My lowdown on Vista RC1

[dagamer34]

While waiting for Paul Thurtott's full review on RC1, I decided to write my own brief review for now.

Specs

Intel Pentium M 725A (1.6Ghz, 400Mhz FSB, 2MB L2 cache)

1.25GB of DDR2 533Mhz RAM (256MB HP RAM + 1GB Transcend RAM) runs at 400MHz due to CPU FSB :angry:

128MB ATi Mobility Radeon x700

80GB 5400RPM Fujistu HDD

15.4" screen at 1280x800

Built-in Ethernet and WiFi

SoundMAX Integrated Audio

Installation

Installation took around 30-35 minutes on my laptop. Personally, installation could be much smoother if all options were at the beginning so you could set it and forget it. I think I remember having to wait until the OS was done installing to put in my username, password, and select my icon and wallpaper.

Performance

Performance of this build is rather smooth compared to previous builds. Aero Glass was automatically enabled. Most windows are visually responsive (no tearing).

UI elements

I'm going to be subjective here without ranting. I wish that more stuff was customizable. The titlebar text is a bit to small for most people to read, and when a window is maximized, you have black on white text (a bit hard to read). I personally turned transparency off so that my GPUs fan on my laptop wasn't running all the time.

Program installs

Nothing outright refused to install.

Drivers

I was ready to use this as my fulltime OS until i got around to installing some non-important drivers (camera, printer). Complete failure. Though I wouldn't pin this on Microsoft for these problems, it just serves as a reminder that Vista is not ready for primetime in terms of driver support. Vista can be used as a full-time OS but not the only OS. You need to dual-boot with XP for some missing functionality.

Built-in programs

I tried tagging some photos in Windows Photo Gallery and found out that it takes a while for the data to get written to the actual image file (metadata is stored in the file itself). Media Center's UI looks superb however it's difficult to navigate with a mouse. YOu have to actually hover over the arrows to move in any direction. A bit confusing.

Yea, I know that this review is pretty short and lacking but I've only had the build for an hour and these are my thought on it. Basically, Vista is almost ready for primetime, but this is where the 3rd parties have to work their magic in order for the OS to get anywhere.

[:: Lyon ::]

It is kinda short but we appreciate it dude ;)

Any thoughts from Pre-RC1 to RC1 difference/comparison?

[»X«]

Well ive just freshly upgraded from pre rc1 and I can say the only major difference so far is the annoying movie playback bug is fixed!!! At last!!

[windows95isg8]

Nice review :-)

[Malisk]

I've also found out the hard way (Explorer.exe crashes and information from a person on AeroXP) that one should beware of DivX codec installs for now, as Vista's thumbnail generation may get messed up from that and start crash. I uninstalled ffdshow and so far so good, so we'll see. The workaround for me for now to watch videos on Vista is to use VLC that's pretty sweet anyway. :) It also comes with a "Blissta" skin downloadable from its website. :)

I can also add that the search indexing and background defrag seem to be clearly less intrusive in the performance in RC1 compared to Beta 2. Heck, overall Vista's performance seem to be reaching and sometimes even exceeding XP's levels now. I'd recommend 1 GB though, but I do that for XP too. ;)

I'm not too annoyed by the UAC prompts anymore. I only use to get them nowadays when I install programs and mess with system settings in the control panel. And then I think you *should* get them. I also of course got one of those when moving files into a Program Files subdirectory, but that's expected too as it's a non-user specific change. Hopefully this will make it much harder for strange adware to infest systems of careless users. Although that's just something in theory. Because then they might be careless enough to click "Allow" on the UAC prompts too.

As for programs, I've run:

- Firefox

- ?Torrent

- VLC

- Remote Desktop Connection to a Windows XP computer

- Various Vista-included applications

These ran fine.:)) I may only have had trouble with the ffdshow codec as said before.

In Vista Beta 2, I ran Guild Wars fine, so I expect it to run well on RC1 too.

I ran Celestia too, and it worked, but very slowly, due to a lack of hardware accelerated OpenGL drivers with the default NVIDIA driver.

A final thing -- I set my BIOS to "Suspend to RAM" (also called power saving mode "S3") as suspend mode to make it fully hibernation compatible and actually shut down fans and CPU, andwow>, I barely had time to blink and it was up and running from a shutdown! Talking something like 3-5 seconds start time. And that's loading the 1 GB RAM image. My monitor didn't quite have time to warm up during the time, so I don't know what happened after the BIOS startup, but whatever did, it was quick! I think they've done some heavy optimizations here compared to before. I love Vista's hibernation support.:)) It gets into either hibernation or full shut down as quick as XP, if not quicker. Perhaps 10-15 seconds or so and it's off.

Edit: Oh, and the List View in Explorer is of course back.:)) Not sure when it was re-added, but I recall it was missing for a while. Good for those Detail View haters among us wishing to have them in columns, vertical first (Small Icons arranges horizontally first)

Edit 2: Also, I noticed Vista tries to use a new protocol for heavier encryption in its Remote Desktop Connection support. It'll only use it when connecting to other Vista clients, but it's good to know it's there. This should be good news for people connecting from home to work computers, at least once these work computers switch to Vista.

Edited September 3, 2006 by Jugalator

[dagamer34]

It is kinda short but we appreciate it dude ;)

Any thoughts from Pre-RC1 to RC1 difference/comparison?

