Ureview by: Gutspiller
Ureview points: 5
Ureviewer since: December 2005
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Reviewed On: Tuesday February 6, 2007
Price paid: $200.00
| Rating: 9 | Recommends product: Yes
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After using Windows Vista for a while I can safely say that I'm liking it. While it still has quite a few features I haven't tried, I have still poked around a good deal and from what I can see, you have a lot of options. Once I can get all the features in my head straight and know off the top of my head where things are, if I have a problem with anything no matter how big or small, it seems there's a place for it to be found. Whether a tweak or adjusting a setting, it seems to be somewhere.
In the Pros and Cons I mention what I like and dislike about the software, or what others may dislike about it. With a speedy video card (ATI 1900XTX) and a speedy processor (Intel E6600 2.4 Dual Core) the features don't seem to slow it down any more than a loaded XP would run. Even with the sidebar tracking system specs it still runs smooth with little waiting time in between simple tasks.
The windows animations have always hindered a little bit of waiting as your system could do it faster, but it's told to show the animation instead. I'm thinking about turning those off since I sometimes have a lot of windows open working on a bunch of little projects here and there.
I recommend the product despite a few flaws with the OS here and there. I have mainly noticed what I don’t like about Vista, but will see about adding the review if time permits the more things I find that I like or dislike about it.
The first and what seems to be major problem is that Vista breaks FireFox when trying to view a wmv video. FireFox claims it needs a plugin, but is unable to install it. FireFox gives a link to manually install windows media player, but it doesn’t work because when you try to install it, it claims you already have a version newer than the one on Microsoft’s site. Hence, you cannot install it, so you are left without watching wmv files in your FireFox browser. I’m still trying to resolve this problem and I don’t think that it was because I installed the mega K-Lite codec pack, but I could possibly be wrong. For now, simply installing the Internet Explorer extension so that you can run IE inside of FireFox has fixed the problem, though I intend to fix the problem completely soon.
Readyboost is a feature that Windows Vista has that allows you to select a certain amount of space on a USB flash drive for system caching. I can’t say I saw any noticeable increase in speed, but it could still be there. A few things that really erks me about this Ready boost is that you can only have it on one flash drive. So if you have two 512MB flash drives, don’t expect to plug them both in and have a 1 GB ready boost file. It don’t work. One or the other is it. Secondly, you can’t add it to a USB (non-flash) hard drive. Makes sense, but just incase you were planning it. Lastly, which seems the stupidest above all, is that if you have a lot of system memory which Vista never uses (which can easily be detected by looking at a sidebar gadget) you can NOT assign the ready boost to a certain amount of SYSTEM memory. It would have a much faster access and transfer rate to the system, but Vista will not allow you to assign the ready boost to anything but a USB 2.0 device. So you’re stuck with USB 2.0 speed instead of the millisecond speed offered by your system memory you may have plenty of.
The Welcome Center is your introduction into Windows Vista. It has far more features than any other introduction screen for a Windows OS. It’s all organized nicely and lets you see system specs and links to places where you may want to explore on your first few times starting Windows Vista. It’s defaulted to always popup at Vista Boot, but a simple unchecking resolves that.
 
In my opinion the search is completely flawed in Windows Vista. You would think with as much competition they’ve received from Google that it would have been a shining point of the OS… wrong. When searching for files you end up searching as you would online. So if you want to search the contents of files for a phrase you will end up typing quotes around your phrase. It’s not so bad for regular users, but for one who searches inside of web files constantly trying to find that one line of code that needs to be changed, it can be annoying to constantly have to remember you are searching on your computer like you were typing the search string into a website search engine.
On the complete other side of the spectrum of something that is really cool Windows Vista has in the way of searching is a new field in the start menu. If you are looking for a setting on your computer and remember the name of it or the name of the window or what the icon was called to get you there, you can type it into the field in the start menu and it will quickly pull up results and more times than not find the exact item or system location you were looking for. (Many tweak tutorials use this method to get you to the right window and place to perform tweaks which is nice as they know what to type in to get you to the spot. Copy and paste from the tutorial and you have the exact spot where you need to be to perform the tweak.)
Vista comes with a few games. Nothing fancy, but thought I would note it with a screenshot. They have all been recreated with animations and sounds. As I play around with the Games Explorer more I will try to add more about it.
Many people have complained about the Aero Glass. It really seems to be a feature people either like it or hate it. I think it brings a fresh new look to windows. I was never one to download 3rd party software and install windows blinds or whatever they were called to give me a new theme. There is something about stuff already being included in an OS that makes me want to try it out, but if I have to go to a site and download it, I just as well rather not even mess with it or have it on my computer. The cool thing I like about the Aero Glass feature is that you can customize it’s color and transparency. I like the look of a slightly smoked clear glass that gives you a better feel of seeing through it, but many options are available. The feature has a few already created, but you are also given complete control over everything about it with some slider bars to adjust every aspect I can think of for it. You can of course turn Aero Glass completely off if you don’t like it too.
