I’m sure most of you regular readers have realized by now that I’m what they call an “early adopter.” And so I went and upgraded my PC to Vista last night. You can go ahead and call me an idiot or whatever in the comments, I don’t care. I had zero problems with the upgrade and Vista performs faster than I expected on my little Panasonic R5 notebook with minimum specs. Although in my haste to install Vista, I forgot that I had to upgrade the BIOS and remove all the drivers before upgrading to Vista. It still worked fine but I reinstalled XP and then upgraded to Vista again anyways. No problems the second time either.
So far, Vista looks promising, my first impression is that it’s at least more pleasant to look at than XP and it’s not as bad a system hog as everyone keeps saying. Then again, I don’t do any heavy computering on my R5 anyway. Aero is razor sharp. For some reason photos look clearer and crisper than with XP and even better than on my Macs. Vista’s new system font is both soft and sharp at the same time. Very nice. It might be just the display on my Powerbook but I’ve never been fond of the fuzzy fonts on Mac OSX. Before you Mac zealots get all defensive about that comment let me just say that I plan to get Leopard when it comes out too. For me, I can like Windows AND Mac. It’s not an either or thing. Windows doesn’t have to suck for Mac to be good. I think there are alot of people out there who just want Vista to stink. I really don’t understand why. I have a bunch of computers including Mac and Windows and I want the best experience I can get on both platforms regardless of which is better.
Anyways, some more first impressions: I like the new start up screen. Sleep and wake are very quick. I like the new waiting ring animation, glad they got rid of the hourglass. There’s some new default screensavers that are actually nice (although I saw some spyshots of screensavers in Leopard that look totally awesome). The transparency of the window borders doesn’t really add any value, you can’t really see through them. The whole window should be transparent not just the border. Maybe I have to change a setting somewhere? The wireless network connectivity controls are simpler and easier to understand. Rendering of photo icons and previews is surprisingly fast. 3D flip is OK. 1GB of memory seems like it’s enough for my purposes.
To sum up this extremely brief review, I would have to agree with what others in the media have already said, Vista is more evolutionary than revolutionary. Most of the menus and controls are the same and in the same places as in XP and there is not much new on the front end that is worth the upgrade unless you have a relatively new machine and am sick of looking at XP.
The photo above kinda sucks. Sorry I was very sleepy.
Another Mac rip off!!!!
I knew it would not take long for a comment like that. You people are so predictable. ;-)
Heh, I was at a job interview when I asked about the company upgrading to Vista. The manager said he didn’t want to become a paying beta tester.
I’m sort of like you, I like and use Windows, OS X, and Linux. Well, I really don’t use OS X due to an unfortunate physics experiment. I think they’re all fine.
Do u think my pc will run vista ? its a celeron M 1.0+ ghz with hopefully soon 1gb ram. It say’s vista capable, but I’m weary of it running like crap.
Ooh! Well I’m a bit curious about Vista, to actually see it running and how it feels.
However from the press and all I’ve read it feels like it’s mostly just aesthetics, and like it will lock down this and that for “security” and “privacy” (as M$ sees it) removing some of my freedom as a user. Also I’m not willing to upgrade my machine just to be able to run Vista.
Good that you didn’t have any trouble though! Did you try the Upgrade Advisor before upgrading? And if so did it sound positive about supporting your hardware?
I use Win2K and hate XP (which I use when I’m forced to, with the Classic skin).
Leo, yeah companies have more to risk with upgrading their systems to a new OS. I would probably not do it either.
Rafael, that about the specs on my PC which was Windows capable as well. So long as you are not planning to do photoshop or games on it, it should be fine. While I haven’t tried it yet, you can supplement RAM by using USB flash memory.
Patrick, I still have an older XP on hand along with my Macs so it was out of curiousity that I upgraded to Vista rather than necessity. Improvements are more aesthetics rather than performance so it’s not worth the upgrade if that’s what you are looking for. I’m using my PC for mobility meaning, net surfing, mail, photos, blog and that’s about it. So it works OK for my purposes. I did use the upgrade advisor and also followed the upgrade instructions put out by Panasonic for my laptop. It was a long process but straightforward with no glitches. I think if you follow the instructions you won’t have any problems. Yesterday, most of the demo PCs at Biccamera had Vista installed so you can go and try it out.
> Yesterday, most of the demo PCs at Biccamera had Vista installed so you can go and try it out.
Cool! I’ll do that and see if I get the itch. :)
Thanks for the review, and I’ll be looking forward to more of your impressions along the line!
Hey Roy,
Which version of Vista did you go for? And how much was it? Anyways I’ll wait till I find a good copy…
I got Vista Business Upgrade. The price was equivalent to prices around the world. Expensive but I had lots of points to use up anyways.
I think you can’t really listen to any bloggers when it comes to hardware or software. I usually turn to on-line magazines and compare what MacWorld and PC World are saying and try to see where they overlap in their impressions.
The main problem, aside from bias, is that you never know what sort of hoops they put the OS through when they offer impressions. Magazines tend to do a more thorough job of putting an OS through its paces.
