I was sitting at my desk when a fellow co-worker handed me a yellow envelope.
"What's this?", I asked myself. "Nobody sends me anything.... ever".
That is when I saw the shipping label.....
MicrosoftOne Microsoft WayRedmond, WA
AHHHHHHHHHHHhhhh ...... ok... it's those damn DVD's I ordered.
Being handed a copy of an operating system that isn't out yet has a strange effect on you. For a brief moment, you feel like James Bond... like Secret Squirrel... or dare I say... like George W. Bush when handed the Sunday funnies on Saturday night.
After about 2 seconds those feelings vanish when you quickly realize you just paid $6 to be Bill Gates' personal Beta Testor when other companies usually PAY to have their software tested.
Welcome to Capitalism at it's finest.
Before I begin, I am going to mention that this review of Vista does not cater to gaming. I use my computer for more than a glorified escapism device so I really want to review the effectiveness of daily tasks, workflow, and development for me first. The gaming can come later when it is no longer “Beta”…. J
On with the show.....
After watching the clock in my office tick away until quitting time, I promptly sped home and started a vicious dig through my extra parts drawer looking for that spare hard-drive. (Hell if I am going to put this on something I actually USE) I found an 80gb drive that is known to have problems. It is one of those drives that you know there is something wrong but the drive won't tell you. I figured it's no big deal and install it as a slave drive in my game/development machine. It's my most powerful machine (modestly) and I figure I will need all the power I can get.
Specs:
After placing the drive in the box and making sure everything original is still operational, I begin by placing the Windows Vista DVD for 32bit in the drive….
BLUE SCREEN!!!
Just kidding J hehe… there was no blue screen but I couldn’t help myself…
Actually everything went OK with the install and I must admit it seemed WAY faster than a traditional XP install… and trust me… I’ve done A LOT of XP installs. The one thing that disappointed me, however, was the little progress bar zooming across the bottom of the screen. You know that little package of boxes zipping across below the XP logo? It has that, but without the logo… It just has the little progress bar and a “Microsoft 2006” copyright underneath. God I hate that bar…..
After the install, I was presented with the usual install questions (what my name is, networking options, etc…) only this has a different look to it. If you’ve used a recent MacOS, you’ll have that look of familiarity and go “Ah haaaa….” If you’ve never seen a MacOS before, then you’ll have that look of confusion and go “Uhhhhh…..what happened to Windows?”
Despite the obvious similarities between the look and feel of Mac OSX and Vista, it is basically Windows XP on the surface. And I say that with extreme emphasis, because half of you are saying “Ah figures… I’ll just stick with XP for now… blah blah…”
This is and this isn’t Windows XP.
Once I got past the new fancy shmancy graphics. I saw all the traditional Windows XP screens. There was the Control Panel, the Computer Properties Screen, the Network Wizard, all taken from Windows XP… word… for fricken word.
So what is the difference you ask?
TONS
First, most of those screens above are much harder to get to. Not in a bad way either. Some might be annoyed but the truth is, if you visit those screens more than once… oh… a YEAR.. you are spending way too much time reconfiguring your machine or you are a specialist in fung shui. They are harder to get to because you are: A) First asked if you want to enter “Administration” mode.. and B) You are presented with the most common options and easy settings in a much quicker and user-friendly way before diving into the complex stuff. This is good as you'll see in the items I outline below.
There are some things I am not going to talk about because you’ll find them on every website from here to Nogova: the sidebar, the media center, and the graphics. If I mention any of those it’s simply to reference them.
Things I noticed:
#1 Resource Usage
This was first on my list because I am apparently very close to requirements to get all the bells and whistles. Granted even a very basic machine can still run this OS, you won’t see the 3D effects and other stuff. However, I had the min specs to reach the highest settings so I thought I’d give it a go.
