I installed Microsoft’s new OS, Vista, on a friend’s computer. Here are my impressions:
General:
With the short time I’ve used it, it doesn’t seem very revolutionary. It seems about as different from XP as XP is from Windows 2000. The interface is fancier, more colorful, but most features are the same as on XP, just sometimes located in different menus.
The “Aero” interface requires a 3D video card, previously only necessary for 3D games and CAD. It’s mostly eye-candy.
It took about twice as long to install as XP. This was with the Home Premium version.
My recommendation is: If you have XP or Windows 2000, don’t bother to upgrade. If you are getting a new computer, it will probably come with Vista, and that’s fine.
Technical Problems (for those interested):
I installed an “Upgrade” copy. The computer started with Windows XP Home. The initial upgrade installation went fine — though it takes longer, it doesn’t stop part way through asking for information. Once it starts, it proceeds until it is almost done before you have to come back and interact.
I also installed a new motherboard. I decided to upgrade to Vista first, then install the motherboard, to see if it handled the change better than XP. It didn’t.
After I installed the new motherboard, Vista refused to boot. But instead of a blue screen, it brought up a screen with a list of options (Safe Mode, etc), along with the recommendation to boot on the DVD and run Repair. Vista’s Repair seems more intelligent than XP’s Repair. It spent a long time looking a things, trying to make it run. In the end, though, it failed.
So normally, the next step would be to do a Repair Install (AKA “In Place Upgrade”), where you just reinstall the OS as if it were an upgrade. But that wouldn’t work either. Since this was an upgrade, it would only let me install it from within a functioning OS. It would not let me install as an upgrade after booting from the DVD.
To make a long story short, it took about 2 hours on the phone with Harisha and Pradeep (you can guess which country they live in) and we ended up doing a fresh install, using some workarounds they walked me through. According to Pradeep, System Repair usually is able to find and fix problems when you switch motherboards, but occasionally problems like this occur.
The lesson from this is that if you didn’t like the hassle and restrictions of activation with XP, you’ll hate them with Vista. Your previous OS will have to be working if you want to upgrade, whereas with previous OS’s you could just pop in a CD proving that you had an earlier version of Windows to upgrade.
I sure wish Linux could become main stream, but Windows has too large an installed base.