At least you made it clear that you haven’t pushed Vista much and offered your impressions only as early impressions. However, most of the things you mention are basic OS functions and you’d expect they’d be pretty snappy. I’m more interested in how a graphics-intensive game or Photoshop will run or how easily your scanner, camera, or PDA connect without difficulties. It’s what runs on top of the OS that will be the real acid test, not the OS itself.
My concern is that, 1 GB of RAM may be peachy for the OS to do its thing and basic web browswing and e-mail but it won’t be enough for coping with other tasks if the OS itself is sucking down most of that RAM. If Photoshop is running for a scratch disk constantly because Vista is eating up the RAM on eye candy, that’s a problem, especially if it’s running fine with the same amount of RAM under XP.
This isn’t a Mac vs. PC observation as one of the things that has always been an issue with Macs is that they use more RAM than PCs. It’s mainly a question of whether there’s any value added to a PC by upgrading to Vista to off-set any necessary costs (new machine, more RAM). So far, everything I’ve read (again, not on blogs) says that it’s a pig.
Well looks like MS finally catches up to Apple 8 years later again. Vista is just a facelift. It still lacks OS X’s real security and real image processing capabilities built into the os like native PDF and compositing features.
I’m a Mac developer and I’m running leopard and I can tell you it’s not much different than 10.4 except for major. major performance improvements and 64-bit-ness. The Finder is wicked fast.
I do have a PC laptop btw and I run XP. I’ll probably get vista too at some point but it will mean I need to buy a new laptop to add to my collection because my old PCG-X71 won’t run it. :-(
OMG. This is probably unrelated but y’all simply must check this out. It’s unbelievable. I know Roy will dig it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/soyburger/
Not that I would ever do anything so despicable, but I wonder if there are any pirated versions of Vista Premium out there already?
I’m not completely sure of the details but I believe that once the OS is installed on the PC your activation code is tied to the hardware but you can still install a pirate copy however you won’t be able to use most of the features.
Vista “Phones home” to a MS serial server. When you first buy and register with MS it sends a combo of the serial # and MAC address of the machine to the serial server and records it.
Since every computer in the world has a unique MAC address, re-installing the OS with a same serial # on a different computer will send a flag to the serial server that something is amiss.
Probably if it happens 2 or even 5 times with the same serial # on 5 different machines they won’t care.
But if pirates in Beijing start mass-duplicating copies of Vista and selling them with the same serial # you can bet MS will be calling the FBI.
I am sure the serial servers also track the IP of the machine being installed onto and I am sure they have code that collects the serial #/MAC/IP data based on country.
If the same serial # of a Vista copy starts popping up 10,000 times in China on 10,000 different machines, there will be hell to pay.
They also probably have a scheme like Macromedia (I mean Adobe) uses for Studio MX and Studio 8 – the serial server records the MAC/serial # combo, then if you want to install it on another machine you have to first connect to the serial server and tell it to “deauthorize” your current computer and re-authorize on the new one. This updates the MAC info on the serial server.
The Adobe arrangement was so cumbersom that I finally called their tech support because I paid $599 for Studio MX 2004 and really complained about the serialization scheme. After that I noticed I could install it on as many computers as I wanted simultaneously without going through the deauthorize crap.
I’ve been cross-platform user for years, I know exactly what you are say.
Did you find any different transparency settings? I had gotten the impression that we would see the same effect as in OSX.
hey roy! my notebook pc specs is pentium m 1.6ghz, 700+mb ddr2 ram. Do you think this is enough to run vista on my notebook pc?
Why are you asking me? Do I look like I work for Microsoft? ;-)
Go buy a copy and find out if it works on your PC or not.
I just got it today from Staples (Vista Ultimate upgrade) and tried upgrading it. Everything was fine till it was finalizing the installation, it rebooted and couldn’t start windows . So as pissed off as i was, i reverted back to XP (good thing the option was there).
I’ll try updating my bios and getting rid of drivers like you said Roy.
Ok, i managed to get it installed! Total P.I.T.A. for me cuz i had to backup, format, reinstall XP home edition and only then install Vista upgrade over it. Looks good from first impression so im not really complaining
That’s the same experience as me. No problems upgrading if you do all the steps properly.
Too late, but the other day I read this article saying that you can install from scratch with an “upgrade” copy. This would probably have saved you from reinstalling XP.
How to install a Vista upgrade on any PC
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/12/cheap_vista_for_everyone/
Pat, I knew about that method but when I tried it, Vista couldn’t even finish installing for some reason.
Well, XP didnt take long to install anyways.
Hi,
It is not related much to Vista but I would like to ask something.
My laptop broke down yesterday and I cannot boot up anymore, so I need new laptop.
You wrote that you got this cheaper. How can I get a cheap but new laptop? Like refurbished or something?
I have no experience in Japan about buying laptops.
I would be really happy if somebody could help me.
http://www.feridun.info
Feridun
Sometimes they sell what’s called “new used” in stores like Sofmap. This means no one has used it but the box has been opened or something. Kind of like things they sell at an outlet mall. These models are usually cheaper.