Our Impressions
Immediately upon trying to install Vista, it's obvious Microsoft has been making some long-awaited changes for the installation procedure. The last of the console view for the installer is gone, and it has been replaced by an entirely graphical process. This includes the recovery console, and while it's still not a walk in the park, it isn't so intimidating any more. More importantly though, Vista is now USB-aware, so the days of the floppy disk are now truly limited, as drivers can be loaded off of USB devices such as flash drives. We can't state enough just how happy this makes us. The installation procedure is otherwise nearly the same as XP: it asks a few fewer questions, and doesn't spend the entire time boasting about its features (though that may change at release), so installation overall is not exceedingly different from XP.
Microsoft has also included a basic memory testing utility as both a recovery and advanced startup option. This can either be taken in a positive light or negative light, depending on whether you're happy that you may no longer need external utilities like MemTest86, or troubled that bad memory is now so common that Microsoft is bothering to include a memory testing utility. The utility seems sound enough; on the surface it seems a workable replacement for MemTest86, but as we don't have any bad DIMMs at the moment to test with it, an actual capability test will need to wait. At least until we break something.
Once installed, our fresh copy of Vista Ultimate Edition x86 ate up 10GB of hard drive space, and in the out-of-the-box configuration was using approximately 512MB of RAM. Running Vista x64 while trying to get real work done can push memory usage up to the capacity of physical memory in configurations we tested (though we never tested with more than 2GB). The actual RAM usage should drop a good deal once Vista is in shipping condition, as many debugging features are still in the code for this beta of Vista. XP 64-bit edition was eating a similar amount of memory when it was in beta, and dropped by over 100MB for its final release, so we'd expect something similar with Vista.
In order to get a good feel for Vista for writing this, we "dogfooded" (Microsoft's new term for beta testing) this for a week, and our reactions are overall mixed. As we previously mentioned, some of the UI changes that have replaced the traditional menus are just very hard to get used to. It's not so much that these changes represent a significant shift in how Windows operates, but rather it's that a lot of things have been moved, combined into buttons, etc. For most of these layout changes, there's little that directly improves Windows or its productivity for most users; people will adapt over time, and these changes essentially make more or less sense depending on how much you like the current XP interface.
We've managed to adapt to these changes for the most part, but it's the kind of paradigm shift not everyone will be ready for, and since the old menu structure is still available that's okay. At the end of the day most users will end up using Windows Vista the exact same way they ended up using XP. The real productivity features powered by Aero potentially have the most impact for changing how users work, such as giving up Alt+Tabbing for Flip3D, but as we mentioned earlier that's not going to happen with the current incarnation of Flip3D: it's not effective enough to replace Alt+Tabbing, let alone the improved Alt+Tabbing of Vista.
To Microsoft's credit, there were to places where we did end up changing our habits a bit thanks to Vista. The first is with the inclusion of a much smarter searching system that can use the search index to instantly pull up results and mix in partial results (very similar to Tiger's Spotlight feature), searching isn't nearly as painful as it is with XP. Given the current implementation of this quick search and indexing service however, there's still some work to be done. By default only the start menu and a user's home directory are indexed, so searching from anywhere else loses the instant results and becomes a normal search. It's also flat-out buggy at this point; quick searching from our home folder for a specific image didn't work, but it did inside of the pictures folder of our home folder.
IE7+ has also picked up a major overhaul, both in terms of new features (sandbox mode, anti-phishing filters, etc.) and its interface. The main thing here is that IE finally has tabbed browsing, and in fact this is one of the few things at this point that really shines compared to Safari/Firefox. For IE's tabs, a new view has been added to help manage tabs by showing a scaled down version of all open tabs at once, effectively creating an Exposé for tabs. It's hard to put in words, but it's similar to looking at a folder full of pictures using the thumbnail view. This is a very useful feature that we're glad to see in IE and it undoubtedly makes it easier to use than any other tabbed browser.
The implementation of Gadgets (aka widgets) also gets a nod, even though Microsoft is very late to this particular party. If you're looking for something innovative in the field of widgets here, you're going to be disappointed, but there's little to be said about these kinds of utilities that hasn't already been said. Users accustomed to Tiger's widgets will be happy to know that these widgets are active all the time and do not have the refresh delay that Tiger's do, at the cost of memory and CPU usage.
