Windows Vista: First Impressions (56K warning- big pics inside) | Forums

[DocSEAL]

I took the time to load up M$'s next iteration of Winblow$ on a spare hard drive this morning. I'll try to be objective despite my hate for Big Brother:

Installation:

Pros: Setup was smoother than anything ever to come out of Redmond. Just enter CD-Key and keep pressing next. Does the rest itself. It found every device and installed them with the exception of my Audigy 2 ZS (Blame Creative for another failure. They are just God awful at drivers.)

Cons:

1) 2GB DVD .iso??? WTF kinda balloning is that M$??? OS gonna take 6+GB now??? ...can't tell because...

2) Load time is slow as molasses and not interactive at all. There was one point it looked like it was just over half done with the DOS install part and it stayed there for 5+ minutes and then rebooted??? There is no % complete stuff and now that the Windows GUI install part is running it's no better. There's no pretty Windows screens that say how great Vista is and no % complete bar. It a screen that says "Completing installation....Do not restart your computer at this time" and a green Nightrider-like bar keeps sliding across the screen with the mouse cursor flipping over and over (and over and over) hourglass...been like that for about 1/2 hr now. I know it's an old hard drive, but this complete lack of feedback is awful. I know it's just beta1, but these are simple things (screens telling you what's installing atm and % complete.) I'll post some screenies later if it ever does complete.

Initial boot:

Finally loaded and it ended up being a tad over 5GB. Whoops, I forgot that it was missing the SATA controller driver as well...anyway...I got to fixing things up. Deleted every thing it would let me off the hard drive that I thought I could to free up space. Then turned off services. I went from 430MB in use to 320. Still a hefty chunk of change for just a boot. Here is the first screen you see when you install:



Of course I loaded this and it found not one but two nVidia drivers and loaded them back to back (77.30 then 77.52.)

I also like the darker feel of the new default theme:


Somehow "My Computer" isn't mine anymore, it's just "Computer":


Also, even though it loads with dx9.0c, the vid driver doesn't know it:


IE is now at version 7.0 and has a tabbed interface ala Firefox. It also has the first inclination that Mr Gates is getting soft in his old age. The top right hand corner has a dropped down of search engines. MSN Search is default every time, but also has Google, Ask Jeeves and others:


One thing that sticks out and is a big WTF...Who's the brilliant programmer/team lead that said we don't need a stop button any more? It's completely gone.

An hour and 40 mins later I had my first crash!!! Woot! That's a new record for me:


It happened because I added the SnagIt extension to IE when I installed SnagIt. I removed that and all was fine again.

--- OS pros and cons:

Pros:

1) I like the new IE. It's much faster than any current build out there. The fact that Gates and crew took the time to learn from the better browser and copy it (minus the stop button) shows he can still steal software with the best of 'em.

2) Some neat little conveniences...when you right click to rename a file it keeps the extension and your cursor autostarts at the beginning. Control panel is now much more user friendly in organization. Most old XP commands still work (with the exception of msconfig...still haven't found it's equivalent.)

3) I like the aggressive tone of the new OS theme. No more fluffy soft-colored ****. Heck, even the loadscreen is just black and white.

Cons:

1) No matter how high a screen res you set the desktop, the icons are big enough for the mostly blind to see them (they don't get smaller than pics 1 and 2.)

2) First obvious bug to me: I hate all the beeps that Winblow$ wants to do by default. A beep for every hyperlink click in IE, a different beep for file download complete, a different one for critical exception....that's one of the first things I change in the control panel. I make my own scheme from the No Sounds option where it just makes a sound on bootup and shutdown. No matter what theme I select, it reverts to default after I click apply and close

--------------------------------

Gaming:

Well, of course I had to load up FC. I did so and it fired up flawlessly. The 77.52 looked great with the exception of texturing issues:


It ran very smoothly:
http://gotfrags.net/vista/benchmarks/FC_10.csv

I used my 1.0-1.33 installer and .reg file to patch up to 1.33. The texture issue was fixed:


Performace was up over 1.0:
http://gotfrags.net/vista/benchmarks/FC_133.csv

(A big oopsie, I forgot that I had Vsync enabled so max FPS was 75.)

The audio had some noticeable crackling in it, but I'm sure that will be fixed in a later driver.

So...fear not...your fav game will play just fine in the next big thang to come from the thinktank in Washington state.