I only had Pre-RC1 installed for about a day or two. I couldn't notice any differences in performance. Most likely they just had some bug fixes.

I've also found out the hard way (Explorer.exe crashes and information from a person on AeroXP) that one should beware of DivX codec installs for now, as Vista's thumbnail generation may get messed up from that and start crash. I uninstalled ffdshow and so far so good, so we'll see. The workaround for me for now to watch videos on Vista is to use VLC that's pretty sweet anyway. :) It also comes with a "Blissta" skin downloadable from its website. :)

I can also add that the search indexing and background defrag seem to be clearly less intrusive in the performance in RC1 compared to Beta 2. Heck, overall Vista's performance seem to be reaching and sometimes even exceeding XP's levels now. I'd recommend 1 GB though, but I do that for XP too. ;)

I'm not too annoyed by the UAC prompts anymore. I only use to get them nowadays when I install programs and mess with system settings in the control panel. And then I think you *should* get them. I also of course got one of those when moving files into a Program Files subdirectory, but that's expected too as it's a non-user specific change. Hopefully this will make it much harder for strange adware to infest systems of careless users. Although that's just something in theory. Because then they might be careless enough to click "Allow" on the UAC prompts too.

As for programs, I've run:

- Firefox

- ?Torrent

- VLC

- Remote Desktop Connection to a Windows XP computer

- Various Vista-included applications

These ran fine.:)) I may only have had trouble with the ffdshow codec as said before.

In Vista Beta 2, I ran Guild Wars fine, so I expect it to run well on RC1 too.

I ran Celestia too, and it worked, but very slowly, due to a lack of hardware accelerated OpenGL drivers with the default NVIDIA driver.

A final thing -- I set my BIOS to "Suspend to RAM" (also called power saving mode "S3") as suspend mode to make it fully hibernation compatible and actually shut down fans and CPU, andwow>, I barely had time to blink and it was up and running from a shutdown! Talking something like 3-5 seconds start time. And that's loading the 1 GB RAM image. My monitor didn't quite have time to warm up during the time, so I don't know what happened after the BIOS startup, but whatever did, it was quick! I think they've done some heavy optimizations here compared to before. I love Vista's hibernation support.:)) It gets into either hibernation or full shut down as quick as XP, if not quicker. Perhaps 10-15 seconds or so and it's off.

Edit: Oh, and the List View in Explorer is of course back.:)) Not sure when it was re-added, but I recall it was missing for a while. Good for those Detail View haters among us wishing to have them in columns, vertical first (Small Icons arranges horizontally first)

Edit 2: Also, I noticed Vista tries to use a new protocol for heavier encryption in its Remote Desktop Connection support. It'll only use it when connecting to other Vista clients, but it's good to know it's there. This should be good news for people connecting from home to work computers, at least once these work computers switch to Vista.

Yea, I can second most of the stuff that you've said. UAC prompts are much much fewer compared to Beta 2, and probably more changes are coming. What would probably instantly solve most UAC problems would be adjusting the prompts to be more like Linux; you're prompted for your root password initially, and then once again after a period of inactivity (5 minutes i think). This would cut down on the umber of unneccessary dialogs while still keeping some security.

One other thing, the general Media Center UI looks finished expect for the Online Spotlight part that looks directly ripped from MCE 2005. I don't know about the state of that but it's gotta go.

[Litespeed]

As for programs, I've run:

- Firefox

- ?Torrent

utorrent always asks me if I want it to be the default .torrent application. It's like the setting isn't being retained.

[»X«]

Well ive just freshly upgraded from pre rc1 and I can say the only major difference so far is the annoying movie playback bug is fixed!!! At last!!

I take it back. Vista is still being a ****. Once again if i pause for too long it all crashes. Damnit I wish there was a fix, this is blood boiling! :angry:

[Agnes Leroy]

Performance

Performance of this build is rather smooth compared to previous builds. Aero Glass was automatically enabled. Most windows are visually responsive (no tearing).

Microsoft release atleast 5 RCs and make it un smoothly on my 512 MB RAM.

[»X«]

Well heres my thoughts on UAC (those annoying confirmations popups when you do anything).

Its just insane. As an experienced user like most on here, the thought of having to wade through boxes of yes's and no's is lunacy. Wouldnt mind so much if it was done only in certain situations like trying to delete system files and such. But simply deleting something or trying to copy a file over another like it, causes the popups to commence.

so imagine what it will be like for new users, or users like my dear old mother who is right at the bottom of the computer literacy chain. She can browse and play card games, but if she used vista im sure she would ask of a way of disabling it. And my dad? He would throw the computer out the window.

Any security feature that interferes with the UI and interupts the end users work is just plain ANNOYING and should be removed. Im sure there are other ways of improving computer security. Besides, never had a single security problem in xp, so why change what isnt broken? First thing I do on a fresh vista install is disable UAC and I have no intention of turning it on, no matter how many people bang on about the security it brings blah blah. For those that have stated "You all moan about not enough security but when you get it you complain!" I say this. We didnt ask for this. Simple. We wanted safer browsing (mainly for IE) we wanted a better firewall and perhaps spyware protection. We didnt want a dialog telling us if we are sure we want to move a file, 3 times!