Print | posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 6:36 PM
At last Windows Vista is here! I don't know how many pre-release builds of this I've run, but I do know it's been alot. I've wanted the overall Vista experience for about a year - when it started fullfilling it's promise - and it's been a painful wait. This isn't a critisism of the "delay" muted often elsewhere, just frustration with not being able to take advantage of all the cool new stuff.
So I slapped the upgrade on my brand new VAIO Ultra Portable, which had a default Sony install of XP and 1Gb RAM. Before installing I removed the tons of bloat and evals Sony thinks is a good idea to install. Did the upgrade, took about an hour and half to complete - and it's all looking pretty nice - Areo no problem. Better yet is all the Sony functions/buttons work, with the exception of the fingerprint reader. Not sure if it would be a smooth doing a fresh install as Sony can't get together and ship drivers for another month or so. Will leave this machine as is and see how it goes.
Next up was my main machine - which was just begging to be blatted. It really needed the format for sure. This box is a FX53 with 256mb graphics and 3.6G useable RAM - a bit of a monster. Was able to load up my RAID controller drivers from USB stick - apparantly this worked under SP2, but I could never get it to work, so my floppy is now removed at last!
Blew away the previous install using the disk tools and started the install - this took only 30 minutes. Nice! Not that I'm planning any more "DR scenario procedures" in the near future :)
Vista baby!
It's very nice, very quick and has new sounds. Got the beta Digital Persona and Wireless Desktop drivers off Connect and they went on no problems, only Digital Persona needed a re-boot. Next up was the Nvidia drivers and another restart. Put Office 2007 on as well and am now playing around with the config. OneCare beta also on along with Deamon Tools (Nero not working on Vista yet).
Somewhat a shame that PowerShell ain't out for Vista yet.
But this is what I wanted. All the bits. No having to buy AV - that's rubbish - paying extra - do you have to buy a seat belt from someone else when you buy a car? No.
Loving the new interface for Search (awesome and quick) and Media (very nice) although had to fiddle with the folders under my User folder - there should be an easier way to manage this.
It's a shame that various "low level" programs still won't work with Vista, but in some respects this is a good thing - as the built in stuff works which means no need to get/buy additional tools for stuff like burning dvds. Might need to go back to those but will give it a try for a while at least.
Performance on this box is massive - much better than XP and the UI stunning on the 24" widescreen. Had a few lock ups in IE however the new "restart app" experience is nice.
Enjoying Vista so far - more soon.