...nah. Just a few random thoughts and opinions. There are plenty of well-crafted reviews of Vista RC1 out there for those who are interested. I'm just aiming to share my initial impressions from working with it for a couple of days on my Alienware Sentia notebook (1.8 GHz Pentium M, 1 GB RAM, 60 GB 7200 RPM hard drive, Intel Extreme Graphics 2).
I make my living as a Windows developer, so it's important for me to keep an eye on what's coming down the pike. I begin taking Microsoft development tools seriously when they reach the beta 2 stage. I take thier operating systems seriously when they reach release candidate 1. I base this rule of thumb on my own historical experiences with these product lines. Prior to reaching these milestones, Microsoft products have often been too unstable for critical evaluation. Once this threshold is achieved it's time to begin beating on them.
I was fully expecting to not like Vista. Everything that I cared about as a developer was either removed from Vista or targeted for retrofitting to XP. WinFS, the object-oriented file system (actually a layer atop NTFS), was dropped early on. WinFX, which has since been recast as .Net 3.0, Windows Presentation Foundation, XAML, Windows Communication Foundation, etc., will be just as much a part of Windows XP as it is of Vista. I was concerned about Vista's use of a 3-D drawing surface for the desktop, since that can cost serious CPU cycles if your graphics card isn't up to snuff. Not being a gamer, my graphics capabilities often lag behind the cutting edge.
Vista was a pleasure to install. It requires very little information and completes quickly. It found all my hardware and even set up my oddball 1280x800 resolution screen properly. Apparently my GPU wasn't up to Aero's requirements, so I didn't get to play with Vista's cool transparency features or its 3-D task switcher. That's OK, 'cause I turn off all the graphical glitz anyway. I need my machines to compile code quickly more than I need pizazz. I expected that disabling the glitz in Vista would be more difficult that it is in XP, but I found it was easier. Similarly, I assumed that Vista would wrap the traditional tools and familiar configuration dialogs in many layers of 'friendliness'. To my delight I discovered that Vista's 'grandma-friendly' UI was only a thin facade sitting atop the tools I've worked with for so long.
I like the Mac/Linux-style confirmation dialogs which stand guard over system-level changes and I especially like having to just click 'OK' rather than having to enter a root password. After all, I _am_ logged in as a member of the Administrators group. Jumping through more hoops might be appropriate for server administration, but it's a pain in the butt when you just want to change something on your single-user desktop machine.
I still don't know if I really care that much about Vista. I need to better understand how well Microsoft is talking to me with this release. I don't need help with multimedia or computer security and those features seem to be Vista's primary focus. I suspect that it will be a lesser feature or three that drives me to Vista once it's officially out. That and my need to be running the latest and greatest. :-)
Comments