Windows Vista RC1 : A user review

Just finished installing Vista RC1, its night time so I just configure Vista & haven't installed much software on it, will do it tomorrow

As of yet I m too lazy to take screenshot, but I did took one, when I was installing my modem drivers & it said it's non-WHQL, expect more as I work more on it



It was installed in 35 mins on my Pentium 4 3.06 GHz computer with 1 GB RAM & FX5900XT & Intel 865GBF, another 10 mins to configure it, setup the LAN, & disable UAP. One strange problem I m now facing, my computer does not shuts down in Vista, when I click to shut down, it shuts & then restarts, donno why

I m using default drivers for my motherboard & chipset, Forceware 96.33 Vista edition

 

Why such a SHORT review??
anyway........how much time does it take to install & boot??

 

It was not complete; I didn't do much due to night

I won't be posting screenshot of bundled application like Photo Gallery etc, because they are already available all over the net. Just check those

Vista has improved a lot; the speed is commendable over Beta 2, just as fast as XP itself. I downloaded & installed the Intel Chipset Software installation utility which has official support for Windows Vista from Intel 848 chipset & above, users of 845 chipset have to live with the inbuilt drivers. Other users must download these new Intel chipset drivers or drivers corresponding to their chipset

Intel has also released updated WDDM Drivers for their GMA950 & above onboard IGP, now Aero is supported on Intel 945G chipset.

Every user must download Vistabootpro 2.1, a great app to configure the boot loader of Windows Vista

Now to the UI Part. Right now it's not ready & it's inconsistent, the colours are not equal all over. I guess either this will be fixed in final version or MS is leaving that to 3rd party developers such as Stardock. The UI is more productive then XP, & took 5 mins only for me to get used to it. Vista enables Clear type all over the screen fonts by default, something which looks very blurred on CRT monitors, so better if u disable it

Flip3D has full anti-aliasing now, no more zaggies


First time users will be delighted to see how much the integrated search helps, u can find not only files, but also apps etc. If the indexing is turned on, it will run a service by the name Searchindexer.exe & U will get instant searches; however it does slows down the system no matter what Microsoft says. Since I don't use searching that much I disabled it & searching speed became same as Windows XP. Here is a screenshot of Control Panel, when I was searching to post error reports to Microsoft




I changed the my documents folder location to my XP My documents folder, & it is likes shared all over

I just miss the Office 2007 beta 2 version of Segoe UI font, it was so better for the UI fonts all over, don’t know why MS changed it in RC1. Right now I m using the Office 2007 Beta 2 & waiting for the Technical refresh soon

Network centre has to change, my airtel connection works as a LAN & it wasn’t showing it anywhere, I had to search for LAN in control panel to get it

Windows now has a much better Program Error diagnostic service, I tried installing Zone Alarm & it said itself, that” Zonealarm 6 has known problems with this version of Windows, check for solutions online”. U can also check for solutions online later on. This also happened when I tried to install Diskeeper 8, which isn’t compatible



The default mode of shutdown in Vista is kind of like a hybrid between Hibernation & Sleep, but don't know why, nothing like that is happening here. When I shut down, hibernate or sleep the computer, it restarts. I m going back to Windows XP to shut down the computer every time, I will be posting this problem to MS. On the start menu U won't find any Shut down icons, you have to go to the Power configuration panel & there select which icon u want to show there.

Add remove programs is much like beta 2



About the app compatibility

Most of the apps I was able to run directly from my Windows XP partition such as Winamp, Roboform & Ad muncher, some I had to install in Vista too.

Acdsee 8 works fine, just that the menu doesn’t show shadow properly, maybe because they use hard coded tga images as the shadow instead of using inbuilt shadow mechanism of Vista



Yahoo Messenger 8 had UI problems with Vista beta 2, now it all works fine. WLM 8 can be downloaded from a link given in the start menu or just download it yourself, however when I installed WLM myself, because I use it on XP, it did not remove the link from start menu, this is UI inconsistency

The first thing to do, after installing Vista is to install JAVA runtime 1.5_8

Yahoo Widget engine ran directly from Windows XP partition in beta 2, but this time I had to install it, works fine, with no crashes etc

DivX 6.3 works fine here. QuickTime 7.1 can play audio but no video; better wait for a new version. I m going to try QuickTime alternative right now, because Real Alternative works fine. Power DVD 7 works fine, even the codec get loaded in WMP11

Firefox 1.5.6 takes 10 seconds to load, haven’t tried firefox 2.0 yet, & Finally Internet Download accelerator works fine, I m running it directly from XP partition.

Going to check the workstation apps now, hope 3Ds Max works this time. Here are few screenshots. I don't think it's good t upgrade to Vista anytime before May 2007, cos only by then we will have most of our application relesed in Vista compatible forms .

 

Some more screenshots

Flip3D



Normal Search found in the start menu. This was when i disabled indexing



Internet Download accelerator running directly from Windows XP



Network centre

 

Alt+tab is what it should be, instant & fast, unlike Vista beta 2, where there was a 1 second lag



& now the most important thing how does Vista looks like in all the three composition modes. GPU based UI acceleration is available only with Aero

Vista RC1 in Aero, graphite colour & customised a little. This requires a DirectX9b or above compatible graphics card with 128 MB RAM



Vista RC1 in Windows Vista Basic, this is like Windows XP GDI+ based compositing. Requires a DirectX 7 based graphics card with 64 MB Memory minimum



Windows Vista Standard, requires a DirectX compatible graphics card with 32MB RAM minimum

 

Awesome review m8!!! as usual gr8 !!

 

now thats a gr8 review!!

 

I will move it to Reviews as it seems more appropriate there.

 

Keep up the good work

Cheers

 

A few other apps i tried

Photoshop CS2 now works fine, but it switches the whole computer to Vista Basic UI insted of Aero, same goes with Adobe Reader



3ds max 8 doesn't work, says some directX 9c files not found wonder how to tell it, that Windows now has DX10

My Vista RC1 desktop



Windows Movie maker

 

nice work thanx.

 

gr888888 ... ,

u guys r LUCKY my PC is not tht POWERFUL to INSTALL VISTA

 

could u post some photos of the performance monitor..i really liked the detail of it in the beta ver. i would like to see it have become better in RC1

 

Here are the screenshot of Performance monitor, resources monitor & reliability monitor

 

@gxsaurav
tnx buddy for that elaboration. will get back to u if i face any probs during my installation.

 

The UI is although not final, but i have started to customise it, right now working on the fonts & their dimension part, lets see how modular vista is

 

I was about to write a review for Vista .. .. Not getting enough time though .. See if I could ..

 

I was looking for a Vista compatible TV Viewing application, & since the original PCTV Vision app was not working, I tried chris TV, & it worked fine. Just that it made the whole computer switch to Windows Basic UI insted of Aero

 

gaurav thanks for the pics....

btw have u got any info abt IR utilites on RC1

 

it's Saurav not Gaurav

IR, U Mean infrared? there is a specific section in the control panel just like XP for that, right now i m on Windows XP, will check that soon