Ah Microsoft Windows, you cant live with it can’t live without it. Windows users have come to accept the quirks and randomness of a sometimes bewildering OS, but does Microsoft’s latest offering hold up to scratch? Wuup find out by testing Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit (with SP1).
The first thing you notice with Vista is the new UI (User Interface) Windows Aero tm, it is a very sleek interface and a joy to work with. It is easier to navigate folder structures thanks to the new directory bar features. It also comes bundled with fancy blur, close and open effects as well as a new 3D ‘ALT-TAB’ window switcher. However you can only use this if you have the necessary video card support.
Vista also boasts enhanced security from viruses, trojans, spyware and mallware. But still vulnerabilities are being found and exploited all the time, albeit allot lesser than XP. In my opinion less holes have been found because Vista still isn’t a big target yet, simply because big companies cannot afford to upgrade they’re infrastructure to support it, so they’re is no point for organised hacking teams to target it.
The networking has been refined from XP, it actually finds everything on you’re network including routers and gaming consoles. Even media sharing PCs (using media player 11) come up ready for you to connect to.
One of the new UI features of Vista is the Sidebar, A program which enables the user to add pre-installed or 3rd party widgets (downloadable from MS’s site) to the desktop. This is probably one of the few features I found useful, I quickly found the system monitoring tools and RSS feeds I wanted. However the sidebar does conflict with some apps trying to run. 3Dmark06 will fail to run a benchmark (something about it loosing full screen control) until you close the sidebar and some games will not launch properly unless it is closed.
Vista Ultimate 64’s compatibility is very much hit-or-miss, sometimes an old app will run fine, where as another may not even install. I have had quite a bit of this in my week and a half using Vista 64. None of my CS3 apps would start up until I installed them using the hidden ‘true’ administrator account (see tips at the bottom). Crysis blue screens on me after 10 minutes or less. However these shortcomings cannot be put squarely on Vista. It’s up to software developers to ensure they’re programs work on a 64 bit OS, and at the minute they seem unwilling to do that.
Vista is also being touted as the platform to have for gaming. In my experience I cannot go along with that. When doing some benchmarks I found a reduction of 2400 points in 3Dmark06 when compared to the same system spec on XP. The drop in performance could be blamed on the young 64 bit drivers, but do you really want to put up with less than 30fps in Crysis till they improve them?
Gaming on Vista isn’t really the experience I was expecting. If you’re hardware mad like me then you’ll try to get the best out of you’re machine no matter what. And vista even with DirectX10 doesn’t cut it. However I did manage to run the Nvidia cascades demo which uses DirectX10′s shaders to generate geometry based on textures. Which looks really cool. Also it utilises the GPU to generate particle based waterfalls which look amazing, I did not want DirectX10 to just look at an Nvidia demo.
Vista comes in several ever confusing packages, if you’re like me though you’d just go for the ultimate package just to make sure. However buying a retail box of Ultimate edition is at time of writing £180 where as an OEM version is around £110.
Final Verdict
In short Vista Ultimate 64 is pretty, but unstable unless you’re doing nothing but office work.
I achieved nothing more than my everyday tasks, even those became a stretch sometimes because Vista might throw a fit and BSOD on me. Especially CS3 was a stretch to get working, probably took 5+ hours total to fix, after looking in countless forums (solution below). Even though these problems are not necessarily Microsoft’s fault but lie in the software developers laps.
I don’t think I can recommend Vista Ultimate 64-bit to anyone who is going to use it for anything work related or for gaming. However I do think this OS will get better as the service packs keep rolling out. Every piece of software has gremlins and especially something as complex as an OS.
For now at least, this gamer is sticking with XP Pro SP3.
Vista Essential Tips
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Disable the Prefetcher The windows prefetcher loads commonly used files/data to the ram on start-up. However this can make the first 5-10 mins after startup very slow. Turning this off will also alleviate around 20% of ram or more depending on system config. Saying that if you use you’re PC all day the prefetcher would eventually learn you’re habits and only load what you use most. |
1. Click on the Start Button (Windows Orb in the bottom left. 2. Right-Click on ‘Computer’ and select ‘manage’. 3. Expand ‘Services and Applications’ and select ‘Services’. 4. Now find ‘Windows Prefetch’. 5. Right click on it and select ‘properties. 6. From the ‘startup type’ dropdown menu select ‘disabled’ and then click the ‘stop’ button. Hurray perfetching is disabled! |
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Enable main Admin account You may think you’re main account has admin control. But it doesn’t! It is only a part of the Admin user group. Some apps require that you install them through the main account (CS3) otherwise you’ll spend hours on Adobe’s forums for an obscure problem. (only do this if you know what you’re doing) |
1. Click on the Start Button (Windows Orb in the bottom left. 2. Right-Click on ‘Computer’ and select ‘manage’. 3. Expand ‘Local Users and Groups’ and select ‘Users’. 4. now right-click on the ‘Administrator’ account and select ‘properties’. 5. Uncheck the checkbox that says ‘Account is disabled’ now you should see the account enabled in the logon screen. Woohoo.
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