Windows Vista Ultimate Hands On: A Diary

[CptAmerica]

I'm going to point out that Vista has a very nice screen capture utility (I said utility preinstalled. It's different from the Print Screen button) built in. It's under Accessories, although I don't remember the name at the moment.

Yep, it's called the Snipping Tool and it's really handy. I uploaded some screenshots of it to my flickr account.

 

[kronicade]

Good article:

I'd be interested in a little more in depth description of Vista's display settings and options. From this article I'd say Vista is just a snazzy WinXP system (of which I know must be way off). Microsoft has poured more development hours in this product then virtually ALL previous products. There has to be something really useful in this new OS.

 

[phenix]

It seems like the author is attempting to pay homage to MS for sending him this _great acer laptop_, but in all his a#@ kissing, the best he can manage to squeel out is "its not worse than XP". Are you kidding? Six years in active focused development and its no worse than before?

Please.

Then, this guy comes on the forum, and tries to defend his work by pretending he's someone else.. that's rich.

So, Slobogowhatever, are you going to keep the laptop?

 

[Slobogob]

Then, this guy comes on the forum, and tries to defend his work by pretending he's someone else.. that's rich.

So, Slobogowhatever, are you going to keep the laptop?

Well, i sure would try to, pheniwhatever, as i´m 100% sure it's better than the machine i´m using right now. You could send me one and i´d do a diary of it too! :twisted:

 

[SRRAE]

I have used Vista, in various beta, RC and even final forms, and Im not that impressed.

I was hoping to read an article about what it was like and also read about anoyances what I have found with drivers, the search utility and the hard to use vista default GUI. But none of that was there. Even for a "Diary" it is a poor article. Diaries should have thoughts and feelings about the software but I didnt find any of that. This is more of a review, and a poor one at that.

 

[Homerr]

/agree with Jedifenner

 

[chuckshissle]

Any news on the pricing? Is the Ultimate Vista still going to put a hole in my wallet?

 

[throx]

Ultimate Vista is quite expensive, but do you really need it? I strongly suggest going to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx and looking at what features you actually need.

As for Vista itself - the motive for me to upgrade is the search, especially on the start menu. I find myself just hitting start and typing what I want now instead of having to look through cascaded menus all the time. Similarly when looking through my "Downloads" folder or something like that.

 

[russki]

Not to regurgitate what so many have said, and also to contradict to all those who are saying "I'm going to go to the old interface" (which has also been done countless times, although seemingly without much effect), but...

1. Article is disappointing, because it does not give a good overview of Vista's features. I know it's called a diary, but the mere fact it's posted on Tom's, a review website, by nature, gives it the tone of introducing the readers to the new system, of which, in my opinion, it does a very poor job.
2. To follow up on point number 1 and what so many people have said here already, the revamped interface is not simply eye candy. Microsoft is not so stupid (even though, don't get me wrong, I deeply dislike the company) that they invest countless hours to invent the new interface; they realize that with changing interface comes the necessary re-training of the users, which is a huge consideration for the designers. That simply means that if a change is implemented, it is thought to improve functionality in a way where the benefits (ease of use, etc.) outweigh the detriments. In this regard, the article fails to give us an idea whether they succeeded or failed.
3. Some of the items discussed are too trivial to warrant mention in a serious Tom's article (i.e. press Alt to pop up the menu bar, preview windows - actually a good feature that warrants positive mention, etc.)
4. Overall, it does not answer the question pretty much everyone who's reading it will ask - is it worth it. This question is much more complex than simply "it's no worse than XP" - there are many, many considerations that go into an upgrade decision (which is what most people are facing, since my guess is it's going to be hard to buy a system with XP preinstalled (i.e. the vendors will start putting Vista on their PCs / laptops) - and I'm not talking about the enthusiasts who put their systems together themselves...)

I thought the overview of Vista was much better handled at www.winsupersite.com (not to plug them, but simply to provide an alternative and an illustration of what I'm talking about).

Enjoy.

 

[celewign]

I have a feeling there are a lot of thirty year old men in cubicles working with new Windows OSs. And they probably rememeber their prime, the good old days of Windows 95. These people probably revert to classic view.

It all depends on your group of peers.
-cm

 

[axilon]

you wont hit driver problems with embedded hardware, they should of sent him a barebones tower.. THEN we would hear some bit#$in

 

[MrStumpy99]

Maybe you guys missed this from the other day. But it makes me curious. Was this Acer Ferrari a loaner or a gift? Seems there are quite a few gifts floating out there. I am not panning Vista. I have used it on a test laptop and I like it but the questions raised by the article below need some looking at.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2077596,00.asp

 

[jfuqua]

I was very disappointed with this article and view it as a waste of time. I'm not interested in hearing how Vista can be turned into XP, it's much more valuable to hear about the new features and UI. Don't get me wrong, it's hard to change, but after not liking the xp start menu for example I grew to love it.

