There are many great Vista reviews on the Internet, like the one written by Paul Thurrott. Yet I consider myself a "half-geek", and I'm not satisfied with only looking at the screen shots - gotta have my hands on the dirts! Here is my 2-cents about the experience:
Installation: One thing I can say is that the installation process for each new version of Windows is getting much better than the previous one. The one for Vista is the best one yet. If you have installed W2K or WinXP, you know that the "initial" stage is actually under DOS - all option selections are done by using Function Keys. It is only after most installation files are copied and pasted to the HDD, Windows will continue its installation in 800 x 600 resolution and support mouse commands, which reminds people of Windows 98. This is no longer true for Vista. You mouse works for the 1st screen that comes up to you (at 1024 resolution, I think), and the whole installation process ONLY needs the user to make a simple choice on the partition selection. Everything else is intelligent detected and taken care of! After a couple of clicks, my new HDD was formatted in NTFS format (I was not even noticed), and the installation kicked off in a thrill and is completed in about one hour (No, I did not log the time. And my computer is not the fastest).User experience: Another huge difference between XP and Vista is the GUI setup. There are similar, but they’re also totally different. I hope that Mr. Gates will not hate me if I say that Microsoft literally tried to copy some of the graphical design styles of both Mac and Linux. Anyways, if my words are not good enough, check out my screen shots, and you will get the idea. Bottom line, it’s fancier. Did I mention that the size of Windows Vista is about 2.4GB (so I’m sure it will be shipped in DVD or several CDs)? It takes about 4.8GB on the HDD after the installation, and I’m sure it will be even bigger when it’s on sale next year.
Check out my screen shots below (click for bigger a picture):
Internet Explorer: I read lots of speculations and discussions about this. IE7 is definitely “re-engineered”. I’m actually a FireFox user, and I believe there is a reason that FireFox takes 10% of Internet browser share at the moment ? User friendliness and stability. Microsoft definitely learned a lot from it. They finally adopted the “tab” feature in IE7, and it supports multiple search engine choices (as oppose to stuck you with MSN) and RSS feeds.Microsoft Desktop Search (?): I don’t know the name of this one. But if you use Google’s Desktop Search, you know that the software performs indexing at the background for better and quicker search results. Microsoft also offers their version of “Microsoft Desktop Search” in Vista, and the icon is available to check out at the right bottom corner. Does it work? I don’t know and I will tell you why in a bit.
Oh well, I did not give myself enough time to check out the stability, reliability and other fancy things of Vista. I didn’t have the time, and I knew that I would be lost in there forever if I try to make everything to work ? there is no driver available for most of the hardware in my desktop (e.g. sound card). I also don’t want to waste time and install games or document processing software to check out the system performance. After all, the installation process and the new experience was a thrill to me. Although it is sad, I formated my new HDD again and put it in my external HDD enclosure for what it was bought for. The Vista's ghost is lost forever.
After all, the new Vista looks great. But I would think twice before purchasing a Windows Vista next year since Mac OS will be available on PC by next year as well. I’m not sure which one will be “better”, but I can tell you right now that there will be lots of discussion and arguments in 2006 about these two operating systems. ? Can’t wait to see the big fight! =)
BTW, the Start-up and Shut-Down delay of Windows Vista are truly improved by Microsoft from XP. It takes the same time for Vista to turn itself off for my XP to fall asleep ? about 5 seconds. Amazing!
No comments:
Post a Comment