Watching the memory usage I was first very disappointed. On WinXP I usually see about 500mb of Page File usage and that is with a ton of services running in the background. At a minimum I usually see about 200mb-300mb on a standard XP install. With this I saw my PF usage at 600mb!!!!! And that is with NOTHING installed! I was horrified…. at first. Then I began to open windows…like the C drive and IE, etc.. and watched my memory go to 800mb!!!!!!! Oh no… this cannot be… now I am having a heart attack!!! Call the doctor!!! Then it hit me. This is actually a GOOD thing! How can this be good you ask? Well, first the OS is effectively managing as much as it can in memory, You want this… it makes your computer go zzzoom!!! But now you are asking what difference does it make if it uses it all up?? Well the truth is it never uses it ALL up unless you task it to. By this I mean that if you have the extra memory, Win Vista will utilize it for mundane tasks to make things fast. If you begin to open up apps and reach your limit, it will begin to re-evaluate what needs to be addressed and try and keep you below your minimum with as much in memory as possible to keep you working fast. I tested this by running all kinds of tasks and trying to task the machine to it’s knees… the truth is I never exceeded roughly 900mbs. Now, had I more apps installed I probably could have, but based on the premise I’d have to have six heads to run that much at once, I figured it was safe that 1gb of RAM is plenty for now. In WinXP this was not the case. As you opened more and more stuff it just increased your risk of lock up. When I would reach 75% of PF usage in XP I cringed and prayed… now with Vista I actually root it on!! There are programmers out there that are cursing me and saying this is bad… they say that you should account for every little bit in memory and use it efficiently.. this is true .. IF your OS isn’t set up to handle it on it’s own. Vista introduces better memory self-management in Windows and rather than hard-limit your app to lower memory requirements, you should allow it to be more free and offer more if your user has more memory available. IMO usability and functionality come FAR before form.
#2 Security
Introducing the first Windows OS that doesn’t persuade you to run in Administration mode!!! Yay! We have finally broken the need for access to every gosh-darn thing in the OS! I tried to dig into the OS to find the configurations fo various stuff and in this attempt I was hit like 100 times by things asking me if I was “sure” and to “allow” access. This is a good thing because if a program is trying to access this stuff and NOT a human you want the human intervention at all times.
#3 Organization
The file structure is still there mainly because the new drive formatting isn’t installed (atleast I didn’t see it) so I am still running NTFS although I don’t think the new one will look all that different. What you do notice is more pressure to use things like “searches” and “groups” with your files. I saw the ability to add a TON of different metadata to file lists that allow you to sort, group, and structure your files any way you want without having to reorganize the file system.
I’ve already made this blog entry way too big so I am going to cut it off soon…
However, I must say that Vista has joined the next gen in OSs. I am not saying it has innovated this concept, but rather it has finally dragged the Windows line into the world that the MAC and Linux users think they own for themselves.
For the most part, the biggest thing is the modern UI and the increased efficiency….
I have to say that if it wasn’t for the new PowerShell (MSH) coming out soon, console commands would be dead… D. E. A. D.…. Dead.
This new way of working is not too dissimilar from Mac OSX again… Old farts and ghetto IT admins (the ones “still using Win2000 because it’s not fancy like that prissy WinXP”) are going to complain, but for being a person with access to many different Op Systems on a daily basis I see that Windows has merely joined the next gen of desktop OSs. With the new PowerShell I can see the interface even comparing to something like Debian or other Linux flavors if you drop the desktop clutter and strictly use that.
They have truly made something that “caters to the masses”.
Many will oppose and give their excuses but if we eliminate the gamers, the geeks, and the fanbois, this OS is definitely worth something above the previous versions of Windows and definitely looks to be competitive to OS X and Linux. A whopping 100% of my users at work are completely computer illiterate and contrary to the opinion of most computer admins, they really shouldn’t have to be programmers to send/read an email or perform the work they get paid for. Mac OSX and Windows Vista make it easier for these people AND still gives us geeks something underneath. This is what computing should be about. Not this manage folders/files and configurations bullshit that we’ve been bred into since 1986 with DOS and further pressed by Win95. No, we should have data at our finger tips and not need to enter a command line to get it. IMO we should get away from desktops completely at some point, but that is another story J
In conclusion, I am happy with this. As much as I am not happy with the licensing scheme nor am I happy with MS when it comes to certain priorities, I am happy with this.
End notes: