I have been using different versions of Vista beta since PDC 05 release and I must say the way Vista has shaped up is quite astonishing. I loved the RC2 Build 5744 as much as much I hated the PDC 05 build.
Microsoft deserve praise on making Vista’s setup the easiest ever for any release of Windows (or for any operating system). It was simple and easy. It took about 40 minutes to complete the setup process. The system rebooted into new streamlined desktop (Aero was working out of the box) and everything looked nice. The crisis started when Vista failed to recognize my 3Com wireless USB adapter. It also didn’t recognize my Intel modem, Sound blaster Live, nForce integrated audio and MSI webcam but that didn’t bother me as long as I have a working Internet connection. It turned out that a minor upgrade of the driver using my old XP driver could give me a working wireless connection, although Vista did warn me about the driver not being compatible. Having a working Internet connection and having activated my copy of Vista I went to device manager and upgraded the missing drivers. Vista was clever enough to find the drivers itself over the Internet and within minutes I had my sound cards and modem working. Now this is sleek! Only driver Vista couldn’t find was my MSI webcam (I blame MSI, they don’t have that even on their website). To get optimum performance from my video adapter I went to nVidia’s website and downloaded nVidia driver for GeForce series. This gave a noticeable performance improvement on Aero and I could feel window animations and flip3D being more responsive. Apparently nVidia have been preparing for Vista big time.
Up to this point Vista’s intuitiveness to come up with problems and my experience to come up with solutions were on par with each other and we were moving forward. First warning I received from Vista’s security centre was to install an antivirus program. With a click it took me to a webpage offering free trials from few companies including Microsoft Onecare Live. I opted for Onecare Live as I am a current user of Onecare Live on my actual system and I am quite satisfied with the product. Onecare Live installation removed the warning message and Vista was happy to let me do the fun stuff.
There are many improvements in almost all the tools and features offered by Vista in this release including everyone’s beloved Notepad (it could be due to the use of new TextBox control). Windows sidebar is my favourite part in this build. To be honest I could never use sidebar in previous builds because the CPU and memory consumption was too high. My poor test system couldn’t handle the extra load so for testing I always had to turn it off. However, build 5744 has got major improvements in sidebar and sidebar gadgets. I have kept sidebar running with clock, slideshow, weather gadgets and notes since I started using this build. I never felt the need to turn it off. In fact I am getting so used to it that I miss my gadgets on my work system. I think there are going to be very innovative and useful gadgets coming out next year. I can feel the coming of the storm.
The system rating tool for the first time has rated my system 2.5, a 0.5 point improvement over previous builds. The detailed results felt close to reality and the time that tests took gave a satisfactory feeling of the actual work being carried out.
User Account Control (UAC) is still annoying at times but what I liked in this build is that if some application needs higher privilege and if it’s not the active window, the UAC waited till we shift the focus on that window. Window button on the taskbar is highlighted to attract user attention but the good news is you can carry out whatever you were doing and come back to the target window when you have the time. However, this is a potential problem for the old applications not designed for UAC and the extended wait might render the application unusable.
I have been using Vista for over two weeks as my primary operating system and I found it very stable and responsive, perhaps more than RC1. Performance is much better than previous builds and idle CPU consumption has gone down big deal. With tools like Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, SQL Server 2005 and some other supporting utilities running I still had half of resources to my disposal. The average CPU utilization I had with my sidebar (with 5 gadgets), Word 2003 and Windows Media Player running was 25% which is a big improvement over previous releases. And with same applications running the memory utilization was 500MB on average which is again a great improvement. With almost similar configuration my Windows XP SP2 gives 20% CPU and 480MB of memory utilization. I would discount Vista on that extra resource consumption owing to Aero and the sidebar.
