Even after all I said about Microsoft’s latest operating system (Vista – as if you didn’t know) copying the mighty Apple, I decided to take the plunge and got it bundled with my new PC. So here’s my mini review.
First up, it has the cool factor that we were promised, making it a much more attractive operating system to use and work with every day of my life for the past month and nine days. It’s been one rollercoaster of a ride though. The first thing I had to get on it was FireFox, it offers familiarity that I was offered and integrates seemlessly with my current black theme. I’ve barely used Internet Explorer 7, all I do know is that I don’t like the fact that I can’t use it the way I want to, i.e. themes, add-ons and layout. Using FireFox also made it so much easier for me to synchronise my current bookmarks (aka – Favourites).
Next up, Vista media center, what can I say? Well it is one slick way for me to browse my media in comfort and I have to admit, I use it even when I don’t need to. It’s menus makes navigation a breeze, the only thing that I’d like to pull down is that cover art still hasn’t appeared on 99% of my albums. But I’m sure that’s only because I’d already ripped them before, if ripping with Vista, I’m sure it would get them fine, as long as you’re connected to the net that is. The same goes for listings, I simply don’t get why it uses the net for listings that it could pull off the air for digital TV. Although my PC has a digital tuner, I wanted to use my PVR, unfortunately, this seems impossible without a media center remote that didn’t come with my PC.
The problems really begin when trying to install hardware and software. Firstly, I managed to install most things fine. Photoshop 7.0 works a breeze, surprisingly. Most things, like Dreamweaver work fine in XP compatibility mode whilst others struggle to work regardless. Adobe Premiere is now installed in multiple locations, only one of these works whilst the others simply tell me to reinstall because there is something wrong with the registration. On the one that does work, I tried to register and it prompted an error dialog, so I learnt that I had to hit register later each time I load the application. I’m now using a trial Internet security application rather than Norton 2006 since that isn’t supported; Norton 2007 is though, but I don’t think I’ll be returning to Norton since it slows things down even more so. Hardware also has issues, unbelievably I had to install my printer (Lexmark X1180) four times and swap USB ports to make it print, and it still won’t scan. It was a stuggle to get my Sony media player to work with the bundled software, I resorted to getting the latest version of Sonic Stage which installed fine and worked with the media player for a couple of weeks before Windows decided one day that it no longer recognised it and attempted to reinstall it. Fortunately, I managed to get it to work again after uninstalling each trace of Sony and starting again.
I will credit the search utility, I use this more than I thought I would. It’s useful for finding things even if I know where they are, due to a speedy response (due to archiving) it’s still faster than locating specific files. It’s also a live search, which I wish they’d implemented into Internet Explorer 7, like in Firefox, it’s much easier to find text when it begins searching as soon as you hit a letter, especially if you can’t spell the word. Secondly, I knew that networking was supposed to be much easier than XP but it’s amazingly simple. It can connect to the net with the minimum of fuss, which is a good point since the broadband installation disc that I have doesn’t work with Vista. I have two Vista machines connected via a router connected to the net. They find one another easily and once file sharing is enabled, it couldn’t be easier. Printing via the network is just like printing to a printer beside you, in fact it happened so quickly, I didn’t know whether it had worked or not. I cynically walked upstairs and found a sheet of paper lying on my bed, sent from downstairs.
Speech recognition isn’t amazing. I found that it is alright for commands but trying to enter text becomes a chore that would take longer than typing. There is a reason that not everyone adopted speech recognition, and that’s exactly it. People don’t want to talk to their computers the whole time either. I found that after a few hours, I was beginning to develop a headache and a sore throat. But then, when it began to do random things, I started shouting at it in an attempt to prevent it from doing something stupid. Speech recognition has come a long way, but it’s still easier to use a mouse and keyboard, for those that can comfortably anyway.
Whilst iTunes might work fine with Vista, I wouldn’t trust it to sync with an iPod (if I had one anyway) with talk that it has corrupted the iPod and official announcements from Apple either support this or are trying to stop people from buying Vista. Maybe Microsoft did this to increase the sales of Zunes when people bust their beloved iPods. Who knows? All I know is that these compatibility issues must be sorted out if Microsoft want to keep their customers. When copying all those cool features, did they have to take the compatibility issues too?
Jon Bentley from the Gadget Show chose to upgrade his home PC (9th April 2007) to Home Premium despite the Microsoft update advisor suggesting Home Basic although his specs were apparently high enough. The install went well, luckily for him since he didn’t have another PC that he could use or any backup of files. He found that some software applications didn’t work but most hardware did. I guess it’s going to be a different story for everyone who gets Vista. That is until Microsoft decide that it would be a good idea to put the customer before profit. Like that’s gonna happen.
My advice would probably be not to buy the upgrade, even if you’re PC can handle anything more than Home Basic. If it can handle Home Basic, I wouldn’t bother since you won’t get the cool features that make it stand above XP. Wait until you get a new PC since it will likely come bundled with Vista anyway and by then, the problems (like the ones listed above) will remain only a part of the lives of those early adopters – myself included.
