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Written by Neil McNulty
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Wednesday, 21 March 2007 |
Finally
the newest addition to the Windows family has been released to the
commercial and home user markets. I went down to my local computer
store outlet and purchased the latest version of Windows. Instead of
going for the home basic edition I could not help myself so I purchased
Windows Vista Ultimate. I found this new addition somewhat interesting
considering the past of Windows and its long line of products.
This addition to windows was something I was not overly excited about
but I definitely was interested to see what all the hype was all about.
After being a bit disappointed at the initial release of Windows XP I
was not game enough to rush out and purchase it. Infact I was talking
to a friend who asked what I thought about it and whether I would get a
copy or not I told him "No I will wait till a service pack is released
and it has proven itself in the market place before purchasing my
copy."
Time passed as the beta's came out, my friends who had
tried out beta's said "You really have to see this, it is so cool, it
has alot of nice little features in it and the appearance of it is not
what you would expect." Finally the curiosity got the better of me. I
had to purchase a copy to try it out on my computer and see what
everyone was going on about. Sure I had read reviews on it and seen the
screenshots, but lets face it, every screenshot you see on the internet
is really just a teaser.
I got down to the computer store and
asked the guys in this store what they thought to Vista. I got replies
like "I think it is good, it has its issues so I wont buy it or install
it just yet" or "Its awesome you should get a copy" and even "I have
tested it, I found it really good and you should buy it."
After
about 30 minutes I thought about it and decided to get my copy from the
store. I raced home, installed it and started playing around with it. I
must admit the results were interesting. I backed up all my data and
obtained all the latest vista drivers from the various hardware
vendors. Then I started the installation of Vista.
The
installation was really good, I found it to be easy, alot more user
friendly as opposed to previous versions. It was very interactive, some
of the core features from previous versions like the locality settings
were still there. This install was probably one of the easiest installs
I had done for quite sometime. After the initial install the computer
restarted and I was presented with all the user setup screens, this was
easy just like Windows XP's. The install was very inquisitive asking me
alot of questions.
Once the install was complete I signed in to
the user account I had established and started looking around Vista, I
activated windows and started configuring my hardware etc. I found that
it had this unusual habit of being polite, asking me questions and
saying thank you etc. This was different and initially it was good but
after a while I found this to be a little annoying.
I then
wanted to install my anti-virus application, this proved to be a bit
harder than expected, unlike Windows XP you could not just install the
anti-virus application that you had for the previous version of
windows. I went to the manufacturer's website and found a "Vista
version." I downloaded it and installed it. While installing it the
software needed to modify some core system file(s) so my screen went
black (transparent so it showed the background and windows interface).
It asked me if it was allowed to continue the install and whether it
could update these core files.
To be honest I found this somewhat
annoying as I was trying to install some video drivers I had obtained
off of the nvidia website.
Once all this was setup I started
surfing the internet, configured the sidebar and had a browse the
around the system. The start menu has had a major revamp, I am not sure
whether it is for the best but none the less it was interesting. The
coolest thing I found about this was that you could search for any
program or file located on your computer or you could even do a search
on the internet through this search function. The results would show on
the left hand side of the start menu.
The folder navigation and
overall appearance was refreshing to say the least. The stability has
been relatively good, performance was pretty good considering it was a
new OS. I did a performance rating check which is a feature in vista
and was shocked to recieve a miserable 6 out of 10 considering I had
just recently upgraded my system.
I continued to install my
video card drivers then tried to configure my video card, I went
through the control panel bundled with the nvidia drivers and was
disappointed to find no SLi support for my video cards. After a bit of
investigation I found where you enable SLi mode in the control panel
software bundled with the nvidia drivers, it is however restricted to a
list of applications listed in the SLi application list. You can add
new games etc to this list but still I think it is a bit dodgie as it
wasnt as easy to configure as it was in Windows XP.
Security has
been improved in Vista and a few things that I think should be standard
with user security has been implemented which is good. A new feature
included is 'User Account Control' which was annoying for an
administrator but has good benefits when you have novice users to
prevent them from doing any form of real damage to the operating system
and its performance.
The new games bundled with Windows Vista
Ultimate was interesting as Microsoft have finally started using 3D
based gaming with their standard games. I even found myself playing one
for a few hours forgetting that it was a basic windows game and
probably something I would not normally do.
Overall I have found
this version of windows to be one of the better ones released in quite
sometime. Granted that some users would find it pretty hard and
annoying to use in terms of customization I would have to say that
Microsoft have done a pretty good job with this new release. If you
have had issues with windows in the past and are unsure I would say
that you would be pleasantly surprised in how easy and user friendly
this OS really is. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 22 March 2007 )
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