Windows Vista - It Doesn't Entirely Suck

I did my first test-install of Windows Vista the other day. I managed to get early access to the RTM bits via Microsoft's MSDN network.

The install went perfectly. I'm guessing the install took about 30 minutes which is similar to an XP install. Additionally, an XP installation requires about another hour and a half to download and install all the patches. Vista doesn't have this problem yet, but probably will soon.

It didn't seem to ask a lot of questions - but that probably makes sense. Power users will figure out how to tweak things to their liking after the fact.

One complaint was that the disk partitioning interface wasn't super intuitive - but was too easy in one respect.

Prior versions of Windows forced the user to hit a funny key, like "L" before formatting their drive. Now users just get warned about losing their data and then asked, "are you sure?" Also annoyingly it doesn't give any indication of progress during the formatting process, or even a message when formatting is complete.

I can understand Microsoft wanting to make the process simpler, but I think it might be too easy now.

This install of Windows Vista was for my "other job." I'm dying to find out if the SpamButcher can in fact filter spam running under it - but that'll have to wait until I can allocate a test box in SpamButcher labs. My main concern is if any of the built-in firewall / anti-spyware software tries to keep the application from doing its job.

The main test / build system is certainly staying with Windows XP for now. It may be several years until Vista composes the majority of installed systems.

Windows Vista also includes the "Windows Mail" application. Apparently it has some kind of built-in spam control software functionality. I'm looking forward to comparing it with SpamButcher. Of course, the concern being that an application shipping free with the operating system potentially provides some pretty stiff competition. I've had trouble finding reviews, but from what the few I've found say, it doesn't sound that effective (which is just fine by me).

The new interface is surprisingly, well, new.

From early reports I was concerned Microsoft was just going to re-hash the same interface that it's been tweaking since 1994. It has kept a lot of the basics, but some key things have changed.

The Start Menu now includes a built-in search tool to help locate applications. If you click the Start Menu (or hit the Windows Key) and start typing the name of an application, it will automatically provide you with a list of possible matches. Typing "Excel" and then the enter key will launch Excel.

In a lot of ways this is a throw-back to the command line days of MS-DOS. Remember when you'd launch Word Perfect by typing "WP" at the C:\> prompt? Well - it's almost like that again.

The new shell generally looks quite nice. Very "Macintosh" - but this makes sense. Mac's have gotten operating system updates roughly every 18 months for the last 4 years. Windows hasn't been refreshed in about 5 years.

Many aspects of the interface have been "flattened." For instance, bringing up display properties just shows you the properties for the actual display, such as resolution. You don't get presented with a dialog of endless "tabs" with the option your looking for buried on the fifth one.

Even though the machine I'm testing on is a brand-new Dell with 2GB of RAM, some eye-candy seems to be disabled. The Mac-style super-slick task-switching with 3D Windows seems to be missing. I'm not sure what specific "Aero" features are disabled, but I get the impression many aren't working.

The problem seems to be the standard on-board video card is lacking the memory and processing power to enable them. Most productivity-oriented systems are configured like this, so users will be missing out on a bit of the Vista experience. Look for computer manufactures to upgrade onboard video cards shortly.

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