To summarize everything, my experience with Windows Vista RC2 has been very satisfying and I think Microsoft have rightfully declared it code complete. As for my Vista upgrade, Dell says it’s November 28th and I am waiting. It would be interesting to see if it will still give me warnings about SQL Server 2005 not being compatible with Vista and then run fine. :)
Test System Configuration:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2100+
RAM: 1GB
Video: nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
Sound: Create SB Live! nVidia Integrated Audio
HDD: Maxtor 200GB 7200 RPM 16MB
(MSP) Nabeel Moghal
The University of Greenwich
Microsoft deserve praise on making Vista’s setup the easiest ever for any release of Windows (or for any operating system). It was simple and easy. It took about 40 minutes to complete the setup process. The system rebooted into new streamlined desktop (Aero was working out of the box) and everything looked nice. The crisis started when Vista failed to recognize my 3Com wireless USB adapter. It also didn’t recognize my Intel modem, Sound blaster Live, nForce integrated audio and MSI webcam but that didn’t bother me as long as I have a working Internet connection. It turned out that a minor upgrade of the driver using my old XP driver could give me a working wireless connection, although Vista did warn me about the driver not being compatible. Having a working Internet connection and having activated my copy of Vista I went to device manager and upgraded the missing drivers. Vista was clever enough to find the drivers itself over the Internet and within minutes I had my sound cards and modem working. Now this is sleek! Only driver Vista couldn’t find was my MSI webcam (I blame MSI, they don’t have that even on their website). To get optimum performance from my video adapter I went to nVidia’s website and downloaded nVidia driver for GeForce series. This gave a noticeable performance improvement on Aero and I could feel window animations and flip3D being more responsive. Apparently nVidia have been preparing for Vista big time.
Up to this point Vista’s intuitiveness to come up with problems and my experience to come up with solutions were on par with each other and we were moving forward. First warning I received from Vista’s security centre was to install an antivirus program. With a click it took me to a webpage offering free trials from few companies including Microsoft Onecare Live. I opted for Onecare Live as I am a current user of Onecare Live on my actual system and I am quite satisfied with the product. Onecare Live installation removed the warning message and Vista was happy to let me do the fun stuff.
There are many improvements in almost all the tools and features offered by Vista in this release including everyone’s beloved Notepad (it could be due to the use of new TextBox control). Windows sidebar is my favourite part in this build. To be honest I could never use sidebar in previous builds because the CPU and memory consumption was too high. My poor test system couldn’t handle the extra load so for testing I always had to turn it off. However, build 5744 has got major improvements in sidebar and sidebar gadgets. I have kept sidebar running with clock, slideshow, weather gadgets and notes since I started using this build. I never felt the need to turn it off. In fact I am getting so used to it that I miss my gadgets on my work system. I think there are going to be very innovative and useful gadgets coming out next year. I can feel the coming of the storm.
The system rating tool for the first time has rated my system 2.5, a 0.5 point improvement over previous builds. The detailed results felt close to reality and the time that tests took gave a satisfactory feeling of the actual work being carried out.
User Account Control (UAC) is still annoying at times but what I liked in this build is that if some application needs higher privilege and if it’s not the active window, the UAC waited till we shift the focus on that window. Window button on the taskbar is highlighted to attract user attention but the good news is you can carry out whatever you were doing and come back to the target window when you have the time. However, this is a potential problem for the old applications not designed for UAC and the extended wait might render the application unusable.
I have been using Vista for over two weeks as my primary operating system and I found it very stable and responsive, perhaps more than RC1. Performance is much better than previous builds and idle CPU consumption has gone down big deal. With tools like Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite, SQL Server 2005 and some other supporting utilities running I still had half of resources to my disposal. The average CPU utilization I had with my sidebar (with 5 gadgets), Word 2003 and Windows Media Player running was 25% which is a big improvement over previous releases. And with same applications running the memory utilization was 500MB on average which is again a great improvement. With almost similar configuration my Windows XP SP2 gives 20% CPU and 480MB of memory utilization. I would discount Vista on that extra resource consumption owing to Aero and the sidebar.
To summarize everything, my experience with Windows Vista RC2 has been very satisfying and I think Microsoft have rightfully declared it code complete. As for my Vista upgrade, Dell says it’s November 28th and I am waiting. It would be interesting to see if it will still give me warnings about SQL Server 2005 not being compatible with Vista and then run fine. :)
Test System Configuration:
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2100+
RAM: 1GB
Video: nVidia GeForce FX 5200 128MB
Sound: Create SB Live! nVidia Integrated Audio
HDD: Maxtor 200GB 7200 RPM 16MB
(MSP) Nabeel Moghal
The University of Greenwich
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