Vista has come a significantly long way since the RC2 build.

[Cole]

Vista has come a significantly long way since the RC2 build. - The Inquirer

WE'VE BEEN trialling the MSDN version of the Windows Vista RTM build.

A friendly developer friend of ours has allowed us to use it on his system since it was made available by Microsoft over the weekend. Microsoft have yet to send us any reviewable copies in the post.

Suffice to say we're impressed. Vista has come a significantly long way since the RC2 build. It's polished, speedy, and looks good on the eye.

It's hard to quantify just how much of an improvement in speed and responsiveness there is over the previous betas. Vista was incredibly sluggish on anything with under 2GB of RAM, but now seamlessly slides from one app to another with the minimum of fuss and disk-swapping on a machine with half the memory.

User account control (UAC) is still present. Some suspected this would disappear in the final release, but evidently it hasn't. It's annoying to the extreme and will be the first thing to be turned off by any users who can find it within the deluge of control panel options.

We're surprised it made it this far, considering the negative feedback from beta testers and the press. It seems largely pointless and somewhat unproductive - users will just hit the ok button several times in an effort to rid themselves of the dialogs, with scant regard for what they're actually saying. We suspect it will vanish from the next incarnation of Vista/Windows.

Installation was smooth, far smoother than any of the betas. Seamless installation on a Nvidia based SATA RAID, was the first time Vista has picked the correct drivers automatically, with no user-provision necessary. Only the Audigy drivers on the test PC weren't found, and we had to resort to using RC1-compliant beta drivers from Creative, who are still struggling to provide the Soundblaster user base with any quality final drivers.

Start-up times are reminiscent of Windows XP, booting the test PC (Athlon64-3200, 1GB RAM) in under 30 seconds, as opposed to RC1/RC2 which took far longer.

Some of the other caveats we've previously reported on, are still present. User interface inconsistencies, and the removal of useful 'up' navigation icons within folder views are incredibly irritating and somewhat counter-intuitive to what has been learnt from previous version of Windows.

The smaller task tray and quick launch icons are still fairly basic, and don't provide users with any clue of what they might do. This really should of discovered within usability testing, and we're surprised these haven't been adjusted.

The new Vista sounds are ok. Not too over-the-top or ridiculously long, and aren't nearly as annoying as previous Windows audio inclusions.

Despite the niggles mentioned, Vista really has come far since earlier betas. Even releases from just several weeks ago have been eclipsed by the polished performance of the final build. It must be noted that this analysis is taken purely from how the system is perceived to perform, and not from timed results.

Despite the polished feel and decent performance, Vista still has relatively little to offer. Windows Media Player 11 and Internet Explorer 7 are both dowloadable for Windows XP. The majority of useful features for Vista fell by the wayside sometime ago, Vista just feels like XP with a glorified pretty interface and a sidebar that eats up more of your precious memory.

Still, the next version of DirectX is going to be Vista-only, so this may be reason enough to upgrade for a lot of people.

Expect more Vista analysis and benchmarking within the INQ this week. µ

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35700

 

[DigiQ8]

I Agree

 

[Uriel]

Another reason for me to get Vista......legitimately.

 

[oldagerocker]

How much RAM does it use? Would games etc perform worse on vista than xp right now or better because of what microsoft would say is a 'better' OS?

 

[Uriel]

Gig atleast for Premium version. 2 Gigs recommended

 

[DEATHMASTER]

my 1.5 should be good enough.

 

[Uriel]

Yah, you should be set no problems, got some pretty good specs

 

[Aenama]

Gig atleast for Premium version. 2 Gigs recommended

Does that mean you need 4gig to platy games?

 

[Beerdude26]

Does that mean you need 4gig to platy games?

Hah! If you're looking to play Patience, yes! :E

 

[Cole]

Does that mean you need 4gig to platy games?

Vista unloads most of the GUI when you load something like a game. I'd say maybe 256 - 512more than XP tops.

For the 64bit version, well then.... your gonna need some more ram....heh..

 

[destrukt]

Err, 1GB is perfectly fine for heavy use (As in, having tons programs open like I normally do when 'working') and for playing games.

You won't need more RAM than XP to play the same games and when you launch a game the GUI is 'turned off' (Well, Aero Glass is and it sort of goes down to Aero Express - bad explanation but meh) so to say to spare performance of your GPU/CPU.

Most of my games ran as good as XP on earlier builds and that's with horrible and buggy drivers from Nvidia. Also, don't be too suprised if some games run faster on Vista than XP, well, when we get proper drivers from Nvidia and so on.


The Inquirer are incredibly pathetic too. One of their editors started emailing me because I wrote a retort to one of his articles showing how stupid, inaccurate and just plain bad it was.

It is amazing they managed to write a halfway decent Vista related article though.

 

[Cole]

It is amazing they managed to write a halfway decent Vista related article though.

Well it all comes down to who actually writes it. Some of them hate Vista, some of them kinda like it and some of them like it. There articles seem diverse and conflicting at times.

Most of my games ran as good as XP on earlier builds and that's with horrible and buggy drivers from Nvidia. Also, don't be too suprised if some games run faster on Vista than XP, well, when we get proper drivers from Nvidia and so on.

Just to comment on why games will run faster:
Vista implements a much more stricter driver system for Dx9 through Dx9L on Vista. Slight optimizations to Dx9 + this strict driver system should result in improved performance for games.

I hear ATI got some decent drivers out for Vista(Scratch open gl that is).

 

[Aenama]

every OS has problems when it first releses.but sofar I only had one BSOD in Vista while I was installing a Creative Audio Driver.

 

[Cole]

every OS has problems when it first releses.but sofar I only had one BSOD in Vista while I was installing a Creative Audio Driver.

I'd like to point out thats not an OS problem thats a Creative problem. I get the same shit with there driver for Vista. There driver is absolutely horrible for Vista and it's for a pretty old build. They should actually get off there asses and make a decent driver for Vista.

 

[DEATH eVADER]

Upgrading my comp is going to set me back £800, I might as well buy a new comp :hmph:

 

[Zeus]

I think I'm just gonna get the basic vista (cheapest). Paying money for the aeroglass theme just doesn't seem worth it, and I don't really have a use for the media center because we have like a home theater downstairs.

 

[gweedodogg69]

I'm running Vista on my laptop and home PC. My home PC (see sig) has 2GB RAM and runs great. I got blue screens at first due to the nforce4 audio driver so I installed the Realtek on from the DFI website and works beautifully.

My laptop has 1GB RAM and runs Vista smooth. (HP Pavilion zv6130us). I have an ATI Xpress 200M and it runs Aero Glass just fine. WoW runs on it just fine as well. I'm impressed