Microsoft Windows Vista (codename Longhorn)

[JoshMcMadMac]

I got my hands on beta 1 of the next Windows operating system. Many of you may have heard of it over the past few years as "Longhorn" and is now being labeled Vista. It is much like XP, although there are many subtle changes that will take anyone some time to get used to navigating with, and I feel would push a lot of the less capable users away. It is also a huge resource hog. I have always thought Windows to be relatively demanding, but Vista was quite slow on my machine. It was using 620mb of page file with nothing running, while XP only uses 260mb, and that is with things in the background like my firewall.

I installed on a seperate drive so that I would not ruin my current Windows installation. The installation is on a DVD, so this is yet another deterent for users with old machines. I am running a 2.6ghz P4 with 512mg ram on 800mhz FSB. The used hard drive is a 30gb 7200rpm drive. It took 30 minutes for the installation to get to the "reset" point, then another 35 for the installation to get to completion. This is against XP that takes ~25 minutes. However, there was no need to monitor the install like XP; all of the questions are answered at the beginning and the install is stand-alone from there. The installation took up about 5.5gig of space.

The user interface is familiar, very similar to XP. The windows open more eloquently, with a fade-in type expansion that "balloons" from the center of the screen. When you scroll over the taskbar you get a small "pop-up" preview of what is in a given window. IE7 seems to be more fine tuned, and has tabbed browsing with built in search, which you can easily default to google from MSN. The top menus are gone in all explorer windows, leaving you playing with several buttons to determine simple things like your view. I think this is more streamline and should work well, but it is certainly a heavy adjustment to make.

I don't like it. It's too much slower than XP on my machine. It takes too long for everything to respond when I am accustom to the instant response I feel I should get. It is probably prettier, but most of the styling ques are straight from XP and are more than achievable by skinning XP. The default view reminds me a lot of what I have seen of other skins for XP, actually. There is virtually no support for drivers right now, so my sound, printer, and greater options of my video did not work. Thus, I cannot comment on many aspects of the system. I'm sure that they will make it much more responsive and less of a hog as they get things worked out, but currently I don't see anything that would induce me to make the switch.

Here is a screenshot from my installation:

 

[JoeyLincolnMK8]

had it for a few months now. but never installed it!

 

[bufordtpisser]

Beta versions are almost always clunky.

Beta versions are almost always overloaded with things that will not ever make it to the final release. Sort of like concept cars. All flash, and most of them couldn't move under their own power. XP betas were exactly the same way. Vista will need much more horsepower under the hood though. This is Microsoft's way of getting everyone to go 64 bit. I have 5 systems, all 64 bit except 1, a laptop. Once you go 64 bit you will never go back. I have XP 64 bit loaded on a few systems, and except for scarce driver support it is by far the best OS that Microsoft has put out to date. XP media center edition is also a big improvement over regular XP. Vista will rock when the shipping edition gets released. Just make sure that you have the horsepower to run it. If you cant run with the big dog's, stay on the porch.