Microsoft finally shipped Windows Vista earlier this year. All was not smooth on the day of its release. The release date was pushed back many times and many features have been stripped out. It has some bugs and security holes, and is in need of tweaking.
Contributed by jkabaseball Rating: / 5 August 21, 2007
It has been six months since Vista's release; let's see where it is now. I have been running Vista on my computer since a few days after its release, so I've had plenty of time to play around and get a feel for what Vista is like in general day to day usage.
Compatibility
One of the biggest complaints about Vista was driver support. I'm not as critical about this aspect as others have been. XP wasn't any better at its release; ME and 98 shared the same drivers, so when ME was released, most of the drivers were ready and polished at release. XP brought with it the need for brand new drivers, and this created gaps in people's devices and their respective drivers.
Granted, Windows 2000 drivers would generally work, but they weren't as widely created with the release of Windows 2000. Now six months after release we are seeing drivers coming with anything bought in stores now, and drivers hitting company sites for Vista. Even so, there still are plenty of devices that don't have compatible drivers out. I have a few USB devices that are still a no go.
Developers have been better about releasing 64-bit drivers for Vista than when XP 64-bit was released. The 64-bit driver availability isn't up to the same number as the 32-bit, and probably won't be for a while, if ever, for Vista. Most people are still using 32-bit operating systems and won't shell out the money to upgrade just for the 64-bit version of the same OS that they already have.
The most watched drivers are by far the video card drivers. Both ATI and nVidia had working drivers for Vista before launch, and have been releasing drivers regularly. They have done some really good work, but still are far away from matching XP in performance.
Even if your device had drivers for Vista, it doesn't mean smooth sailing unless the program you use it with is compatible. I didn't run into many of these problems, but there were a few. The program I use to connect my cell phone with my computer is still waiting for a compatibility patch. Nero and other burning programs needed a patch to work without errors. These were available before or shortly after the release of Vista. So there is not much of a complaint from me here, but this is just something else that made it one step harder to do normal computer use.
There was one program that made me want to throw my computer: Windows Mobile Device Center, AKA ActiveSync. I have never been a fan of ActiveSync, but it is the only program you could use. I downloaded Windows Mobile Device Center, and installed it without a hitch. I attempted to connect my Samsung i730, and was able to do nothing. Now what do I do? This is the ONLY program that could work with my PDA, and it doesn't.
One of the Vista's biggest selling points was its security; it was supposed to be very secure, much more so than earlier Microsoft operating systems. So far, however, it isn't living up to this standard. There are already dozens of security updates for fixes to the OS.
Needless to say, I don't really feel that Vista is any different or better than XP concerning this issue. In fact, it looks like the security fixes could top 1 GB in total downloads in just a few years. Is this Microsoft's idea of improved security?
I will point out that Vista features a little pop-up that tells you whenever a program is trying to access something or installing or modifying something. As you can probably guess, this gets real old real fast. One of the first things I did was disable it. I have the feeling that many users have done the same to their machines. The problem is that disabling this "feature" completely removes its whole purpose. So much for security!
There aren't any other noticeable differences in security compared to XP. Microsoft was giving away free trials of the beta version of Windows Live OneCare for a while. This is not one of the greatest security programs by any means, but it integrates really well into Vista.
If Microsoft had given a free subscription for all Vista users, and put some elbow grease into OneCare, I would feel that the company had done a great deal more about security. Indeed, I would feel safer about using my computer than I do now. But as of this point, you need a third party anti-virus program, and you also need to keep up with all the Windows Updates as they come out. In the area of security, then, Microsoft failed at improving this important aspect of Vista.
This could be the most important aspect of this review. It doesn't matter how secure your computer is if it is unusable. I wouldn't describe the changes to Vista as a great leap forward or anything near a drastic change. They're closer to just a nice visual overhaul and the addition of a few programs. I was really surprised at the excellent functionality of the sidebar. The standard sidebar items didn't do much for me, but the ones you can download added a new element to the OS. You could download a sidebar for XP via a third party, but this was built into Vista.
The whole glass theme is nice looking, but it's not more than looks. Overall I enjoyed the glass effects and new window transitions. It took me back to the days when I used a Mac as far as the feel goes. I have a Pentium Mobile 2.0 GHz and 1.5 GB RAM and it definitely took a hit on my memory and CPU running Glass. Early into Vista's life, there were some programs that didn't play well with Glass, and ended up having the program disable it. Now most programs have been ironed out and I haven't run into a problem with this in a while.
I am totally in love with the new layout of the start menu. Instead of having an All Programs pop out menu, Vista condenses into a scrolling menu that pops up in the left column of the start menu. This is the major change in Vista. It lets you find things a lot more quickly than the old pop up menus that can take up over half the screen.
I didn't get much use out of the new search functionality. I used it mainly for finding programs which I knew the commands for running, such as 'cmd' or 'calc.' The taskbar got an addition too. You can now scroll over the opened area of a program and a preview window opens up and shows you what the program is doing or what it has opened. I thought this was a great idea, but I never really used it all that much. I knew what was on each screen. When you have Word open, you can see the title of the document in the task bar and the preview is too small to read what is in the document. It is a great idea, but doesn't really serve a point in my opinion.
Windows Explorer also got a make over for Vista. I am very disappointed in what Microsoft released. When Microsoft released some very early preview video clips of "Longhorn," aka Vista, it was radically changed and very functional. It was supposed to look like the new Leopard OS X, or like iTunes scrolling through Albums like a Jukebox, with some more functionality that would let users watch video clips and preview audio within Windows Explorer.
What we got was the menus as buttons. The different views get their own button, and a different theme. Microsoft left it mainly unchanged. I'm disappointed in what we got compared to what Vista should have been in this sense. If Microsoft had followed through and redesigned Windows Explorer, I think Vista would have been a massive upgrade.
Microsoft made some other changes to Vista too, but the rest I didn't notice or really use. There is a new system performance check to benchmark your computer against set parameters to see how well it performs. The lowest score in any one area is your total overall score. While this was probably made to help Grandpa with upgrading his computer, I find it practically worthless.
The performance check doesn't really tell you what is wrong with your system, or how to help it achieve a higher score. And these scores don't really mean anything. I guess the games released by Microsoft will eventually use this system, but now it isn't even worth using. If you know anything about computers you know that that $700 CPU is being limited for gaming with a $50 graphics card.
Microsoft missed on Vista. I don't know what they were doing in Redmond the past few years, but they had to cut out the parts of Vista that would have made it great. What they left us with is a normal, mainly visual upgrade with a few more bells and whistles. This is by far the best looking Windows to date and offers some really nice features. However many of these features are or will be available from Panther when it is released; it looks very promising.
Vista certainly has its flaws. It is still a little too demanding for the average computer and forces people to upgrade. There is still some major compatibility work to be done. After six months of using Vista, I went back to XP. Everything just works with XP; Vista is still way too sketchy. I will miss Glass and the start menu until I decide to go back. But I have no regrets letting Vista sit while I happily sync my PDA and export pictures from my phone onto my computer.
/ 5 
Microsoft Patch Update for July