 

[Narg]

Bluetooth rocks, especially for mice on laptops. I'm sad by the short selection on bluetooth mice in the market today. It sucks having to have a dongle hanging out of a laptop to use a good mouse.

 

[russki]

Bluetooth rocks, especially for mice on laptops. I'm sad by the short selection on bluetooth mice in the market today. It sucks having to have a dongle hanging out of a laptop to use a good mouse.

Bluetooth is nice, but it is still slower than wireless, and, for whatever reason, I have to connect my Logitech BT mouse several times to my HP before it "takes" for good...I guess that's the cost of the dongle-free world...

 

[CyBrett]

I've been using Vista, multiple releases, for a few months now on my MacBook Pro. I have to say that I absolutely love Vista. The new interface and features took a while but they really grow on you. To answer some of the questions from your article you should really check out Paul Thurrotts review of Windows Vista at www.winsupersite.com. It goes into greater depth concerning all the new features that Windows Vista offers as well as answers as to why they did things like remove items from the menu bars. As for Office 2007, I was immediately impressed. The changes in Office 2007 are far greater, and better, than what Vista brings over XP. I suggest that everyone check out Office 2007 if they can.

Cy

 

[vanka]

I personally stopped reading the "diary" (does he also write about his crush on the boy next door and his wish for a pony) after the second page. I don't mean to diss on THG or the author of the review, but this review is a little late. I have run various builds of Vista (leaked alphas, betas, and RCs) and have been following Windows Super Site's coverage of Vista almost religiously from the Longhorn days; so the info in the THG review is old news to me. Heck, I subscribe to PC Magazine and even they published a review Vista RTM about a month and a half ago. THG usually scoops the competition (like Anandtech) with reviews and news, but not this time; time to get on the ball guys.

 

[Narg]

Bluetooth rocks, especially for mice on laptops. I'm sad by the short selection on bluetooth mice in the market today. It sucks having to have a dongle hanging out of a laptop to use a good mouse.

Bluetooth is nice, but it is still slower than wireless, and, for whatever reason, I have to connect my Logitech BT mouse several times to my HP before it "takes" for good...I guess that's the cost of the dongle-free world...

You are definately showing the problem. Not enough good equipment available. I too hate the Logitech BT mouse. I also have another BT mouse which links up much quicker and works much better. Unfortuantely, I think the company that made them is no longer doing so. But, it doesn't stop at mice. BT is so much more useful if laptop makers would stop charging for it. BT chips are pennies in costs. They should be free in every laptop, just like they are in many cell phones. Instead laptop sellers are trying to get more money out of it rather than make it a standard.

Granted BT is not perfect, but it's the best short range standard format available and needs to be used. We users must be vocal or it will never reach mass velocity in the market.

 

[wrack]

And When doing a file transfer (round 25GB) from one HDD to another, vista took rougly 7-10 minutes on my rig while xp took almost an hour to do this same operation... hurray vista!
I also love the backwards compatibility of the OS, it actually has a setting that allows you to define what operating system you want to open a specifi file as, from win 95 - nt4.0 to vista.

Have u actually tried this comptability mode? It exists in XP too but to my knowledge I was never be able to make it work..!

I hope it's improved in Vista.

 

[Kim_Jong_Moon]

I fully agree with the previous statements that this article doesn't cut the mustard in any sense, given the context of this site. One must assume that the readers of Tom's Hardware are a little more interested in reading a more in-depth evaluation, than the average person loitering around on his laptop.

The author obviously is not the kind of person who would know that one can reach System Properties through etc. My Computer -> Right-click-> Properties, or simply pressing Win+Pause/Break.

After setting the Control Panel to Classic style, I was able to locate the System applet icon.

or the the beforementioned Print Screen/Alt+Print Screen.

Also, instantly reverting all GUI to the good ole' familiar looking Win95-ish style, shows a kind of conservatism that is not what I would call suitable for a site that is supposed to be cutting-edge, hardcore tech.

The fact that he by default disabled the firewall in XP because it asked too much questions, is in my opinion, also a tell that this person might not be the one you should pay much attention to. Has he ever used a software firewall that doesn't ask these questions? And does he understand why?

 

[hergieburbur]

No, the operation was IDENTICAL, the files moved and the file system used.. the only variable was the OS..

I did this transfer awhile ago, so my times might be off, but one thing that is very neat about vista is that it shows you the speed of your file transfers, which mine averaged at 50MB/s which, according to my calculations woulda taken bout 8.33 minutes to complete.

