First Experiences with Windows Vista « Irfan’s Corner on the Web

18Feb/0710

First Experiences with Windows Vista

I've been a long time Linux user, recently someone asked me what were the advantages of Linux compared to Windows Vista, to be honest I didn't know the answer primarily because I had never used Windows Vista. And online sources such as Slashdot.org are unreliable when it comes to Linux vs. Windows debate, as they are biased towards Linux.

So I bought myself a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate and setup a machine with it. In the coming days I will post my experiences with Windows Vista and will be in a better position to objectively answer the advantages of Windows Vista compared to Linux.

My initial experiences in installing Windows Vista have been pretty good. Windows Vista has the simplest installer of any Windows version. However, its not the simplest installer I've ever seen. The Installer of OpenSUSE 10.2 most notably stands out. I especially like the way the OpenSUSE 10.2 installer makes decisions on your behalf, like partitioning schemes etc. Where-as partitioning and disk selection is still manual in Windows Vista.

Once Vista completed installing, I was not at all amazed by the eye candy. The transition in user interface design from Windows XP to Windows 9x was huge, and less so with Windows XP to Windows Vista. Infact there are softwares which change the look and feel og Windows XP to that of Windows Vista.

There was much ado about the resource requirements of Windows Vista, and how it will force people to upgrade their hardware. I'm running Windows Vista on a Pentium 2.8 Ghz HT, 80 GB SATA, 512MB+256MB RAM, and a Radeon 9600 (which is now considered legacy), and I'm getting smooth performance. However a true picture of performance requirements will emerge once some software is installed in it.

Vista looks 'visibly' more secure. That is there are popups asking you that some certain application is about to execute, there are popups for messages from applications. Sometimes it can be annoying thats why I may disable User Account Control. I've disabled the standard Windows Firewall, and tried installing Sygate Professional, one of my favorite firewall for Windows, however due to compatability problems it wont install.

The start menu has been redesigned, and to be honest, I think the Windows XP one was better. Recently a new design of the 'K Menu was added to OpenSuse 10.2, and I like the way its structured and its really easy to access applications, however in the Windows Vista menu, its not easy because all applications are displayed as a single list. See the screenshots to see what I mean.

And Compare this to the OpenSUSE 10.2 menu

And while I was taking the first screenshot, I came across the first user interface bug, I have seen it being reported somewhere while Vista was till beta, but its still not fixed in the final release. As you can see when I go about saving the image and click on the drop down button instead of seeing a hiearchical list of the file system, I see a list of recent websites visited!

So my verdict about Vista in the first day is, that its not a definite improvement over previous Windows versions, most notable Windows XP, and surely not against other Operating Systems. Upto now I have not seen anything that is a geniune innovation. Microsoft trumpeted a lot about translucent windows and security in their add campaign, sure security is better now, but they can not claim it to be the 'most secure system ever', and translucent windows have been in MacOSX for years.

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Filed under: microsoft, operating systems, windows Leave a comment

jekwl4

So was your purchase of Vista worth it, given your initial experience? It sort of seems to confirm the overall reaction of the users…As in “meh”. Not “Woohoo!”.
http://gracefulflavor.wordpress.com/ Jeff Ventura

Good post. I blog about Vista pretty prominently, but more compared to OSX rather than Linux. Having used Vista for a while myself, I agree with your assessment. It’s good, but nothing terribly noteworthy over XP. At least not yet. Maybe the .NET 3.0 framework that’s included with Vista will lead to some interesting apps down the road.

Your and my opinion don’t stand alone: recently, a very prominent Windows guru working at Computerworld switched to a Mac — for good. That’s quite a testament not only to the Mac, but also to what Vista *isn’t*.

Good post.

Jeff Ventura
Graceful Flavor (http://gracefulflavor.net)
EmyrB

Like you I recently went from Windows XP to Windows Vista at work and I have to say my experiences have been really mixed. I must agree with both you and Jeff that there is nothing more here than Windows XP has to offer. It is a shame really, a closed source OS that was 5 years in the making does not offer anything “jazzy”, but a open source OS with a six month release cycle can offer us leaps and bounds with innovation, the LiveCD is a good example of this.

The hardest part now for me, is to learn all the foibles of Vista so I can support the end users in my organization.
Roque

I´m not a linux geek (very new in linux wold), also I´m not a windows Geek, just some one that needs to have a pc at home.

