02:24
htc
The wait is over. Microsoft has officially launched their new operating system, Vista, to a store near you. Some of your students may have already installed Vista on their computers, and you may be wondering if it's worth all the hype. Chris Guirreri, a Web Multimedia Specialist from Center for New Media and Technology (CMNT) at UMUC, tried out a full-functioning version of Vista during the Release Candidate Program. Today, Chris shares his insights on the product.
Installing
Installation is a breeze compared to Windows XP and other previous Microsoft operating systems. The interface is clean, concise, and easy to understand. One nice new feature is that the Vista install disc contains all versions of Vista. This means that your installation is purely dependent on the key you have purchased, not the disc itself.
First Boot
It took a mere 25 minutes to reach my first actual "boot" into Vista - this compared to nearly 45 minutes when installing Windows XP SP2 on the same machine. Upon the first boot, Vista analyzes all of your hardware and gives you a "system score" known as the "Windows Experience Index." Depending on your score, certain OS settings may be disabled, and in my case, a score of 5.2 out of 6, pretty much everything in the OS was enabled. Once complete, all of my hardware was found, installed, and working right off the bat. This was extremely impressive!
Visually Appealing
Compared to XP, Vista's new interface is a complete overhaul.
The first show-stopper is the new "glass" effect seen on all of the windows known as "Aero Glass." These 3D-card enhanced features give Vista a whole new sheen of quality never seen before in a Microsoft operating system. You can literally see through certain areas of a window, however, while it is visually stunning, it can also be somewhat annoying. For instance, if you have a lot of windows open (as many of us commonly do), it can be, at first, a bit difficult trying to quickly determine which window is up front. There were many times that I found myself clumsily clicking on the wrong windows.
Thumbnail previews are everywhere. By holding your cursor over a window in the Start bar it will show you a small thumbnail preview of the window. The ALT-Tab shows a preview of windows. In Explorer, image thumbnails are loaded very quickly, and by using the slider in Explorer's view menu, you can instantaneously go from the classic "details" view to the gigantic thumbnail preview. I found this to be very intuitive when dealing with folders full of large images.
Everything has animations, fades, and pretty graphics. Minimizing, maximizing, and restoring windows offer easier to-and-from animation, making it much more clearer for you to accomplish the intended task.
The Sidebar
The sidebar appears as an opaque vertical bar along the right side of your screen. It allows you to drag-and-drop "gadgets" that do anything from display an analog clock to streaming audio from NPR, to getting notifications of RSS feeds being updated. Gadget libraries are freely available and are open-source so you can create your own. Microsoft hosts a well laid out community website where you can download new gadgets or share your own.
New Features
There are entirely new suites of applications bundled in, new security applications, new multimedia applications, new settings for mobility and device synchronization, easier networking and sharing, better backup and restoration... the list is quite long. For the most part I found the new features to be quite useful. Some of the new applications, such as Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11, are actually available as updates in Windows XP.
The "Soft" Crash
More than anything else, I found "reliability" to be one of the nicest enhancements in Vista. I never able to completely crash either of my test systems. In XP, crashing certain software was sometimes disastrous. In Vista, any software crash is complimented by a fading of the desktop, bringing your attention to a simple window that tells you of the problem, and after clicking OK, the system runs along just as smoothly as it did before.
Compatibility
As for software, I did bump into quite a few that simply would not install. For instance, installing my current version of Nero produced strange problems when trying to run the program. In order to use the software in Vista, I had to install the latest iteration. Vista, like XP, does offer a "compatibility mode" where you can emulate running older software, as if it were on an older operating system. This was quite effective in a few cases where I was not able to run the software in Vista otherwise.
System Specifications
Depending on your system specifications, Vista will probably feel like it's sucking up every ounce of your computer’s resources.
On the two systems I tested, while Vista ran very well, it was just under the limit with all of Vista's features turned on. In the particular case of my laptop, I noticed that it was quite a bit hotter during software development sessions, and its fan seemed to be much louder, and ran for longer periods of time than it did with XP. At the least you will need a "decent" dedicated video card. If you have a video card that is built into your motherboard, or in the case of laptops, your built-in "Intel-based" video card, you may not be happy with Vista's Aero Glass enabled.
RAM was also an issue. Booting to Win XP SP2 typically comes in around 200MB on my laptop's first boot, and around 400MB for a typical software development session. On Vista, a fresh boot almost toppled 512MB, and I quickly broke 1GB. Since RAM is getting cheaper every day it's recommended that have at least 2GB of RAM for Vista.
The Bottom Line
Vista caters to even more people than any previous Microsoft OS, and it makes many tasks much easier on a Windows-based PC than ever before. There are many features to assist the hearing and visually disabled folks as well as new parental controls, a built-in game-ratings system, and system automation. Because of the new file sharing, home networking, and Media Center functionality you even have the ability to hook up a home theater.
