as much as a difference as PreFetch did. How many people other than me around here know what PreFetch is, or how much it helps? I thought so.
Programs:
While Microsoft claims that Vista has all the programs you need, and would like nothing more than for you to never install another one (except more of theirs), and it is true that Vista comes with quite a few nice productivity tools (it even has a built-in ftp server you can enable), most of us have a few progs we want to add in. All of the mainstays of pirates the world over work just fine. OpenOffice, Daemon Tools, Nero, uTorrent, Opera, VLC, and WinRar (except the context menus) are 100% good to go. You do, however, have to set file associations manually. Most programs that work in Xp will work in Vista, even without the compatiblity options, but some won't. Nothing is perfect.
For those of you who hate IE7 and love IE6 (for some strange reason; forget em both and use Opera), tough luck. IE7 comes with Vista, and afaik, there is no way to get 6 on it.
Games:
I have a game compatibility thread elsewhere, so this is just general info. I have not personally had a game that would not work in Vista yet. Most of the time, compatibility options are not necessary, so try it without em first, and then use em if you have to. Win 95, 98, and XP compatibility, as well as all the other options you're used to, are here. The rumours of Vista's compatibility issues are blown WAY OUT OF PROPORTION. Yes, you should still dualboot XP for those few that don't work, but then I also say you should dualboot 98, 95, and Dos for the few games that don't work in other OSes.
Dos:
Dos command prompts are still included in Vista. They, in my opinion, work better than the XP dos prompts, with two caveats. First, you need to run the command prompt with administrator privileges. This is easy to do, just right click the command prompt shortcut and tell it to do so. Second, you will need a workaround to run dos in full-screen mode. Why they did this, i have no clue. There are several methods floating around the net already, pick one and the problem is fixed.
Final Thoughts:
Vista is possibly the best OS in the best shape Microsoft has released in a very long time. Yes, there are occasional errors, but all that I have encountered have been fixed by forcecrashing explorer.exe and reloading it. I have not had to reboot or had the entire OS crash to date, and let's face it, the reason i knew about forcecrashing explorer.exe was because I had to do it so often in XP. Imho, Vista is already more stable than XP SP2 is. Unless you just bought one within the past year, you will need a new computer to run Vista well. Yes, you can run it with a 800Mhz and 768 mb ram and a 50$ graphics card, but it will be so slow you will think it is a stopmotion animation. Compatibility is top-notch, but that does not mean it is perfect. It will likely get even better over time. Whether you like it or not, even if you prefer Linux, Unix, or Mac, if you want to game, you have to get Windows. Wine simply cannot run Splinter Cell: Double Agent even on a quad-core with 10 gb ram and a geforce 8800 SLI. Vista is the future of windows. Therefore, the sooner you start getting comfortable with it, the sooner you will be in the future. And, for now, you can still keep XP around to comfort you when you're feeling sad. ;-P