Vista Ultimate First Thoughts
Stephen Cooper, February 15th, 2007

     After years of development and delays Microsoft has finally brought their Windows Vista operating system to the greater world. Microsoft was kind enough to send over a copy of the 32-bit version of Vista Ultimate for our review, and today I’ll be making a quick overview of the installation process, as well as my initial thoughts after using Vista Ultimate on both a high performance system and an aging laptop well past its prime.

     Today’s first impressions, and the upcoming full review of the Windows Vista Ultimate OS, will be written from the perspective of an average user. I would not classify myself as a guru of operating systems, and will never claim to be one. When it comes to OS’ I’m no more than the typical computer user out there like most of the world in terms of highly advanced knowledge of system features. Also, with the limited time I’ve had with this new OS, roughly one week, it would be foolish to make concrete judgments about the product overall. While the full review will delve much more deeply into some of the complex features, this article will only skim the surface to give an accurate first impression of Vista Ultimate for the average user.

     In respect to the installation process of WindowsXP, Windows Vista employs a far more streamlined approach. Windows Vista moves to a graphical interface versus the old hat look of WindowsXP. Gone are the days of navigating through a series of blue screens selecting option after option. All of the user input into the process happens at the beginning of the install, and that too has been minimized by Microsoft. The only items required to proceed with installation are entering the product key, selection of upgrade or fresh installation and finally selection of the disk partition for the installation. Finally, a k.i.s.s. installation process.

     In terms of the time required for installation, I have yet to time it in comparison to WindowsXP, but on high performance systems I’d estimate the installation time at around a half an hour to get things going. Now, on my older laptop which barely meets the Vista Basic requirements, installation was a bear and that’s putting it nicely. On the average system I’d say that installation is likely going to proceed rather slowly. At least this time you won’t need to check up on the installation to see if it’s halfway complete to enter in more settings, like was required in WindowsXP.

     Once the real installation has been completed, the user is asked to create a new user account and select a few other items similar to those asked in the WindowsXP installation routine. Vista then performs an assessment of the system performance for configuration of various features. This adds on a few additional minutes to the installation process, but once complete you’re ready to roll.

     Thus far, I have been rather pleased with the hardware support offered by Vista. Only two pieces of hardware that I’ve tried with the system have failed to work properly. Once of those items was a Creative SB Live! 5.1 card, and another was an older 3Com 10/100 NIC. The SB Live! 5.1 was supported by a standard driver within Vista, so while it worked it lacked the advanced features like stereo surround. After paying $300 for a 4.1 speaker system, this left me rather annoyed as half my investment was going unused. After checking the Creative website, I further found that no drivers were planned to support Vista. Well, isn’t that wonderful. The same happened with an older 3Com NIC card with no manufacturer driver support being offered. After an upgrade to a newer X-Fi and Intel NIC, everything was working wonderfully.

     On my older laptop, I was a bit concerned as the Vista Upgrade Advisor warned me that a few items, the touchpad being one, would not work. Well, there’s certainly no better way to find out than by installing Vista to see, no? It turned out that everything on the laptop worked perfectly, with the exception of a missing driver for the integrated graphics. This was expected given the fact the system is 4+ years old and is only “DirectX 9 Capable”. The integrated sound, networking and other hardware features all worked without problems and left me quite pleased. The Vista Upgrade Advisor worried me for nothing it turns out.

     In terms of software support, I have yet to have any major issues. All games, benchmarking and productivity software have all installed and performed well. The only issue that arose in my use was with Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. After the installation process when I went to test out the software support, I was warned by a pop-up window that there was a known issue with the updater software. It informed me that a fix was available and that it should be downloaded from Adobe’s website. Well, after searching through the download page on Adobe’s website it seems that only Photoshop Elements 5.0 is offered a patch for Vista support. How nice of Adobe. Luckily, the updater seems to be the only part of the software that isn’t working and all of the available updates for PE4.0, I won’t be needing. One thing I did notice with using the Photoshop Elements 4.0 software was that it, along with its compatriot Premiere Elements 2.0, ran much smoother under Vista than WindowsXP. Under WindowsXP simply maximizing the window causes some lag but these issues are gone under Vista. I had no problems bringing over my iTunes files. I know many have had issues with this, but after following the tutorial on Apple’s website, everything worked like a charm.

     Microsoft wants your first impression to be “Wow” when you experience the Aero interface. I have to say that initially this was indeed the impression I had. The Aero interface is gorgeous with the menu transparency, available color palette, icon resolution and quality and much much more. This isn’t to say there weren’t a few things that irked me. The default icon size for the desktop is what I would classify as obscene. Luckily this is fixed with a simple right click, but why in the world are the default icons so massive? I for one utilize my desktop for numerous shortcuts, and while I know navigation has been improved in Vista, I don’t plan on ditching my old habits because the new icons look pretty.

     While the full Aero interface left me feeling warm and fuzzy, the Aero Basic interface left me in tears. I haven’t worked too much with it other than on my laptop where the full Aero interface wasn’t supported. The menus are all a light blue color that made me long for WindowsXP. While this color might appeal to some others, to me it can be summed up in one word, ugly. I don’t know what it is, but the Aero Basic interface just makes things feel old to me. If you’re looking to upgrade, make sure you can support the full Aero interface.

     The new sidebar gadgets, better known as widgets to most of us familiar with such items, adds an additional layer of depth to the Vista interface. While I have to wonder why there are clock and calendar gadgets when they’re already built into the toolbar, several of the gadgets that others have developed can be quite useful. The CPU and RAM usage gadget, along with the notepad gadget have both been put to good use on my system, along with a competing weather gadget. Be warned however, system startup times suffer with the gadget sidebar enabled in my experience.

     The new Explorer offers some nice perks but again it does have some issues as well. Several operations such as searching and sorting of files have been improved with implementation of a toolbar of buttons across the top. There are several ways that the files can be viewed, from huge icons to simple lists. However, now things feel quite cluttered. All of this was designed to make the user’s life easier, which it certainly can, but it was at the expense of a simple interface.

     Overall, my first impressions of Vista, and specifically Vista Ultimate, are quite good. I had few problems moving over hardware and software, other than issues of driver support by manufacturers. This is an extremely annoying issue and I’m sure I’m not alone in my distaste for such lack of driver support. Simply beware that this could pose an issue if you choose to upgrade to Vista. It’d be best to use the Vista Upgrade Advisor to know what you’re getting yourself into first. The new Aero interface is gorgeous and is one of the big reasons I have moved over to Vista on my main system. It has it’s quirks like anything, but it is a big improvement from WindowsXP. Thus far, I’m impressed.