n01getsout.com’s blog

I recently purchases a Acer Aspire 5100 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium on it. I wasn’t too thrilled to get Vista because of all of the bad news I have heard about its development. I had actually sworn off of Windows entirely, having uninstalled Windows 2000 and installed Debian Linux on my desktop PC.

I haven’t been too impressed with many of the versions Microsoft had put out over the years. Here is my quick list of what I thought about previous Windows versions:

3.1 - Ah, simplicity. I liked it because it was much better than DOS.
Bob - Microsoft should have to apologize to the world for releasing something so bad.
95 - I liked it because it was much better than 3.1 and it started to have much better support for games.
NT - Although I have used it before, it has never found its way onto one of my machines because it wasn’t compatible with most games.
98 - 95 with bug fixes. Should have been free.
2000 - Loved it. This was the last version of Windows I owned (until now).
ME - Never used it because it was completely worthless. They should have never made it.
XP - 2000 with System Restore, crappy built-in CD burning software, and the ability to decompress ZIP files. It should have been much cheaper than it was.
2003 - I never used it, but 2003 seemed to have nothing new to really interest me.

Quite honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from Windows Vista, but Vista seems to the first major improvement in Windows since 2000. Vista looks very nice and seems to be pretty speedy, but know that I am using it on a dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM, and I have heard it is about as fast as a turtle on older hardware.

Microsoft has again redesigned the Control Panel as they did with XP, but I find it is much more usable now, especially for novices. If you do have a hard time finding what you are looking for, they included a nice search bar in the top right corner. Vista also comes with a brand new Windows Help program that is much more complete and helpful than older versions. It is now filled with screenshots and can pull new or corrected information from the Internet.

The new Start Menu takes a little getting used to. Microsoft changed from the menus that open when you hold your mouse over them to ones that open when you click on them, which is nice because the menu does not go away if you accidentally move your mouse off of the menu for a second. I bet older people love this, as I have seen many struggle with the old menus. I also think the integrated search box makes life much easier. The search bar also works as the old “Run…” dialog, meaning that if you type in “cmd” and hit enter it will launch the command prompt for you. Very nice indeed.

The Windows Sidebar is fairly useless due to the small number of gadgets that actually do anything useful. Windows Media Center is also useless for me, which unless you actually have your PC hooked up to some sort of cable or satellite receiver for use as a DVR, has no real purpose.

I find that people make a big deal about the User Account Control, otherwise known as the annoying box that pops up asking me if I want to allow or deny. My Debian Linux box was set up so I had to type in my password any time I wanted to do anything requiring administrator rights, so clicking an OK button doesn’t seem that bad to me. I do wonder why Microsoft decided to restrict so many things, however. Security is still much better on my Linux box, but I am all for Windows becoming more secure and I will happily click a few OK buttons if it will keep me from having to remove a bunch of viruses and spyware later.

I haven’t played very many games on my system, but I know that the removal of DirectSound hardware acceleration will cause some frustration for gamers. OpenGL has been somewhat crippled in Vista, so OpenGL games may run poorly. Also the Aero interface will undoubtedly be a drag on performance as it uses more resources than the standard Windows interface.

I do like the new sound API that Vista uses, as it allows setting the volume on individual applications using the mixer as well as adding different sound enhancements like virtual surround or volume equalization. Windows Speech recognition is a fun toy to play around with and it works better than I expected, but I think it will take many more years of work to get speech recognition to the point where it can actually be useful.

Vista also seems to check files for DRM protection and will not allow you to copy them if the file is protected. I personally don’t think I will ever buy any music or movies that have DRM, but this Windows “feature” seams to have the effect of slowing down the copying any file while Windows checks to see if it is protected. There also seems to be other speculation as to what may be causing slow downs, but everyone seems to agree that file copying is slow in Vista.

All in all, I am happy with Vista and think it is the best Windows version to date and would thoroughly recommend getting it with a new PC, but on older systems I think you would be better saving up your money for a whole new computer rather than upgrading to Vista. I think that Vista may be the most novice friendly operating system Microsoft has ever created and yet it offers enough that even seasoned veterans like me will be happy.