All of this said, am I going to be upgrading to Vista? Probably not. I don't really need it, particularly at work. But then I also said the same thing about Windows XP when I first bought it, and over time, as computers have become cheaper and more powerful, resources have become less of an issue. Maybe a year from now, when my computer has broken the speed limit, even I might get Vista installed for development purposes.
Installing
Installation is a breeze compared to Windows XP and other previous Microsoft operating systems. The interface is clean, concise, and easy to understand. One nice new feature is that the Vista install disc contains all versions of Vista. This means that your installation is purely dependent on the key you have purchased, not the disc itself.
First Boot
It took a mere 25 minutes to reach my first actual "boot" into Vista - this compared to nearly 45 minutes when installing Windows XP SP2 on the same machine. Upon the first boot, Vista analyzes all of your hardware and gives you a "system score" known as the "Windows Experience Index." Depending on your score, certain OS settings may be disabled, and in my case, a score of 5.2 out of 6, pretty much everything in the OS was enabled. Once complete, all of my hardware was found, installed, and working right off the bat. This was extremely impressive!
Visually Appealing
Compared to XP, Vista's new interface is a complete overhaul.
The first show-stopper is the new "glass" effect seen on all of the windows known as "Aero Glass." These 3D-card enhanced features give Vista a whole new sheen of quality never seen before in a Microsoft operating system. You can literally see through certain areas of a window, however, while it is visually stunning, it can also be somewhat annoying. For instance, if you have a lot of windows open (as many of us commonly do), it can be, at first, a bit difficult trying to quickly determine which window is up front. There were many times that I found myself clumsily clicking on the wrong windows.
Thumbnail previews are everywhere. By holding your cursor over a window in the Start bar it will show you a small thumbnail preview of the window. The ALT-Tab shows a preview of windows. In Explorer, image thumbnails are loaded very quickly, and by using the slider in Explorer's view menu, you can instantaneously go from the classic "details" view to the gigantic thumbnail preview. I found this to be very intuitive when dealing with folders full of large images.
Everything has animations, fades, and pretty graphics. Minimizing, maximizing, and restoring windows offer easier to-and-from animation, making it much more clearer for you to accomplish the intended task.
The Sidebar
The sidebar appears as an opaque vertical bar along the right side of your screen. It allows you to drag-and-drop "gadgets" that do anything from display an analog clock to streaming audio from NPR, to getting notifications of RSS feeds being updated. Gadget libraries are freely available and are open-source so you can create your own. Microsoft hosts a well laid out community website where you can download new gadgets or share your own.
New Features
There are entirely new suites of applications bundled in, new security applications, new multimedia applications, new settings for mobility and device synchronization, easier networking and sharing, better backup and restoration... the list is quite long. For the most part I found the new features to be quite useful. Some of the new applications, such as Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11, are actually available as updates in Windows XP.
The "Soft" Crash
More than anything else, I found "reliability" to be one of the nicest enhancements in Vista. I never able to completely crash either of my test systems. In XP, crashing certain software was sometimes disastrous. In Vista, any software crash is complimented by a fading of the desktop, bringing your attention to a simple window that tells you of the problem, and after clicking OK, the system runs along just as smoothly as it did before.
Compatibility
As for software, I did bump into quite a few that simply would not install. For instance, installing my current version of Nero produced strange problems when trying to run the program. In order to use the software in Vista, I had to install the latest iteration. Vista, like XP, does offer a "compatibility mode" where you can emulate running older software, as if it were on an older operating system. This was quite effective in a few cases where I was not able to run the software in Vista otherwise.
System Specifications
Depending on your system specifications, Vista will probably feel like it's sucking up every ounce of your computer’s resources.
On the two systems I tested, while Vista ran very well, it was just under the limit with all of Vista's features turned on. In the particular case of my laptop, I noticed that it was quite a bit hotter during software development sessions, and its fan seemed to be much louder, and ran for longer periods of time than it did with XP. At the least you will need a "decent" dedicated video card. If you have a video card that is built into your motherboard, or in the case of laptops, your built-in "Intel-based" video card, you may not be happy with Vista's Aero Glass enabled.
RAM was also an issue. Booting to Win XP SP2 typically comes in around 200MB on my laptop's first boot, and around 400MB for a typical software development session. On Vista, a fresh boot almost toppled 512MB, and I quickly broke 1GB. Since RAM is getting cheaper every day it's recommended that have at least 2GB of RAM for Vista.
The Bottom Line
Vista caters to even more people than any previous Microsoft OS, and it makes many tasks much easier on a Windows-based PC than ever before. There are many features to assist the hearing and visually disabled folks as well as new parental controls, a built-in game-ratings system, and system automation. Because of the new file sharing, home networking, and Media Center functionality you even have the ability to hook up a home theater.
All of this said, am I going to be upgrading to Vista? Probably not. I don't really need it, particularly at work. But then I also said the same thing about Windows XP when I first bought it, and over time, as computers have become cheaper and more powerful, resources have become less of an issue. Maybe a year from now, when my computer has broken the speed limit, even I might get Vista installed for development purposes.
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