Windows Vista has some new screensavers and for those that didn’t know Vista took the chance on 3D acceleration for their desktop, and it’s no different for their screensavers. You can see the first time you view the screensavers that a few of them are using your 3D accelerator. Nothing fancy, but something to mix up your screensavers is nice. There are even registry tweaks to change their settings, but unfortunately it cannot be done when selecting the screensavers themselves from the display page.
 
The sliding view (started by pushing tab and the windows key together) of showing 10 windows in a sliding 3d fashion is gimmicky, but nice once you start to get use to it. I opened tons of windows as you can see by looking at the taskbar, but the slider would only show 10 at a time. As you flip through them the others will show, but they won’t all show up at once. One of the nice things about this feature too, is that you can use your mouse in combination with it and click on one of the windows that are far back in the stack and it will then popup onto your screen. One sad note that I noticed is that despite this being a fairly nice feature there was no little tip that I ever saw on how to do it, and I actually had to find out from somebody that was familiar with a few Vista shortcut keys. For those wondering that never heard before, yes if you have a video playing in a window and then you go to this slider, the move does continue to play. I’m thinking of opening up 10 different movies and see how my system handles the slider with all ten movies playing against each other.
For those that don’t want to switch windows using the slider view mentioned above, have no fear. The alt-tab feature is still in Windows Vista and even contains a nice new look using Aero Glass.
Speaking of shortcut keys, you can now assign shortcut commands to the first 10 quick taskbar buttons (The small icons next to the Start menu button) So you can quickly launch those apps. Simple, but useful.
The Windows Explorer has changed a good deal. Mainly because I use it so much and that’s probably why I noticed all the little changes. The main two changes is number one the way directories are handled. In Windows XP when you moved through the directory structure it would show you the contents of that directory just by being over it, but in Vista you have to hit enter if you want to see the directory contents. This can get a little annoying when moving or copying files as you think you are in one directory because it’s highlighted, but that doesn’t mean that you are actually in that directory if you haven’t pushed enter on it or clicked it with your mouse. Secondly, the explorer needs some tweaking to get it right. Microsoft is really trying, but it’s still buggy. The explorer seems to have been revamped or media so that when you view a directory that has MP3s in it, you can sort by artist, album, etc. The disappoint thing about it, is that it keeps these settings even when you are viewing a directory that has no MP3s in it. So you will be viewing a data directory and you still have a column to organize that directory by artist or album. To organize by “date modified” which I use regularly you actually have to go in and add it as an option that you would like to use it as an organization method. New features getting in the way of old favorite features is a pain, but after you customize it, it starts to behave more properly, but despite trying to have the setting applied to all folders, it still has problems saving it seems for all directories and across drives.
The thumbnail view is extremely nice. You can create thumbnails in a variety of sizes and if you hold down ctrl and scroll with your mouse wheel they will adjust very specifically on the fly, but there’s also a menu. Very nice for those that ever wanted larger thumbnails than what previous Windows OSes would offer.
The Windows Experience Index basically is a quick look at your systems main components and then gives you a number based on your hardware. Microsoft claims that this will be pushed to software developers so that when you are looking for the specs on a game or app it would simply have that number on the box and you would instantly know if your system would run it or not. If they accomplish that it seems to be pretty nice. If developers don’t pick it up, then it will be a useless feature.
Two different ways you can use the sidebar in Windows Vista. One way is to have it as part of the desktop and when you open new windows they will overlap it and your new window will be full screen over the top of your desktop. The other way is to actually set it so that it can be permanently viewed. This way when you maximize a window, it will only maximize to the space left after the sidebar. Most of the screens I’ve taken have this feature enabled so that I can always keep an eye on system stats. You can see the gadgets I’ve installed and all will be straight forward as to what they are tracking in my system. For now I’m keeping it, but I can see myself growing tired of it and turning it off.
One side note on the sidebar is that after playing games with it on, I am almost certain that I saw a slowdown in my games when it was on. The sidebar did not know to stop using CPU cycles when I started a game. To make matters worse, even after turning off the sidebar from the interface, I checked tasks running and two tasks were still running called sidebar. So it still didn’t close itself completely. I removed those tasks from running and gaming seemed to be much smoother. This problem may have, however, not been a problem of the sidebar, but from one of the gadgets that was created by some miscellaneous user that didn’t code their gadget to stop tracking when a full fledged game was launched. (It was a multiplayer game, and I do have a network traffic gadget installed). More investigation is probably needed to confirm anything.
