I installed Windows Vista Ultimate on my primary computer a week ago. Here are my impressions along with my machine specs. AMD X2 4400+ chip, Nvidia 6600 GT graphics, SATA2 Drives, 2 GB DDR memory, Creative X-Fi soundcard, No RAID or anything exotic.
The Good:
- The Vista Upgrade Advisor worked as advertised. It told me that Nero had to be uninstalled before the install and I’d need to find beta drivers for my soundcard and graphics card, but that both would work.
- The installation is quite fast and doesn’t require much input.
- It feels as fast if not faster than Windows XP Pro.
- It found all drivers except those noted above, even those for our three printers.
- The interface feels a lot more polished than XP.
- The new Windows Photo Gallery is great for those who don’t use Picassa.
- All my programs (except Nero) seem to run just fine under Vista.
- Setting up a home network is as easy as walking through a simple wizard.
- The Sidebar is pretty slick but could use more Gadgets.
- It just looks really good compared to XP. The colors, shading and icons look great.
- The more robust imaging features are sweet. You can now image an entire drive for backup or just individual folders and files. This isn’t a well know feature but it’s very welcome for those who (over)extend their computers.
- It’s more intelligent. When I tried to copy over some pictures with the same name, Vista asked me if it should rename those pictures I was trying to copy over to the same directory. Very simple but well thought out.
- Pictures dragged to the desktop show a tiny thumbnail of that very picture. No more guessing by file name.
The Bad:
- Way too many system warnings until I disabled “User Account Control”
- Good luck finding the “Add/Remove Programs” area. Why change the name now?
- Lack of customization for individual folders (Can I put a “delete” cross on the menu, please?)
- The Web UI taken a bit too far in places. Do we really need everything to look like a web browser? Moving back and forward within folders could be made easier.
- Internet Explorer is still lame but Firefox runs just fine. Thank goodness!
- Strange behavior for some start menu items. I don’t know why I can delete some program folders without a problem yet some require I empty the folder before I delete it.
- Disk Defrag takes forever. Could be a problem with my drives but I doubt it.
The Ugly:
- Having dealt with past upgrade nightmares, I should have known that trying to upgrade from Windows XP would be a major pain in the butt. On three separate occasions, Vista would appear to install just fine but on initial boot up, the system would hang before getting to the login screen. No errors or anything. Starting with a fresh install solved the problem but I feel bad for those that are planning for a simple upgrade from XP.
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