Michael Dolan Dot Com

Tuesday, October 9th, 2007

2 months with Windows Vista

I’ve spent almost two months now with Windows Vista on a new AMD x64 dual core system. It’s dual boot right now with Ubuntu Gutsy as an option, but I’ve made it a point to force myself to use the Vista partition to the point where I know it inside out. Here are some of my takeaways after further use. You may recall I did something similar after a couple days of use and so this will simply complement that post here.

IE7: for some reason the new interface with tabs is good, but the toolbar changes just throw me off… just a nitpick, overall a better IE for sure.

User Access Controls: Microsoft could have taken a lesson from Linux for UAC. While it’s good to see they’re finally there, I have no doubt that the non-stop “yes, I allow” button clicks will eventually result in normal users with no knowledge clicking allow blindly and with no knowledge of what they’re really allowing.

3rd Party Software: While it’s not a difficult process to pay for new versions of software to use on Vista such as PhotoShop (CS3, Elements 5.0), Ulead, Sony Vegas, Nero, etc. you should be prepared for the financial discomfort of paying for new versions of any essential software (especially multimedia). What happens is that you try to run your old version but get a “Compatibility warning” and then usually the app just breaks and doesn’t work. So much for binary compatibility, but I can understand this is probably

Multimedia: Both good and bad. The good is that Vista is built for multimedia – compared to XP, the multimedia is clearly better integrated. On the downside, it’s “generation 1″ integrated in that things like color management are off which means that viewing digital camera pictures (JPG) in the Windows picture viewer discolors them (mine show up yellow, dark). We’re talking about a great monitor and high end graphics card so it’s clearly a Vista issue. Another problem is video – poor performance although it’s well integrated. The multimedia playback vs network rumors are true, although it honestly baffles me as to why. Windows Media Player is “nicer” and the minimal audio playback interface is finally good enough to actually use. I did find Sony Vegas to be much better on this computer but I can’t tell how much of the difference was the new specs or Vista (and it doesn’t run on Linux so I have no comparison).

Devices: You will need new drivers for most of the 3rd party devices in your system. Normal things like DVD burners are well supported, but I noticed Logitech has a poor driver/software implementation for their webcam, Canon has good printer driver support, but funny issues with my SD100 Digital Elph. I still can’t get my Labtec USB speakers to work consistently – the USB audio driver in Vista is a bit shaky.

Hardware Performance: The news stories about Vista needing resources are entirely true. While Gutsy barely hits 10% CPU or memory utilization, Vista is steady state at 30% memory, 10% each core CPU.

Management: If you were familiar with XP, much is the same, but some of the “renamed” Control Panel items will annoy you for sure. I found Vista just as easy to manage as XP, but it’s still a far cry from Linux and Mac OS X. For instance, Microsoft **still** has issues with applications that you can’t uninstall from the “Add/Remove Programs” interface. For whatever reason, they error out (usually they didn’t fully install correctly). I had an issue where the Logitech webcam utility started to re-install itself every time I rebooted. Naturally, I tried the “Cancel” button which didn’t work. So I then used Task Manager to kill all the processes – only to see them restart from some “ghost process” that I couldn’t see. So I went in and changed the startup/boot config settings in the much easier to find control panel app… no go – when I’d disable a process from starting at boot, it would show up as enabled when I rebooted. Obviously there are issues with the Logitech app, but worse was I couldn’t manage it and this app literally took over my system everytime I rebooted. Through an intractely timed set of actions, I was able to finally remove the software from the system. Now it won’t install again… Compare this experience to apt-get or a Mac and you’ll find a much better implementation. Windows Update has improved, and checks that you’re legit often. Windows Update is still not as clean/simple as on Linux, but it’s no worse than XP.

Visual appeal: Vista has caught up. It looks just as good as a Mac and a desktop Linux. I was somewhat surprised to see that visually, the desktop is not 3D as on a Mac or Linux. While the eye candy is not there, the graphics are visually appealing and conservatively “pleasant”. Definitely a step up from XP. I really like how Microsoft has integrated translucency – much nicer than on Gnome/compiz.

Integrated functionality: I was annoyed by some integrated functionalities I expected to see. For instance, I still can’t burn an ISO to disc without installing a 3rd party app. I couldn’t view RAW formated images still. Adobe PDF and Flash capabilities were not installed by default (and actually simpler on Linux/Firefox it seemed). It baffles me that Microsoft does not include a decent FTP client … why? There are still no decent GUI network tools that give you control such as from the command line… Mac OS X and Linux are way ahead here.

The “Start Menu”: I found the Start menu a bit repetitive. You will find that there are say 5 menu items on the right side that pretty much take you to the same place – your home folder. It’s just that in your home folder, there’s a folder for pictures, music, documents and they have individual links for each… why not just one?

Startup/Shutdown/Hibernate: Microsoft made some noticeable improvements in both startup and shutdown. The experience is very nice and it looks like Microsoft made some noticeable speed improvements although I haven’t run XP on this system to compare. I can say that Hibernate and Suspend/Resume work flawlessly on this new system. I haven’t had a single issue (wish I could say the same for Linux).

On the whole, it’s easier to point out “shortcomings” than it is “benefits” for any platform. I find Vista has it’s pluses and its minuses. It’s a very capable platform although I can definitely understand why many will wait until XP has run its course before taking on the expense and burden of upgrading. I particularly am not pleased with the restrictions Microsoft has (artificially) created with respect to licensing and virtualization. And that’s the beauty of the marketplace – users now have choice. I just wish Adobe and other ISVs would begin releasing commercial applications that dominate on Windows and Mac for Linux users.