Harsh J

Vista is all about show-off. Seriously speaking, it is all about show-off. After a year of watching MSDN, Blogs, Websites, etc across the web speaking of Vista’s this and that, I finally decided to give it a try on my now-spruced up hardware.

Note: Some links in this post lead to screenshots on my Flickr set, so keep looking at your Tooltips or Status bar below to find them…

Installation:

Installation, they promise, will only take 20 minutes and it did just that. 20~ Minutes and Vista’s ready to go vroom!

After watching a rather non-informative screen of installation, you are shown a screen where it says that Vista’s calculating your system’s Performance Index. This PI is in other words Confidence-Reducer. You might think you have a top notch 9/10 Hardware with you but after you run this you’re going to be pretty low on self confidence. Poor multimedia geeks worldwide, they’ll now be thrown into chaos of upgrading constantly in order to keep up with the scores of one another!

My score card

Taking the least of the subset as the base score IMO is a bad idea. Instead, why not take a mean of all values and make the user happier with numbers. Whatever, it doesn’t count much really. A score of 4 to 5 will give you power to do all things that can be done with Vista. Including HD-Video playback etc…

Effects:

To run Aero effects, you at least need a basic Ge-Force FX series card, like the 5200. Else it won’t run and you’ll find no reason to buy Vista. Yeah, all there’s good and new about Vista is covered in one simple word – Aero. Aero gives you Flip-3D Interface, a good but not so powered alternative to Alt+Tab, and it gives you transparent sidebars, window borders, application interfaces, etc. Window thumbnail previews are also present.

Other effects one can enjoy are like, glossy icons which can go up to massive sizes like 256×256, glossy this and that. There’s also Dream Scene coming up in Windows Vista Ultimate Extras, which I think is a pretty cool application of DirectX 10. I wish I get a Matrix style dream scene desktop soon for my Vista Ultimate. Also, speaking of DirectX 10, I guess it isn’t time yet to talk about it since I haven’t seen any application make use of it. Most games based on DirectX 9.0c work fine with 10 too. All they need are just DLLs from DirectX 9 which can be easy to set up. A sidebar with Gadgets adds to the effects and functionalities.

My Computer (No ‘My’ prefixes in Vista though) now looks like this and your Home Folder looks like this. Plus folder views looks neater and better like this.

Applications:

Since I tried Windows Vista Ultimate, I guess I had access to all applications Vista comes with. New spruced up Photo Manager/Gallery and Movie Maker are really nice for the multimedia enthusiastic. Not to forget, it also now has its own Media Center for the remote-fiddlers and a DVD Maker for those who love to author DVDs.

Outlook Express, apart from being renamed to Windows Mail looks easier on the eye thanks to Aero but apart from looks, it’s pretty much… ‘Outlook Express’.

Windows Vista also comes with its own Calendar and Contact applications. Contacts are given more priorities in Vista with a folder dedicated to your contacts in your Home folder.

Windows Defender, the new application of Microsoft which deals with Spyware infections etc, comes bundled with Windows Vista and so does a Fax and Scan application. Vista’s new Meeting Space boasts of making sharing files between networks easier but since I wasn’t on one, I couldn’t try it…

Windows Media Center is a neat application to work with if you have a remote. It has a nice interface but it does get heavy while usage. Since I don’t have a TV Tuner card or a remote, it wasn’t much use to me but to Windows Media Center XP PC users, this is a boon.

Start Menu:

The new start menu has 2 tiers, just like XP. One that shows recently used applications and the other that shows ‘All Programs’. The first layer is as nice as XP, with nice graphics thrown in for each folder at the right hand top corner. The second layer, or the ‘All Programs’ menu, is a bad thing in my opinion. Vista has thrown the menu slide or fade pop outs from it and made it like those Indent style menus. This makes it very cluttered. But on the brighter side, it now has a live search right below the menu. Just type in partially any name of the application you want to search, and it shows that above, also searches Documents and Windows Live Messenger logs at the same time.

Special folders:

Special folders under your Home menu include Contacts and Games. Contacts, I didn’t really use since I like my Gmail better for that, might be good for business.

Game folder is a very neat feature. It indexes all the games you install on your PC and shows it all in one folder. Not only a link to the game but also to its official sites, configuration dialog boxes, support sites, options to modify/remove the game are also given in. Plus, it downloads info about the game like its ESRB rating, publishers and producers, game update version numbers, etc…! Features gamers worldwide would enjoy.

Apart from Games and Contacts, there is also a separate folder called Searches, for you to save your specific searches which you might often do. And a favorite Links folder which can be modified to edit the sidebar on the explorer’s left for your ease of access to various folders you specify.

Mainstream Applications:

Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11 come integrated well into Windows Vista. You can find my earlier reviews of IE 7 and WMP 11 at my blog here. Help, Control Panel and Internet and Networking panels now have better wizards and UI (User Interface).

Overview:

Everything basic in XP is available in Windows Vista, with just interface and minor feature lifts. The CD-DVD Burner by default now supports more features than before and is easier to work with. The Photo Manager is also nice to use now. Likewise, all applications have just been remade so that you can show off your graphics and power of your PC to others. Gaming has been made easy with one stop access to controls, devices etc.

Hardware detection coupled with a faster Windows Updates is much better than before and there’s Windows Ultimate Extras that will help make your Ultimate copy non-boring with new applications offered for download every month or so as they promise. If I were you, I’d wait till SP1 ‘Fiji‘ comes for Vista and then opt for it. That way we’d get more features and functionality than just the cosmetic changes now.

Buy if you got the cash and a pretty good hardware. Else just ignore till Fiji SP1 arrives.

Screenshots:

I made a Flickr Set for my Vista Screenshots, you can view it here.

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