Immediately upon trying to install Vista, it's obvious Microsoft has been making some long-awaited changes for the installation procedure. The last of the console view for the installer is gone, and it has been replaced by an entirely graphical process. This includes the recovery console, and while it's still not a walk in the park, it isn't so intimidating any more. More importantly though, Vista is now USB-aware, so the days of the floppy disk are now truly limited, as drivers can be loaded off of USB devices such as flash drives. We can't state enough just how happy this makes us. The installation procedure is otherwise nearly the same as XP: it asks a few fewer questions, and doesn't spend the entire time boasting about its features (though that may change at release), so installation overall is not exceedingly different from XP.
Microsoft has also included a basic memory testing utility as both a recovery and advanced startup option. This can either be taken in a positive light or negative light, depending on whether you're happy that you may no longer need external utilities like MemTest86, or troubled that bad memory is now so common that Microsoft is bothering to include a memory testing utility. The utility seems sound enough; on the surface it seems a workable replacement for MemTest86, but as we don't have any bad DIMMs at the moment to test with it, an actual capability test will need to wait. At least until we break something.
Once installed, our fresh copy of Vista Ultimate Edition x86 ate up 10GB of hard drive space, and in the out-of-the-box configuration was using approximately 512MB of RAM. Running Vista x64 while trying to get real work done can push memory usage up to the capacity of physical memory in configurations we tested (though we never tested with more than 2GB). The actual RAM usage should drop a good deal once Vista is in shipping condition, as many debugging features are still in the code for this beta of Vista. XP 64-bit edition was eating a similar amount of memory when it was in beta, and dropped by over 100MB for its final release, so we'd expect something similar with Vista.
In order to get a good feel for Vista for writing this, we "dogfooded" (Microsoft's new term for beta testing) this for a week, and our reactions are overall mixed. As we previously mentioned, some of the UI changes that have replaced the traditional menus are just very hard to get used to. It's not so much that these changes represent a significant shift in how Windows operates, but rather it's that a lot of things have been moved, combined into buttons, etc. For most of these layout changes, there's little that directly improves Windows or its productivity for most users; people will adapt over time, and these changes essentially make more or less sense depending on how much you like the current XP interface.
We've managed to adapt to these changes for the most part, but it's the kind of paradigm shift not everyone will be ready for, and since the old menu structure is still available that's okay. At the end of the day most users will end up using Windows Vista the exact same way they ended up using XP. The real productivity features powered by Aero potentially have the most impact for changing how users work, such as giving up Alt+Tabbing for Flip3D, but as we mentioned earlier that's not going to happen with the current incarnation of Flip3D: it's not effective enough to replace Alt+Tabbing, let alone the improved Alt+Tabbing of Vista.
To Microsoft's credit, there were to places where we did end up changing our habits a bit thanks to Vista. The first is with the inclusion of a much smarter searching system that can use the search index to instantly pull up results and mix in partial results (very similar to Tiger's Spotlight feature), searching isn't nearly as painful as it is with XP. Given the current implementation of this quick search and indexing service however, there's still some work to be done. By default only the start menu and a user's home directory are indexed, so searching from anywhere else loses the instant results and becomes a normal search. It's also flat-out buggy at this point; quick searching from our home folder for a specific image didn't work, but it did inside of the pictures folder of our home folder.
IE7+ has also picked up a major overhaul, both in terms of new features (sandbox mode, anti-phishing filters, etc.) and its interface. The main thing here is that IE finally has tabbed browsing, and in fact this is one of the few things at this point that really shines compared to Safari/Firefox. For IE's tabs, a new view has been added to help manage tabs by showing a scaled down version of all open tabs at once, effectively creating an Exposé for tabs. It's hard to put in words, but it's similar to looking at a folder full of pictures using the thumbnail view. This is a very useful feature that we're glad to see in IE and it undoubtedly makes it easier to use than any other tabbed browser.
The implementation of Gadgets (aka widgets) also gets a nod, even though Microsoft is very late to this particular party. If you're looking for something innovative in the field of widgets here, you're going to be disappointed, but there's little to be said about these kinds of utilities that hasn't already been said. Users accustomed to Tiger's widgets will be happy to know that these widgets are active all the time and do not have the refresh delay that Tiger's do, at the cost of memory and CPU usage.
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Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Excuse me, what? How about this then: http://www.macworld.com/2006/05/reviews/osxfirewal...">http://www.macworld.com/2006/05/reviews/osxfirewal..."The emphasis is on incoming. As it ships from Apple, the firewall does not monitor traffic that may be originating from your own computer. If your Mac gets possessed by a malware application that then attempts to attack or infect other computers via your Internet connection (a not-uncommon trick), OS X’s firewall won’t, by default, pay any attention. And, there’s no way to change this default setting from your System Preferences. To force the firewall to monitor outbound traffic, you must use Terminal’s command-line interface."
