My review of Vista after 3 days of testing

[Punio4]

First of all, I'll say what I installed it on, so you can get a better picture of it.

Barton 2800+

1GB DDR400

Abit NF7-SL (nForce2 + Soundstorm)

ATI X1600pro AGP (256MB)

Samsung SyncMaster 757NF (17'' CRT)

After I booted from the DVD, my first surprise was how well the installer was polished up. Heh, still nowhere near LiveCD installs, such as the one Ubuntu has, but lightyears from the previous versions. Another small change I found nice was that the installer asks you for the serial before it, unlike XP, formats, copies files onto your PC, and restarts. Saves you the nerves if you got the wrong version/cd key (happened to me once). Oh yeah, it will also automatically activate and download updates for ya if you have a network connection.

The next thing I noticed was that booting took well over one minute from bootscreen to login. XP booted for me in <40 sec. Optimized, it takes 4-5 passes of the loading bar until I see the desktop, which is about 30 seconds.

I was surprised to see that aero was working out of the box, whereas on XP I had to struggle with software rendering on a clean install, and evade any kind of scrolling / moving until I download some drivers. A big ++ for Vista. Oh yeah, sound worked too, but more on that later.

So, automatically, I wanted to boost my resolution to 1280x960@85Hz, right click - ... - Personalization? Ok... I guess. *click*

And a html-like window opens, with lotsa links to some settings. Adjust resolution or sth... And the good old "settings" tab window opens...

Now, the first thing I noticed, is that this is an entire window named "Display settings" with one tab, seems like a leftover from XP, named "Settings".

So, I went around and searched for the other "lost" tabs, and this is what I found out:

The XP display properties, which had 5 tabs, was split into 5 different windows/options, each with one tab visible.

Why would you want to do that? The settings are exactly the same, only scattered across the OS. And a lot of things in Vista have this feel to them:

"Let's change something for change's sake."

Some things aren't neccesary better, but *different*. Ofcourse, the majority of the OS has seen the change for the better. For instance, the new background selector is great. It has a dropdown menu, where you can select the source of the pictures, thus filtering results. And all backgrounds have a preview too. A huge step from the previous Windows'.

I thought that Aero will be "In your face", but actually, I haven't even really *noticed* it. It's just so unobtrusive. I love it. The new audio and networking stack/options are great too.

The entire system works like a charm, and the RAM usage is excellent. The whole sistem feels oh-so responsive.

One thing that really bugs me is the shutdown time. On XP, it takes ~5 seconds. On Vista, I restarted the system, and went for a cup of coffee. When I came back, I saw the loading screen and waited for it to type in my password. I was surprised to see that the sreen wasn't showing "Loading", but "Shutting down". Yes. It took it almost a minute to shut down. But no big deal, My computer is on the whole day.

Alas, I couldn't switch.

Since there are no drivers for Soundstorm, nor will there ever be, my sound was acting very weird. The default drivers which came with Vista only allowed stereo output, and the sound crackled when I was moving windows around.

Then I installed the latest Realtek drivers, and got 5.1, but still my microphone wasn't working, nor was there any hardware mixing, EAX, or anything for that matter. In Fruity Loops, not even 512 ms of buffer could prevent sound crackling...

Another thing was, that there was no software, or driver options, or tab in dxdiag, which allowed me to force the maximum refresh rate. Me being on a CRT = bad. Playing Wc3 in 60 makes my head hurt.

So, my conclusion is: If you have an LCD monitor, and the latest hardware, go for it. I probably won't switch to Vista in quite some time, until I get myself a new PC. It's definetly better than XP, and the problem for most of the non-switchers isn't hardware, but the lack of drivers for Vista, and dropped support.

Hope I gave you a good impression what Vista is like, and I must say although my standards are pretty high, I am still pleased with the OS.

Edited January 14, 2007 by Punio4

[Lenin91]

Cool, thanks.. I like vista myself but meh, it's not because it way better than XP

[NienorGT]

nVIDIA killed the nF2 in Vista, no driver support. >.>

[Cosmin]

Nice review but I'm waiting some .. gaming ' news ' . :)

[CPressland]

Yeah nice review, as for your startup and shutdown problem, it takes a week or so before all the bugs in it just seam to disapear! i can get from off/dead/cold to desktop in about 20 seconds!

[Punio4]

Nice review but I'm waiting some .. gaming ' news ' . :)

I tried Wc3, Dark Messiah demo, and UT2004.

I saw no performance hit compared to XP, only after entering/exiting games, after 3 seconds, the screen flickers, and the pc freezes for about 2 seconds, then everything resumes normally. Same goes for minimizing/restoring games, probably the AA/AF kicking in, cause the drivers are still in beta.

No problems like that when you're running them in windowed mode. Hell, you can flip3d em :) (though, if you do, the framerate drops to like 1/2)

Offtopic: The insta-index-search is great. I'm using Launchy on XP, and this is tons better. I have no use for shortcuts now :)

The start menu has a bug it would seem. Even if I remove most of the links on the right side, and set the recent items to zero, the start menu can only get smaller to a certain extent, which is still too big for my liking :)

This image is with *some* items on the right side, same works when there is none.

Also another thing. I cannot put my computer to sleep. I'm using suspend to ram in bios. In XP, the computer would just appear as if turned off.

In Vista, it "turns off" but then instantly wakes up. It's suffering from insomnia ^^

PS, don't look at the ram usage. It will just freak you out :D It jumps from 380, to 750, then back to 420... It just works, and let it be :)

Edited January 14, 2007 by Punio4

[cork1958]

Seems like an honest review and obviously not from some "fanboy".

From what I've seen of Vista, not impressed at all though.

[LiGhTfast]

I have a simular setup and thought the same, its a shame because if companies bothered to support hardware vista would be great. Next upgrade im making sure i dont have a creative sound card or a nvidia chipset on the motherboard in my pc

[Mr. Gibs]

Finally a review that is done by someone who actually used the RTM.

Heres what I found for vistas gaming:

Specs: Look at my sig

Driver: 97.46 Nvidia drivers [delivered via windows/microsoft update]

Games used: HL2, CSS, HL2:DM, DoD, LOTR:BFME2, C&C Generals, and WoW

HL2 performance in relation to XP: Cannot say because I last used HL2 ages ago when it used to stutter.

CSS performance in relation to XP: Mostly the same, about 1-5fps gain.

HL2:DM performance in relation to XP: Mostly the same, about 1-5fps gain.

DoD performance in relation to XP: Much better, 10-20 fps gain.

LOTR:BFME2 performance in relation to XP: Slower, has to be played on medium. XP could play on high->ultra. LAN/internet games do not work due to changes in the way vista handles networking .

C&C Generals performance in relation to XP: Same, playable on max, no fps change. LAN/internet games do not work due to changes in the way vista handles networking .

WoW performance in relation to XP: Slower, have to use 2x multisampling as 4x will give fps of about 10.

Thats what I have noticed so far. However, I have to say that the nvidia drivers as of now do not contain any game optimization code and are only provided so that Aero can work properly.

So far the results seem quite promising. I therefore assume that when nvidia finally releases proper gaming drivers, the performance gain will be obvious. I havent tested any high graphical games [like fear etc] because I don't play them anymore and I don't want to install them just to see how they run on Vista.