I´m using Ms OS´s since ever, the Microsoft products in Europe are extremely expensive, always had been, reason why (I´m shame to say but it is truth) I used pirate versions, in last the two years I have followed very close ubuntu, only about 8 months ago i assembled a 2 PC for me with linux, the new one is for the kids they need to have windows OS for the school IT (Information Tecnology class) home work.

Ubuntu for as came across a long way, I remenber a few years a ago the first time that a friend give me Suse cdrom …
Who would say in that time,that today I´m using must of time at home in linux .
I would like to say that I make every thing …. I repeat… I make every thing I need at home with the Ubuntu linux and the applications that have available on it .

I´m not a linux geek, cannot test all distros … I do not have time for that .

Ubuntu distro so far is the one I need, the support from the community is wonderful, have read a lot about linux vs windows … this is not the real issue .

The real issue is the fact that no one can deny that more and more people like me are starting to use linux, why … because it´s not about MS or BSD or Linux or MAC, its about what the people need, and what “people like me” can do with it.

“people like me” means people that don´t known what is su command or what is the “command line”

thank you for your time
Antonio Roque
John

I agree with you. Mac os is definitely better than vista. Even this article says,

http://www.vistahunt.com/vista-versus-mac-os.html

If you want to check difference between Xp & Vista, check this article.

http://www.vistahunt.com/compare-windws-xp-with-windows-vista.html

regards
dopleganger

let us know if windows vista will let you playy pirated music.
http://thesunnah.wordpress.com/ abu ameerah

nice post. i think i hate Vista…i can’t help but feel that it is a scam (like other Microsoft products)…

anyway…i’ll still go with XP
António Pedro

As António Roque, I too notice I spend much more time using Linux (Ubuntu Edgy 6.10, for that matter) than Windows… I only use windows when I want to play a game, or when I take my laptop to school and some one needs to use it for a while… At home, I have my both my laptop and the family’s desktop set up to dualboot Windows + Ubuntu.

In the Desktop, I use only Ubuntu, and my family uses only Windows… The laptop, being the system that’s truly mine, has windows installed merely for games… If it weren’t for games, I’d have only linux!

Besides, in Ubuntu, i’m using VirtualBox, which allows me to test certain Windows programs that do not work well (or at all) under Wine… Actually, VirtualBox is extremely fast, there’s no need for me to reboot into windows unless I want to play a game.

As for the eyecandy… XGL/AIGLX + Beryl really do kick Vista’s ass… with a smaller performance hit
http://mikesplace.wordpress.com/ Michael Perry

I’ve been running Vista since beta 2 and through the RCs on a rather nice AMD64 box with a 256mb nvidia card and 2g of nice memory. The install took me about 15 minutes more or less I would think. The longest thing is adding the applications I often use. I use Linux a lot but mostly Debian and Ubuntu. I think Vista is interesting and fun but its not a huge leap forward in productivity or use case factors. Some things really irritate me with it like UAC which I just turn off since many of my so-called legacy applications (Xara Xtreme) will not install correctly.

When I first started out with Vista, it was hard to find things like Antivirus programs. And you still need to add those kinds of programs for obvious reasons. Updates occur much like with windows xp updates however, I’ve noticed that often the updater does not spin around for minutes like with XP.

Talking about updates though, Ubuntu now wants a few hundred mb of updates with edgy as well. By the time I add the sources.list for the programs I really want, the updates are up there.

Someone mentioned the installer. On Ubuntu Edgy and Dapper, the installer insisted on setting up X for a card on the motherboard I had disabled in the bios. Vista caught that and installed the right PCI-X card. However, the Vista support by Nvidia is kinda sucky. I get blue screens trying to upgrade the nvidia drivers every so often on Vista.

So my take is mixed. Vista is not leaps and bounds but I like some of it. Ubuntu Edgy takes a lot of updates too to get things. I like the aero and glass look in Vista. I don’t use beryl in Ubuntu. Windows boxes for me are disposable desktops and I still boot a w2kpro box here. For things like managing virtual machines in VMware Server, I use Debian Etch.
http://irfanhabib.wordpress.com Irfan Habib

@dopleganger

unfortunately it won’t let me play anything! It didnt recognize my Intel 865 hardware, it uses an internal sound card. The drivers are also not available from the Intel Website and the driver shipped with the motherboard only work upto windows server 2k3.

Anyone installed Vista on 865 yet?

@abu ameerah
I dont know why microsoft focused their advertising dollars on Vista, maybe because the platform is so crucial to their success.
But I really LOVE MS Office 2007. It has a huge GUI upgrade, and I personally feel a LOT more productive in the new Office.
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