The start menu has a new look with a new organization feature, but you can switch it back to the classic organization and look as well, without having to switch your compete OS to a classic look. One thing you will notice in the screenshot is that there are a few apps provided with Windows Vista from Microsoft. No doubt inspired by a “I’m a Mac” ad. Remember that my start menu has been tweaked a little and that’s why it contains the scrollbar to the right of the menu. One thing that was nice is that if you scroll down and then close the menu, when you re-click the menu, it will be right where you left that scrollbar. Overall a nice change once you get use to the new layout of the start menu. I will not go into each app that MS has offered with Windows Vista has you can find that else where. Remember if you are thinking about getting vista that your version of Vista may not have everything listed in that menu in my screenshot unless you purchase the Ultimate version. Some items are missing from other versions.
Conclusion
Overall I really like the new OS. For the price of the OS, it’s a high price for something that isn’t going to function for you. One of the great things is that the Windows Vista DVD from a friend can be used to install a full fledged Vista on your computer for 30 days with no CDkey allowing you to test out Vista for yourself to see if it’s for you.
My main reasoning with it is because I finally have a beefy system to run, I wanted something that would use my nice system every day and not just when I load up games on the weekends. The second reason, but still very important is that I need to see what Microsoft is pushing and hopefully align some of our services so they work properly with Vista or add new features that Vista gave me ideas for.
All of my personal stuff aside. If you asked me if I think a regular gamer needs Vista, I don’t think they do. While there’s the slowdown that will likely be resolved with drivers, it may not be for a while. If you mostly game on your PC I would wait until a game you want will only run on Vista or benchmarks prove that it runs better on Vista than XP.
If you use your PC mainly for business, you may like some of the security features and it will probably make your life easier ONCE you learn the ins and outs of Vista. Vista is huge. There’s a lot to look through and tracking down the spot that you want can sometimes be daunting.
If you use your PC for a lot of media or want a little nudge to help you start. Not just downloaded videos off of Bittorrent, but making home movies, taking family pictures, etc. Vista really is a must. It will make your life a lot easier if you are willing to learn it and use all of its media functions. Vista was made almost specifically for you!
Are you a well rounded person that uses a PC for a little gaming here, a little family media there? If so, you really should try out the 30 day trail. There are tweaks out there to extend it to 120 day trail, and from my experience I believe that if you end up liking Vista and order a copy for yourself and you receive it before your trail runs out, you can enter your cdkey into your trail and it will automatically register for you and you won’t end up losing any customizing you did on your trail version. 30 days is more than enough to decide if you like it and 120 days you will be certain and even have time to save for it.
In the end Vista is a great OS if you use it the way it was made to be used. If you just game and browse the web on your PC though, using Vista probably isn’t for you and you should wait until you hear games start running better on Vista than XP or a game will only work on Vista that you want.
I hope you enjoyed this review. If you have any questions for me, feel free to ask questions on our forum: http://www.LeetForum.com
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| Pros: Many features have been optimized and tuned to fix problems that peppered previous incarnations of Windows operating systems.
Many features that are focused around a PC that deals with multimedia a lot.
Found all devices in my system and installed them all correctly. I had no reason to insert a driver disc that came with any of my hardware.
More security and features (if you know where to look) to make it so that it doesn't bug you as much as Windows XP might, despite having more security than XP.
Sidebar. I know 3rd party things of this sort have existed for a long time, but I, like many others never got around to installing them and trying them out.
3d Slide view. Slightly gimmicky, but still useful.
Readyboost system speed up.
Windows Experience system. |
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| Cons: Expensive. The full Windows Vista Ultimate package will set you back around $300 or roughly $200 for OEM.
Because it's a new OS with multimedia bells and whistles and a skinning system called Aero Glass, all comes down to one thing. You need a beefy system to run all these features. YOu do have the option of turning everything off and bringing back the classic look for a speed up.
Lack of sidebar gadgets (items that plug into the sidebar). Since most gadgets are created by users means some are buggy and haven't been thought through completely. Personally, with as long as the Vista beta was I would have thought there would have been more and slightly higher caliber.
The search feature needs some work.
Even with every bell and whistle turned off, Vista will likely still run slower than XP.
Gaming benchmarks on other sites and even my own experience show that gaming slows down slightly on Vista compared to XP. Remember though as Vista drivers are tweaked by their manufacturers Vista gaming could easy surpass XP gaming.
Some features that you got use to in Windows XP may be completely gone with no way of tweaking them back in. |
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