Imma keep messing with some stuff on and off...I'll post more as I find it...(if I can just put up with those #^@%@*!% beeps.)

[CuZtds_Lst_Stnd]

One thing that sticks out and is a big WTF...Who's the brilliant programmer/team lead that said we don't need a stop button any more? It's completely gone.

Should have guessed all it would take was me buying XPx64 for them to start releasing the new OS...

And the way it is going it will be in final RC b4 i get to use the other!!

I can think of two huge assumptions why they would remove the stop button:
1. Everyone taking up this OS will be Broadband users.
2. The browser code is so foolproof it will never hang during a link opening.

The first may be a valid point, any indications on the second; my money is on NFW...

CuZ

[DocSEAL]

Actually, the new OS has been under development for quite some time. It'll be 5 years since the release of XP (Oct 2001) and Vistar release (scheduled holidays 2006) which is the longest time in between OS releases for home users in M$ history. The former name of Vista was Longhorn and this build has a combination of both. The loadscreen and screensaver both have Longhorn, but the desktop and "Computer" both say Vista.

Fear not, your money was not totally wasted. There's a 64-bit version of Vista. When I stuck in the DVD in WinXP, it looked like it would upgrade straight within Windows. I may give that a go soon. So, you'd only need to get an upgrade version rather than full. More info and M$ propoganda here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx

~stop- I'm on broadband now and I use the stop button all the time. It stops streaming movies and stupid cookies from loading (like hitbox.com from here for instance.)

[PJLE30]

Well that looks absolutely stunning.

I certainly am a little suspicious of MS though. I'm not even sure why

It must be all the bad that I hear about them. This OS will most likely improve zero functionality but provide a really neat new look that everyone will "have" to have. That's how MS is gonna make $$ from now on.

I'll pick up the student upgrade when it's $75 at newegg

[DocSEAL]

@PJ- Be very afraid of anything that comes from M$ hdqtrs...

Well, I took some more time this evening/morning to tinker...today's findings:

Vista has to be a real recent name change, because Longhorn is written everywhere else:


Outlook Express is still at version 6, but it thinks it's Longhorn beta:


---I'm not liking the new search tool at all. Very cumbersome.

@H8ball & all: You'll be glad to know that they finally fixed the % complete/time remaining on file transfers complete with transfer rate under advanced:





I took Vsync off the vid driver and within FC and decided to do a showdown. All settings set to medium:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
WinXP 77.62/XG 80.40 combo driver. SB2 with hardware mixing on:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7473, 60000, 79, 171, 124.550

WinXP 77.62/XG 80.40 combo driver. SB2 with hw mixing off:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7233, 60000, 74, 166, 120.550

Note: Noticeable stutters.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vista 77.52 driver. Onboard sound hw mixing on:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6919, 60000, 0, 173, 115.317

note: Nasty ~2 second pause at one point.

Vista 77.52 driver. Onboard sound hw mixing off:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7785, 60000, 84, 179, 129.750

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I decided to give another try at getting the Audigy card to work again. After trying some downloaded drivers from Creative and it not detecting the card, I tried the original driver from the CD. No card found. So I just tried right clicking on the card in hardware manager and update driver. It found it right away and loaded the driver. It must've been in the supplemental pack that I installed right away. (K.I.S.S.)....with that:

Vista 77.52 driver. Audigy2 sound hw mixing on:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6919, 60000, 0, 173, 115.317

Note: Sound completely disappeared during the test (slightly down the trail from where the onboard sound paused) and never returned until FC restart.

Vista 77.52 driver. Audigy2 sound hw mixing off:

Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
7785, 60000, 84, 179, 129.750

Interesting to note:

1) Vista posted exactly the same numbers using either onboard or SB2 (those were not copy and paste mistakes.) Vista choked or quit with hw mixing on but ran smooth as glass without.

2) XP performs better with hw mixing on (as it should be.)

3) Vista outperforms XP with default drivers right out of the box by over 5 fps avg. Interesting to see whether 3rd party drivers will improve upon these or slow them down...

I'll mess with it more later...

[Blademrk]

One thing that sticks out and is a big WTF...Who's the brilliant programmer/team lead that said we don't need a stop button any more? It's completely gone.

I think I remember reading somewhere that the stop button replaces the refresh button while the page is loading, but then becomes the refresh button again once it's finished.