Software'd Special Edition: Windows Vista

Thorlord · Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2007 8:52 pm

Software'd
By: Thorlord

Windows Vista
The forces of Microsoft have struck again with a new operating system release. The new operating system called "Vista" promises improved performance, increased security, loads of new features, redefined easier interface and much advanced gaming. in some respects it has met these goals as it does improve the desktop experience much more than XP had.

To start with vista, i should explain the different versions you can get. While there are a lot (16 different boxes you can buy) there are really only 3 you need to know about. Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, and Vista Ultimate. Vista Basic is really quite basic, it doesn’t include the Aero glass effect (so no pretty UI) and really is a stripped down version of vista that is about on par with XP in features. Vista Home Premium includes many more features that are very useful in the OS and give it the functionality that will make it the optimal choice for many consumers looking to upgrade to vista; some of the features include the Aero Glass UI, Media Center, Gadgets (also known as Widgets). On the far end of the release list is Vista Ultimate, which includes features from the business line (which I am not mentioning as I am aiming this article for Home users, but the business version is more oriented towards domains, workgroups, security and encryption) AND includes some of its own features that are unavailable to other versions of vista. Which include video backgrounds and dynamic backgrounds that will change depending on what you are doing or what time of day it is, Bit locker encryption for enhanced hard drive security. While Ultimate does have the features many people want, it retails for $400 and that price will disinterest many consumers. It is worth noting that at any time you can upgrade whichever version of vista you currently own to a higher version for a smaller upgrade fee; so you are never stuck with what version you originally purchased.

Security is a very important aspect of computing ever since Windows 95. And since then the security problems of operating systems has grown to include a much more threatening list of problems. During windows XP's lifespan the computer world saw the largest increase in security threats ever as more and more people learned the technology and how to exploit it. With that in mind you can expect Vista to require the security to be beefed up for whatever new threats that will come. The first line of defense Vista added was the UAC which in its essence. This prevents any application from launching without it alerting you to its presence. it also prevents Kernel level modifications as well. The problem with UAC is that it is annoying and requires some knowledge on the user end to know how to deal with alerts and what they mean. The windows firewall got a small upgrade and probably something that will help most of anything is Windows Defender, the Microsoft spyware scanner, is integrated into the background to give you always on spyware protection.

The most noticed and most touted new feature of Vista is its Aero Glass interface and its Overall user interface enhancements. Everything I found was logically easier to find after 5 days of using Vista, the first few days I admit I was lost in the interface not really knowing how to do what I could normally do in XP. For the average user who isn’t a technician I would estimate that it will have a learning curve of about a week for you to learn it. For new users it will be easier to learn than XP was. There isn’t too much to say about the Aero UI, it is very nice to look at and really adds a feeling of quality to the desktop. It’s much more than just glass window frames for your browser, you will find the Aero glass effect in your applications as well such as Windows Media Player 11 which uses it to give you a VERY well designed interface that doesn't intrude on your viewing of movies or pictures.

A new feature to vista that I would almost say is one of the best features yet is the Sidebar and Gadgets. this bar is very intuitive by giving your desktop the freedom of expandability, there are gadgets that come with the OS that you will want to use immediately such as the performance meter that tell you how much CPU and RAM you are using just by a glance, an analog clock that moves dynamically that you will find yourself using more than the digital display in the lower right corner. Best of all is the ability to download new gadgets online that can do much more than what comes by default, such as show your Xbox Live gamer-tag on your desktop, instantly give you your RSS feeds, let you know what the temperature is in your area, and whatever else you can think of. The library of gadgets will increase as time goes on and improvements are made to the sidebar.

