i´ll talk about my first impressions about vista, i ve been using it for 2 days now, and i didn´t use any betas, so i think i can have a different point of view compared to people that were using it since the first beta versions.
1 - Hardware:
Athlon 64 2800+ s754
512MB ram @ 200mhz
Epox 8KDA3+ (Nforce3 250GB chipset)
Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128MB
As you can see, its not an expensive nor high end system and my VGA is directx 7.
2 - The install process.
The install process was surprisingly easy and fast, no more 2 hours waiting for the stupid drums to detect your hardware, no more questions after you type the serial, but with some scary things, like a button "Install Now" which when i clicked i say "oh god, here comes microsoft erasing my whole harddrive", but there was (a very easy indeed) partitioning option, that worked flawless and allowed me to install Vista on a 10GB partiton without erasing my other partitions.
The whole install process (and all countless reboots, but at least without stupid questions) took less than half hour, and after that i was already on the vista startup screen to set a user and password.
3 - Desktop First impressions.
I didnt like much what i saw but, the interface is clean and being a windows user since 3.1, (no i´m not that old) the first thing i did was change the start menu to the classic one and complain about how ugly (and big) the icons are, but you get used to it.
After that i opened up IE7, i´ll not talk about it because i just saw one website using it: www.mozilla.com and downloaded firefox, after that IE is just another brick on the wall.
I didn´t like one thing, the files and folders navigation are a lot worst than the previous windows versions, i never liked the gnome way to open folders with that "view all folders" button, but guess what, microsoft copied that stupid navigation system, and its very very annoying, hope i get used to it.
4 - Protect you from yourself.
Another annoying thing is that you have to confirm almost everything, even to open vista´s own configurations apps you have to confirm, almost everything you try to run or install, a message like "Are you really sure you want to do this?" pops up and you have to click on allow each time, its very annoying, hope i find out soon how to disable it, cause i don´t need to be protected from myself.
5 - Performance.
It was a suprise, but i didn´t think it would run so smooth on my pc, off course it isn´t as fast as my Tiny XP (Tiny xp just flies), but it was ok, i didn´t notice any slowdowns, off course i wasn´t using aero (my vga can´t run it) and set up the visual style for performance, just left the font anti-aliasing (finally windows have it) and the vista-ish theme on, but disabled all the shadows, fades, effects, etc.
6 - Installing Essetial Software.
First thing i tried to install was the Comunity Combined Codec Pack (CCCP), it didn´t run saying that it required windows xp, so i set the compatibility mode to windows XP and it installed, mplayer classic works just fine, and all the codecs works too. Azureus worked fine after installing the JVM.
Nero din´t run, sadly we will have to wait for a vista version, i heard that nero 7 lite runs on vista, but their website keept sending me corrupted files so i gave up, then i found swiftdisc that fits my needs perfectly.
Apache, Mysql and php didn´t run either, but i just tested to see if it would work, who uses this on windows anyway?
Keeping it short:
My first impressions of vista couldn´t be better, after all that talk about having to upgrade all the hardware to run it, it appears that was just rummors.
The only setbacks are the "protect you from yourself" philosophy and the files and folders navigation that i didn´t like.
I didn´t try all that media center crap and never will, and the movie maker and dvd maker refused to run on my VGA saying it was too damn old.
But Vista is a fine OS and i was surprisingly pleased with it.
Anyone who is using it have the same opinion? Did i miss something?