I could hardly believe how long took either lol.

Funny, I did almost the same thing, but with a group of large files amounting to a few gigs, and my experience was the times are the same at best (based on Vista being a little slower, but running on a slower machine).

 

[dade49]

I agree that the Author obviously isn't tech savvy. While it may be a good article for low-tech readers, it seems out of character for this site.

One thing about Vista that I'd like to mention is file sharing services. While they work great between 2000/XP/Vista, There are some known incompatibility issues between Vista and Samba. If you're using an older revision if SMB that does not support AD type authentication or CIFS, you may run across some problems. Vista's file security requires encrypted passwords, not clear-text. For those of you out there running Linux with Samba, be sure to update to the newest revision of Samba to be sure you can access your SMB shares from Vista clients.

 

[Slobogob]

I agree that the Author obviously isn't tech savvy. While it may be a good article for low-tech readers, it seems out of character for this site.

Indeed. I wondered about that myself and am curious why they feature that article. I´ve a idea why, but that´s just speculation so far.

 

[darklife41]

My opinion, having run Vista for 3 months on a desktop, is pretty similar to this diary writer's.

For what it's worth, I like the change to an opinion/diary format vs the review format. The bottom line for Vista, as I see it, is whether or not it's worth the investment in hardware and the OS to upgrade. Here's a few of my own experiences that have convinced me that it's not worth it for most users:

I have transferred 200 gig's of music to different folders on the same hard drive with both XP Pro and Vista Ultimate RC1, many times on each, and seen no difference at all in transfer speed/time. (Anyone who sees an hour of transfer time with 25 gigs on XP has serious problems, as both Vista and XP take about 30 minutes to transfer my 200 gigs to a new folder on the same system, whether it be the same partition or a different one. Now if you transfer across a domain, completely different situation. But still this is a bandwidth issue, not an OS issue.)

I spent months fighting to learn the new interface and finally changed it back to the good ol' classic interface. I don't see any advantages to the new interface, and frankly it's all about what is comfortable for the individual. The interface itself has nothing to do with how the OS performs. It's all personal preference whether the new interface can be used faster than the classic interface. For me, its not worth it to wait until the new interface becomes second nature. I know classic. I like classic. I can find things as fast or faster using the interface I know and like.

I grew so wary of the constant security advisor popups that I shut them off entirely. I don't need an OS to protect me from myself nor force me to make the decison more than once to install something. It didn't protect me from anything, but then my AV and spyware programs do that.

If anything, Vista Ultimate is slower than XP overall. Programs hang at startup. There is so much useless crap running in the backround that the entire system is slowed. Sure, you can tweak it by turning off rarely used or never used features, but then why spend the $ for Ultimate in the first place?! I'm a speed freak. Give me speed or give Vista death!

I'm constanty reminded by Vista that I don't have enough system resources to do everything Vista is supposed to do, although I have a pretty decent system. While a Core 2 Duo or Quad Core may resolve that issue, people need to know that a dual core (even overclocked to 4.1GHz) won't suffice. I have a C2D on order and will know in the next week the results of Vista Ultimate RC1 with an X6600.

Setting up Vista to run with Windows 2003 Small Business Server is a total pain compared to XP.

Drivers are STILL NOT available for many software and hardware configurations. I still can't find updated Gigabyte drivers for seeing the other hard drives, etc.. More than a minor inconvenience when you rely on the computer for your job.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I expect Vista to be the biggest flop since ME. Vista will have it's share of die hard followers, but the majority of people will see no benefit whatsoever over XP.

And for the record, 80% of our customers prefer to set the XP interface back to classic. I don't expect this to change with Vista. When customers ask my advice, I'll recommend XP over Vista for everything except possibly media center systems. Of course, I'll build anything they want as it's their problem, not mine. 🙂

 

[vanka]

I grew so wary of the constant security advisor popups that I shut them off entirely. I don't need an OS to protect me from myself nor force me to make the decison more than once to install something.

True, you may not need the OS to protect you from doing something stupid like installing spyware; but others do! This is why there is an option to turn off the feature for the power users who don't really need it. I personally found that after I installed all the drivers and applications, the UAC rarely popped up. Sure there were those annoying times when it required multiple clicks just to delete something - like a shortcut from the desktop - but this usually required only 50% more clicks than XP so I got used to it fairly quickly.

All in all it is a very good feature for those like my moron cousin who deleted his System folder several times (and came running to me for help) and installs whatever pops up. Of course the feature does require the user to have enough brain cells to realize that if he didn't want to install something, but he's being prompted to, he should click "No".