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Other Discussion / My Windows Vista Review - After 2 Months [Changes Images Added]
« on: April 07, 2007, 03:01:09 am »
Introduction
Most of you should know by now, I have Windows Vista. If you're on my MSN contacts, you'd know it's Home Premium. I got it on the 5th of February... Yum.
Installation
When I popped in the disc, I felt so excited... Like booting a PC for the first time. Seeing all these installation issue videos on YouTube, I was worried, but it seemed OK. I met the requirements. So a window came up. It was asking me to run the "Upgrade Advisor" from MS, which informs you what will and will not work. I knew Nero 6 wouldn't work... the rest was OK. So, after a horrific 40minute install time, and getting a "Starting windows for the first time" message only to see it reboot, it was time.
First time
"Duhduh - duh duuuuuuuh!" (bad example of the sound...) Black background with a Windows Vista symbol shining light out. I was so excited. It faded into a "Welcome" screen, then faded to the actual desktop. I was... pretty excited to see er, nothing but the start bar really. Where were all these features!? Well, after some Googling, here's what I had to do:
- Turn off UAC (Lame prompt that appears everytime you do something "Admin-ish")
- Enable Aero to experience transparency/effects
- Turn on Windows Sidebar
You don't expect to need to do that... since it's on the box. I had to GOOGLE help.
My first month using
Wow, the desktop wallpapers... sucked. Well, not sucked, but they didnt match the black theme. Nothing really beats the default XP wallpaper.
I found ALOT of gadgets (33pages) on the Vista Gadgets page on microsoft's site. You can make your own easy as pie. I must say, gadgets <3.
Fast search... You dont realise how good it is. I love it. Within 3 seconds, anything on your HDD appears related or including the search string, even text within a .doc or even .xml.
Because I only had 512mb of ram, Vista told me something. When I inserted my USB drive, it told me it could use it as "secondary ram". I used 3.8gigs of it... and you see a difference in both OS performance and games.
Oh and, GM6.1 and its games did not work. That !@#$% me off.
My second month using
I made my own account on Vista because my brother kept modifying things. Setting Lucy as your login picture... yea, loved it... It looks REALLY good when you login in glass form. Along with my wallpaper (sig image, in full form). I disabled gadgets because it was just a waist of startup times. I bookmarked my Internet Usage meter, and a currency converter, and other thing swere useless. GM7 came out so... I was finally happy 100%.
Performance
On 512mb of ram WITHOUT ReadyBoost it was like XP on 256mb of ram. WITH it was like XP with 512. I didnt mind startup times, 1min was fine, sometimes it was 10seconds. 3ghz CPU was fine, and 128mb gpu was finer.
Final thoughts
Should I have gotten it? Yes. I love it. Should you get it? Well, if you are a gamer, no. No point. If you are a lover of eye-candy, then yes.
Changes Images
My Computer XP
My Computer Vista
Start Menu XP
Start Menu Vista
Whole lot of things
Gagdets Manager
...You can see my wallpaper through that =P.
Most of you should know by now, I have Windows Vista. If you're on my MSN contacts, you'd know it's Home Premium. I got it on the 5th of February... Yum.
Installation
When I popped in the disc, I felt so excited... Like booting a PC for the first time. Seeing all these installation issue videos on YouTube, I was worried, but it seemed OK. I met the requirements. So a window came up. It was asking me to run the "Upgrade Advisor" from MS, which informs you what will and will not work. I knew Nero 6 wouldn't work... the rest was OK. So, after a horrific 40minute install time, and getting a "Starting windows for the first time" message only to see it reboot, it was time.
First time
"Duhduh - duh duuuuuuuh!" (bad example of the sound...) Black background with a Windows Vista symbol shining light out. I was so excited. It faded into a "Welcome" screen, then faded to the actual desktop. I was... pretty excited to see er, nothing but the start bar really. Where were all these features!? Well, after some Googling, here's what I had to do:
- Turn off UAC (Lame prompt that appears everytime you do something "Admin-ish")
- Enable Aero to experience transparency/effects
- Turn on Windows Sidebar
You don't expect to need to do that... since it's on the box. I had to GOOGLE help.
My first month using
Wow, the desktop wallpapers... sucked. Well, not sucked, but they didnt match the black theme. Nothing really beats the default XP wallpaper.
I found ALOT of gadgets (33pages) on the Vista Gadgets page on microsoft's site. You can make your own easy as pie. I must say, gadgets <3.
Fast search... You dont realise how good it is. I love it. Within 3 seconds, anything on your HDD appears related or including the search string, even text within a .doc or even .xml.
Because I only had 512mb of ram, Vista told me something. When I inserted my USB drive, it told me it could use it as "secondary ram". I used 3.8gigs of it... and you see a difference in both OS performance and games.
Oh and, GM6.1 and its games did not work. That !@#$% me off.
My second month using
I made my own account on Vista because my brother kept modifying things. Setting Lucy as your login picture... yea, loved it... It looks REALLY good when you login in glass form. Along with my wallpaper (sig image, in full form). I disabled gadgets because it was just a waist of startup times. I bookmarked my Internet Usage meter, and a currency converter, and other thing swere useless. GM7 came out so... I was finally happy 100%.
Performance
On 512mb of ram WITHOUT ReadyBoost it was like XP on 256mb of ram. WITH it was like XP with 512. I didnt mind startup times, 1min was fine, sometimes it was 10seconds. 3ghz CPU was fine, and 128mb gpu was finer.
Final thoughts
Should I have gotten it? Yes. I love it. Should you get it? Well, if you are a gamer, no. No point. If you are a lover of eye-candy, then yes.
Changes Images
My Computer XP
My Computer Vista
Start Menu XP
Start Menu Vista
Whole lot of things
Gagdets Manager
...You can see my wallpaper through that =P.
along with Nero Suite 6, but I'll be fine.