See - IT CAN monitor and block outbound traffic, contrary to what you say. It's just a matter of configuring it properly. You should at least correct your article and stop saying OSX ipfw CAN'T track outbound connections. You can say this: it's SET UP not to monitor outbound connections BY DEFAULT but anyone can CONFIGURE it to monitor outbound connections either through third party GUI like Flying Buttress or via command line. Then you won't look like a liar to any Mac guy who cares to read your review.
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
I see your point, but I believe there's nothing in the article that needs changing. Tiger's firewall can't block outbound connections without having to drop to the terminal to muck with IPFW, I do not classify that as an ability any more than I classify Vista x64 as being amateur driver programmer friendly(since you need to drop to the terminal to turn off the x64 integrity check). When a version of Mac OS X ships with a proper GUI for controlling outbound firewalling(as is the Apple way), then it will be capable by a reasonable definition. Right now it's nothing more than a quirk that results from using the BSD base.Pirks - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Excellent point! So, when (and if) Mac OS X will see its share of virii and malware, THEN Apple will incorporate outbound connection settings in OS X GUI - right now it's not needed by Mac users, and the rare exceptions are easily treated with third party apps and command line.OK, got your point, agreed, issue closed. Thanks :)
bjtags - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Vista x64I have been pounding on it for 4 days never crash or even farted once!!!
Have all HalfLife 2 and CS running Just Great!!!
Had at one time 10 IE windows open, MediaPlayer, Steam updating, download driver,
updating windows drivers, and 3 folder explorer windows open, and tranfering
4gig movie to HD!!!
Still ran fine... I do have AMD 4800 x2 with 2gigs...
Poser - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Two questions:1. What's the ship date for Vista supposed to be? Q4 of 2006?
2. I seem to remember that speech recognition would be included and integrated with Vista. Is it considered too much of a niche toy to even mention, not considered to be part of the OS, or am I just plain wrong about it's inclusion?
It was a extremely well written article. Very nice job.
Ryan Smith - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
1. Expected completion is Q4 with some business customers getting access to the final version at that time. It won't be released to the public until 2007 however.2. You're right, speech recognition is included. You're also right in that given the amount of stuff we had to cover in one article it was too much of a niche; voice recognition so far is still too immature to replace typing.
ashay - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
"Dogfooding" is when a company uses their own new product (not necessarily beta) for internal use.(maybe even in critical production systems).Term comes from "eat your own dog-food". Meaning if you're a dog food maker, the CEO and execs eat the stuff. If they like it they dogs hopefully will.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_one%27s_own_dog_f...">Wikipedia link
fishbits - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
Yes, I know it's still beta, we'll see. The UAC and signed drivers schemes sound like they'll be flops right out of the gate. Average user will quickly realize he can't install or use anything until he adopts a "just click 'Yes'" attitude, which will reward him with a functioning device/running program. I've lost count of how many drivers I've installed under XP that were for name-brand devices, yet didn't have the official seal of approval on them. Again, get trained to "just click 'Yes'" in order to be able to do anything useful. Without better information given to the user at this decision point, all the scheme does is add a few mouse-clicks and no security. Like when you install a program and your security suite gives a "helpful" warning like "INeedToRun.exe is trying to access feccflm.dll ... no recommendation."As expected, it looks like the productivity gains of GPU-acceleration were immediately swallowed up by GUI overhead. Whee! "The users can solve this through future hardware upgrades." Gotcha. For what it's worth, the gadgets/widgets look needlessly large and ugly, especially for simply displaying things like time, cpu temp/usage. Then it sounds like we're going to have resource-hungry programs getting starved because of GPU sharing, or will have an arms-race of workarounds to get their hands on the power they think they need.
Ah well, I've got to move to 64-bit for RAM purposes relatively soon. Think I'll wait a year or two after Vista 64 to let it get stable, faster, and better supported. Then hopefully the programs I'll need to upgrade can be purchased along the lines of a normal upgrade cycle. Games I'm actually not as worried about, as I expect XP/DX9 support to continue for a decent bit and will retain an XP box and install Vista on a brand new one when the time comes.
shamgar03 - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
I really hope that will mean for BETTER GPU performance not worse. I would really just like to be able to boot into a game only environment where you have something like a grub interface to pick games and it only loads the needed stuff for the game.darkdemyze - Friday, June 16, 2006 - link
beta implies "still in developement". chances are very high performance will see an increase by the time of release. I agree with your seconds statement though.