Vista RC2
October 09, 2006
I’ve been having some PC trouble recently, random blue screens and that kind of thing. They’re caused by a driver but since it’s a crucial one I’ve decided rather than wait for a fix I’d re-format. So naturally I just had to take a look at the recent Vista RC2 before resuming my old 32-bit XP usage.
It’s been a while since I last touched on Vista (albeit briefly), way back in February in fact. Since then there have been many new builds and many bugs squashed so I was eager to see if the experience would convince me that Vista is indeed a good thing and worth the wait.
Installation
Wow. That’s all I have to say. No, but really, the installer has seriously been overhauled, or at least had a lot of debug code removed from it. I was up and running in under twenty minutes which marks the first time Vista has ever installed quicker than XP on my system. (Though in retrospect that may be because of the dual core CPU I added last month). The amount of information you have to enter in is much less than in XP and so you can actually leave your computer a few minutes into the process, safe in the knowledge that it will actually complete without any extra pop up windows.
Compatibility
I didn’t have all that many compatibility problems before, and I still don’t now which is a blessing. My only disappointment is that my X-Fi soundcard is still not supported “out of the box”. I’m not expecting EAX or crystallisation to be supported since that’s obviously for Creative to take care of, but it would be nice if I could just get some sort of sound after installation.
Software compatibility so far seems okay, I’ve yet to try a huge array of different apps but so far all the important ones work. With the exception of America’s Army but that’s only becuase PB hasn’t been updated.
Performance
Performance is much improved. Having gone such a long time between trying out builds of Vista it was a tremendous jump from before. Searching for apps and files is snappier and the time taken to index my 160Gb of data is also much abbreviated from the interminable period it was before. Memory management is better and most of my games run at almost the same speed they did before, though with better driver support I’m sure even that marginal performance loss will be eradicated.
Features
The OS is now starting to feel much more complete thanks to the new bundled apps. Windows Gallery, new Movie Maker, new Media Player etc etc. They all add depth and media support that previously you only found on Apple systems. Make no mistake, the apps bundled in Vista are still no match for the iLife suite, but the features they provide will be more than adequate for the average user. Sadly, despite the overhaul, windows media player is still lacking in features when compared to the new iTunes7 release from Apple last month. It has however improved aesthetically though given the state of MP10 that was never going to be that hard.
Conclusion
Vista has come a long way during the course of this year and is actually due to go gold at the end of October with it being released publicly early next year (just before Leopard I believe). I now know for certain that I’ll be buying it, I was on the fence before when the system was sluggish and presentation poor but having seen and used what is nearly the finished product there’s no way I can say that my moving to Vista from XP is going to be a bad thing.
It still doesn’t match OS X though, I’m more excited about Leopard than Vista, but regardless, both will be purchased come the first quarter next year.
Feedback?
If you’ve found errors or have some feedback please . Comments aren’t currently enabled due to spam but I’m sure they’ll return in the future.