Vista Plunge
Well over my reading week I decided to make the transition to Windows Vista. I had recently been running Ubuntu Edgy exclusively on my desktop, but decided that I wanted to see what Vista was all about. I picked up a copy of Home Premium (Legally!), and installed it on my box. I must say that I was very impressed with the changes to the Windows Installer. The image based install went smoothly and I was up and running in just over 30 minutes.
Once Vista booted everything just worked, I didnt’ need to download any drivers everything was done for me, which was a pleasant change from what I remember installing when I last installed Windows XP. Although Vista doesn’t have any services packs yet I think this will eventually change but we will see.
I was concerned about how my box would handle Vista, my computer is by no means old, but at the same time it’s definitely not bleeding edge. Currently I am running 1.86gz Centrino Processor with 1gb of PC3200 Ram, and an 80gb Sata Drive with a 120gb IDE storage drive, and I have an AGP 6600GT Nvidia Video card. Vista actually runs quite nicely on this setup. The overal experience seems very “snappy” everything opens quickly, and my memory usage is usually between 500-750mbs of my overall 1gb. I did however make the upgrade to 2gb recently just to give myself that extra “room” just incase.
Overall I really do enjoy the UI changes that have been made, and with the system in general. The search improvements are a blessing, and it’s nice to just type what I’m looking for in any window and have it just come up. Overall the Vista Eye Candy is nice, but is by no means as good as Beryl in Linux, however I do find that it is a lot more stable.
I really enjoy the integration of windows media player and the improvements they have made to it. I was always a fan of windows media player when I used windows. I liked it’s small memory footprint, library folder watching, the only thing I didn’t ever really like was the UI and they have definitely improved in that department.
All things considered if would definitely recommend anyone who is still running windows xp to go out and make the switch. I find that Vista has given me a reason to enjoy windows again, for now, but that definitely does not mean I spend a lot of time in it. I still use Linux as my main OS and would say I’m in that at least 85% of the time.
So yeah I guess that’s my pseudo review of Vista. I hope it helps some people make the decision to make the switch.
I almost forgot here’s a screenshot 