Vista includes the much hyped DirectX10 which is exclusive to windows vista. DirectX10 is a revolutionary gaming standard that not only requires a vast change to the way video cards will be made, but also is deeply linked to the way the operating system is built giving your games a much more control over windows (meaning your game can improve resource management so it runs smoother) there are very few directx10 video cards available today and the ones that exist are very expensive, but considering that there are very few games that take advantage of DirectX10 at the moment there really is no need to get one of these cards (if you’re curious, the games are Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and Supreme Commander) upcoming DirectX10 games that really show off the power of DirectX10 are Crysis, Hellgate London, and Age of Conan.

Even with DirectX10 not everything about the operating system is gamer friendly. i have noticed that many DirectX9 games have performance problems that range from 5 to 10% decrease in performance. while i have not tested any that have not worked, i have heard that there are a few titles that do not work at all depending on which video card you own (some titles don’t work in vista if you have an ATi card, some don’t work if you have a nVidia Card) part of this problem lies with the video drivers made available, the OS is brand new and the video drivers are buggy at best, in a couple of months the situation should improve when more DirectX10 games are launched and more DirectX10 video cards are made. Which will require the companies to build better drivers to even compete in the gaming market; Updated video drivers will fix half of the decreased performance problems. The other half of the problem is that vista really is not optimized for DirectX9 that much. I do not see this being fixed in the future because by simply having a DirectX10 video card means that every single DirectX9 game will run INSANELY fast (games tested: World of Warcraft, Halflife 2, and a few other steam games)

With game performance having mixed feelings, there are obvious attempts in Vista to improve the overall usability for the gamer. The Games folder will find and add all of the games installed on your hard drive, and include ESRB and box art for your game. This feature will expand in the future to include online resource links and help guides built into Vista. This feature also includes Parental controls that let parents decide to restrict profiles from playing games rated a specific maturity level. Along with controls that track the date and time played. Microsoft is also preparing to launch Games for Windows Live which will tie to your Xbox Live gamer tag. Don’t worry though; this will not require a monthly fee, like the Xbox version does. But you will be required to pay the monthly fee for a gold membership if you want to play online WITH XBOX GAMERS. You can still play online for free with other PC gamers, but to play online with multi-console gamers may require a gold membership (it’s still not decided if all games will require gold or not, but its most likely going to happen) Games for windows Live will not just tie your Xbox Gamertag to your computer, it will also enhance your games by giving an easy way to issue updates and introducing achievements and gamer-score to PC games along with in-game messaging, Video messaging, Friends lists, and Xbox 360 controller support for all PC games.

Some of the default applications within windows have gotten major redesigns as well. By default windows has very much improved the way it interfaces with Hard drives, while it is still using the NTFS file system. The advances it’s made in hard drive use is very noticeable. To begin the old Microsoft defragging program has been dropped and Microsoft licensed Diskeeper to be the default built in Defragging program. If you know about Diskeeper, you will know that they vastly improved the algorithm for defragging hard drives to improve performance, decrease the amount of time it takes to defrag, and organize the hard drive in a way that it fragments less. It also has a scheduler so you can have all your hard drives scheduled to be defragged while you sleep or while the computer is idle. Another added feature that was missing from windows XP that makes a VERY appreciated welcome in vista is the addition to resize partitions. You are now able to take any active NTFS partition and resize it to be smaller or larger. The partition though cannot exceed the size of the hard drive which the partition is on though.

Office 2007 I would say is a huge improvement over office 2003 and even Open Office. While technically Office 2007 is NOT included in Windows Vista as it is sold separately. The advancements in Office 2007 are simply the interface. The UI is much easier to figure out what you need to do to modify a document. It also clashes well with the Aero UI so you will feel at home with the way it is presented. A new feature to 2007 is the addition of Proper Tense. It will alert you when you use a wrong tense or wrong style of wording in a document for enhanced word correcting. While there is not too much more to say on 2007 than that it really is an improvement over 2003, though I would not say it is a $400 improvement as Microsoft seems to think, but it is better.

