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Other Discussion / Vista Ultimate: First impressions
« on: February 06, 2007, 10:49:17 pm »
Basically I installed vista a few days ago, a link to the article of how it went is here:
http://www.fendez.com/index.php?page=readarticle&id=4
For those who do not have a fendez account, here:
Well, I got myself a copy of Windows Vista just recently, and thought I would install it. My current setup included two operating systems, Windows XP Professional SP2 and Ubuntu.
Installation:
So, I put my Vista Ultimate DVD in, all seems to look nice, lovely graphical setup, pretty easy until I got to the partitioning part. I told it to delete (and only delete) my Ubuntu partition, nice of it not to ask before it deleted my Windows also, resulting in a strange loss of most of my files (which I was to later discover). The setup completed and I booted up Windows, but that wasn???t the end of the setup. For some reason the second I rebooted it could not find my operating system to boot into.... odd? I installed Vista Ultimate a further three times on my partition before I had to completely wipe all my partitions and install it on a fresh one (all NTFS previously). So slightly frustrated that I had now lost all my drivers, I carried on setting it up.
Inside Vista:
Well, I had just logged in to my first account, very nice, noticed its sleek look, very happy here, only one problem: it didn???t recognise (or even detect) my plug and play network card that worked on my XP machine fine... I played around with it, only to find that if I unplugged my WinTV card, my network card was instantly recognised, detected and functioning. As you can imagine, I was majorly annoyed, I wanted to play around with the Media Centre built in, no chance now. It turns out this would have been no use anyway; there were no Vista compatible drivers for it. I continued to look around, to notice the constant nags that really infuriated me, but I managed to turn them off using a simple registry edit, so I was more than happy.
I started looking at the network options, to find it was majorly difficult to do anything remotely advanced and it was built for dumbasses, just a slight inconvenience, nothing major.
I then proceeded to install my graphics drivers, FireFox, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Office 2007, Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Google Talk and mIRC. I found no problems with most, except Live Messenger which had a few troubles retrieving my contact list; nothing a reinstall didn???t fix - not a Vista issue, I don???t think. I then decided to install some zBoard keyboard drivers, only to find they were incompatible, this could be a major issue to start with but I???m sure most companies will develop nice drivers soon, so I wasn???t majorly upset.
After that I noticed the very nice built in speech recognition, I played around with it and I have came to the conclusion that it is as good or almost as good as Dragon Naturally Speaking, so I was very impressed, however the setup was a bit lengthy. All in all, it was worth it though. The commands are easy, and the interface is just amazing.
I noticed the games section and enjoyed most of my favourite games with much better graphics, such as solitaire and chess. However, I was annoyed to see the lack of my favourite game - where???s my pinball?
After that I looked at my most commonly used programs, the Command Prompt was pretty much the same, Paint was similar with a nicer interface and one or two more options, and Notepad was pretty much the same, this made me very happy, however Paint???s colour toolbar was at the top instead of the bottom, if anyone could tell me how to change that I would be most grateful - it???s annoying. Windows Media Player is absolutely awesome, I couldn???t have asked for anything better, I???m very pleased with it, both graphically and functionally-speaking, enough said. Internet Explorer? Wouldn???t know, I don???t plan to use it; I???m a Firefox fan mostly. The Task Manager is nice, and it comes with what I???ve longed for in a Task Manager for a long time - a nice little service manager, it looks a bit nicer too.
Finally, gaming. Most people worried about this. I have 1GB RAM, and had no trouble playing Battlefield 2, so I don???t think it???s a major problem.
My overall view? Well, if you don???t count the incredibly rubbish installer and the few driver clashes, its just an enhanced XP, but the eye-candy is very appealing. If you have dumb parents and want to keep them from screwing up your PC, my advice is get Vista.
http://www.fendez.com/index.php?page=readarticle&id=4
For those who do not have a fendez account, here:
Well, I got myself a copy of Windows Vista just recently, and thought I would install it. My current setup included two operating systems, Windows XP Professional SP2 and Ubuntu.
Installation:
So, I put my Vista Ultimate DVD in, all seems to look nice, lovely graphical setup, pretty easy until I got to the partitioning part. I told it to delete (and only delete) my Ubuntu partition, nice of it not to ask before it deleted my Windows also, resulting in a strange loss of most of my files (which I was to later discover). The setup completed and I booted up Windows, but that wasn???t the end of the setup. For some reason the second I rebooted it could not find my operating system to boot into.... odd? I installed Vista Ultimate a further three times on my partition before I had to completely wipe all my partitions and install it on a fresh one (all NTFS previously). So slightly frustrated that I had now lost all my drivers, I carried on setting it up.
Inside Vista:
Well, I had just logged in to my first account, very nice, noticed its sleek look, very happy here, only one problem: it didn???t recognise (or even detect) my plug and play network card that worked on my XP machine fine... I played around with it, only to find that if I unplugged my WinTV card, my network card was instantly recognised, detected and functioning. As you can imagine, I was majorly annoyed, I wanted to play around with the Media Centre built in, no chance now. It turns out this would have been no use anyway; there were no Vista compatible drivers for it. I continued to look around, to notice the constant nags that really infuriated me, but I managed to turn them off using a simple registry edit, so I was more than happy.
I started looking at the network options, to find it was majorly difficult to do anything remotely advanced and it was built for dumbasses, just a slight inconvenience, nothing major.
I then proceeded to install my graphics drivers, FireFox, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Office 2007, Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Google Talk and mIRC. I found no problems with most, except Live Messenger which had a few troubles retrieving my contact list; nothing a reinstall didn???t fix - not a Vista issue, I don???t think. I then decided to install some zBoard keyboard drivers, only to find they were incompatible, this could be a major issue to start with but I???m sure most companies will develop nice drivers soon, so I wasn???t majorly upset.
After that I noticed the very nice built in speech recognition, I played around with it and I have came to the conclusion that it is as good or almost as good as Dragon Naturally Speaking, so I was very impressed, however the setup was a bit lengthy. All in all, it was worth it though. The commands are easy, and the interface is just amazing.
I noticed the games section and enjoyed most of my favourite games with much better graphics, such as solitaire and chess. However, I was annoyed to see the lack of my favourite game - where???s my pinball?
After that I looked at my most commonly used programs, the Command Prompt was pretty much the same, Paint was similar with a nicer interface and one or two more options, and Notepad was pretty much the same, this made me very happy, however Paint???s colour toolbar was at the top instead of the bottom, if anyone could tell me how to change that I would be most grateful - it???s annoying. Windows Media Player is absolutely awesome, I couldn???t have asked for anything better, I???m very pleased with it, both graphically and functionally-speaking, enough said. Internet Explorer? Wouldn???t know, I don???t plan to use it; I???m a Firefox fan mostly. The Task Manager is nice, and it comes with what I???ve longed for in a Task Manager for a long time - a nice little service manager, it looks a bit nicer too.
Finally, gaming. Most people worried about this. I have 1GB RAM, and had no trouble playing Battlefield 2, so I don???t think it???s a major problem.
My overall view? Well, if you don???t count the incredibly rubbish installer and the few driver clashes, its just an enhanced XP, but the eye-candy is very appealing. If you have dumb parents and want to keep them from screwing up your PC, my advice is get Vista.