As far as hardware requirements for vista go. I have found that on my computer it runs smoother than XP ever did; Folder pop up faster, searches are much quicker and give me what I’m looking for much sooner than before; managing files and programs is much easier than before. And overall I have had a very good experience with the desktop overall. Now while I am running on a very good system that many do not have (my hardware specs at the end of the article) I can say that the average system will see about the same performance as XP if they meet the minimum specifications, with the ability to improve when they upgrade their hardware.

Driver support has been good overall, with only the oldest of devices having major problems or not working at all. Not only did I find all of the drivers for my hardware, all but two pieces of my hardware worked right away (printer and sound card) and only two drivers I have had minor problems with (ATi video driver likes to claim it crashed about every 8 hours, even though it didn’t. And Creative labs soundcard driver just is not as good as the windows XP drivers). Interestingly enough though whenever a driver crashed, Vista would alert me, and recommend some actually useful advice on how to fix the problem, such as suggesting that the driver may be out of date and gives you the website to download the latest version of that driver (the official site, not the legacy drivers that Microsoft offers that don’t work right half the time).

With a newly launched operating system there are bound to be bugs. And I have to admit this is probably the best launch I have ever seen from Microsoft. The only bugs I have encountered I have been ATi drivers getting confused, un-optimized DX9 performance, and even though it’s not really Microsoft fault, my inferior sound drivers. The final feature of vista that I want to point out is that it no longer uses Internet Explorer to do updates, instead it has the update program built right into windows itself making it easier to update windows, and more convenient as well.

With all of this in mind, would I suggest on upgrading to vista from XP?
Don’t, Vista has many new useful features that you may want. But the simple fact that DirectX9 support is unreliable and it’s still slightly buggy as it is a just launched operating system. Not all the biggest features are available yet (Games for windows Live and DirectX10 mainly) as well as not everyone has a computer that meets the minimum requirements (or even meets my recommended hardware requirements) and simply because at the current moment, I would not say it is worth the investment. When Games for Windows launches, and you have a computer that has a Dual-core processor and a directX10 video card. I would say upgrade to vista as you will find it to be a much improved experience compared to Windows XP.

Of all of the different versions of Vista, the one I would recommend over all the others is Vista Home Premium. This will include all the features the average consumer or gamer will need and is about the same price as Windows XP Professional. Home basic while cheaper, does not include the features that make Vista great and Ultimate really isn’t worth the $400 asking price at the moment (maybe in the future when there will be more Ultimate Extra programs and features) and while you may have 64bit hardware and compatible drivers for all your hardware, the 64bit version of vista is still not a good choice as there are not many 64bit applications to make it worthwhile, there will be many software applications that just won’t work.

Reviewers system:
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit Edition (Final Build, fully updated)
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Motherboard: ASUS P5 DH Deluxe (Bios: 1407)
RAM: OCZ 2gb PC6400 5-5-5-15-6
Harddrive: Seagate 250gb SATA I 7200rpm
Video Card: ATi X1900xtx 512mb GDDR3
Video Drivers: Catalyst 7.2 (February)
DirectX Version: Microsoft DirectX 10
Sound Card: Creative Labs X-Fi Xtreme Music
Network: ASUS Onboard Wireless G
Printer: Epson Stylus Photo R220
Monitor: Dell 2006wfp 20.1" Widescreen LCD (1680x1050)

Average idle CPU usage: 7% each core (2 cores)
Average idle RAM usage: 40% (of 850mb/2,000mb)
Idle: Antivirus (AVG free), and drivers loaded, with browser and Dynamic Video background enabled.

CPU report: It will randomly go into 70% CPU usage on a single core. not sure what it is but this does not happen when playing a game or running a resource intensive application.

My Vista Hardware recommendations for optimal Performance:
CPU: ANY DUAL CORE CPU
Video Card: any video card in either the x1000 series for ATi, or 7000 series for nVidia.
RAM: 1.5gb DDR2

View the images of Vista in action Here
they are quite large so be patient (full size 1680x1050 screens)