And so I downloaded VISTA for the sake of testing. Nice OS. Aside from the fact that MS has (once again) stolen ideas from different OSes (especially Linux this time) it looks really sweet. Reminds me of UBUNTU or SUSE. Anyways, I booted it up, no serial as I wanted to test it before buying, don't want to waste US$400 on a piece of crap software. And lo - it's a good thing I didn't buy it.

First off - it comes with IE7 stock, and DirectX 10. Nice next-gen stuff. The visuals are sweet, hard to customize though, and if you've used Linux before the interface isn't had to get used to. The letdowns? If you're a gamer you're going to hate it. DirectX 10 doesn't seem to be backwards compatible, and therefore all DirectX 9 apps wont run.

Aside from that, the OS seems more stable than XP, and it has a whopping 15GB requirement to be installed. I checked it myself when done - 14.6GB of space after a clean install. It took all of 14.6GB. What now when I install OFFICE and other apps?

Visuals look nice, the progress bars and icons are so Linux like - and then the whole functionality of "ask before doing" reminds me of Linux. Then there's the video drivers. Found drivers for most of the stuff in my machine. Most. I installed the Vista drivers for my nVidia card, and even before installing those I could play Counter Strike: Source online. After installing the latest drivers, there was little difference...........oh yea, where's my network card?

Fortunately, my wireless card was ok, but my network card was "not compatible" and therefore did not even show up in the control pannel as a non-functional device. My wireless card now, I had to force-install the drivers, then reboot in order for it to recognize.

Seeing the order of things I decided to try playing one of the older games I have - Yuri's Revenge. And LO! It wouldn't start. I even tried running the game in "compatablity mode" with no success. Oh yea, it has a "XP SP2 Compatability Mode" for those apps that can't run well on Vista.

My conclusion? Vista is for people who don't plan to play any games, or are planning on getting really high-end hardware for upcoming games that require DX10. If you want an OS that's pretty and reminds you of Linux, then by all means get it. Maybe when they've ironed out the bugs and made the OS backward compatable I'll consider buying it. Laterz.

PeAcE.

P.S. - I forgot to mention that shortly after the official release, there's been tons of security issues with the OS, including the ease of cracking it - which really entails nothing more than setting forward the date in your BIOS before installing and setting it to the right date after. Sheesh. MS and their thievery, and they didn't even do a good job.

PeAcE (Again).

I downloaded it from when, but cant install on a machine with less than 512mb. Not using my laptop as the testing machine either :eusa_snoo

All of these problems except the security ones are expected and stated by many sources, it will take a while for the gaming side of things to pick up on vista because of the directX 9-10 transition, I expect big things to start happening within months after it's official worlwide release date on January 30th and have my eyes on 2 games so far thats takes advantage of vista's features in Supreme Commander and Crysis.

So I say wait a bit and get the expected updates and fixes that will soon follow and if nothing starts happening in a year start bashing the software. I will be buying my license and testing it out properly in Feb.

haha.. good review @khat.. i might put that on the home page.. secondly i too installed vista for a few days and i gotta say good work on the visual.. and its got more of a beastly vibe under the hood now (powerful os now).. but i'm a die hard linux man apparently and i felt out of place so i had to switch back. everything worked for me though. i installed it on a dou core processor dell 6400 notebook with 1 gig mem and 128mb ati xpress vid card.
one thing that had me with vista is that it picked up every single device for ma notebook i had to install zero drivers and being the lazy dood i have become when it comes to formatting and setitng up a notebook i was very grateful for that. i think vista comes with roughly 1 gig of drivers, which i assume is a shitload of device drivers cuase drivers normally tiny.

Mostly it looks like UBUNTU/FEDORA/SUSE. The AREO or whatever they call it is OS-X. MS is a smart criminal. It's the truth. Anyways, I'll stay disappointed till the PC world makes it mandatory to have VISTA for apps/games to run.

Forgot to mention - it doesn't like disk management software. Told me straight up thet PQDI7 would not work (Power Quest Drive Image 7) so that couldn't be installed. Heard from a friend that it doesn't work with ALCOHOL120%, so I'd have to buy POWERISO in order to use an imaging program. *blech* When they iron it out, and maybe costs a lot less, I'll look into it.

UBUNTU (Linux in general) - the elements like the color schemes and icons, the gradient effects, the double-color efects.

SUSE - Themes for the user environment (theming the user environ)

FEDORA - Prompting for changing certain resources or installations etc. Though this is a general Linux feature it's seen more in FEDORA.

OS-X - AREO and icon animations

*edit*

And some interesting watching material!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QT6YO30GhmQ&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rQW7zDVOmis&mode=related&search=

http://youtube.com/watch?v=3QdGt3ix2CQ&mode=related&search=

PeAcE.

Personally, I'm not a big fan Linux, so I could care less if its being ripped off or w/e. I've experienced Vista somewhat and the GUI has contented my appeal, so far the features are pretty useful (even if it may be rip-offs from other OS's). Futhermore, Windows Vista is the name of the latest release of Microsoft Windows, a line of proprietary graphical operating systems used on personal computers, including home and business desktops, notebook computers, and media centers. Prior to its announcement on July 22, 2005, Vista was known by its codename "Longhorn" (what kind of code name is that? (lol) ). On November 8, 2006, Windows Vista development was completed and is now in the release to manufacturing stage. Some editions were available to volume license customers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers through November 2006. Microsoft has stated that the scheduled release date for worldwide availability is January 30, 2007. These release dates come more than five years after the release of its predecessor, Windows XP, making it the longest time span between major releases of Windows.

According to Microsoft, Windows Vista contains hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network using peer-to-peer technology, making it easier to share files and digital media between computers and devices (so Khat don't worry about your network dilemma yet). For developers, Vista introduces version 3.0 of the .NET Framework, which aims to make it significantly easier for developers to write high-quality applications than with the traditional Windows API (Application Programming Interfaces).

Microsoft's primary stated objective with Vista, however, has been to improve the state of security in the Windows operating system. One of the most common criticisms of Windows XP and its predecessors has been their commonly exploited security vulnerabilities and overall susceptibility to malware, viruses and buffer overflows. In light of this, then Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced in early 2002 a company-wide 'Trustworthy Computing initiative' which aims to incorporate security work into every aspect of software development at the company. Microsoft claimed that it prioritized improving the security of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 above finishing Windows Vista, significantly delaying its completion.

During the course of its development, Vista has been the target of a number of negative assessments by various groups. Criticism of Windows Vista has included protracted development time, more restrictive licensing terms, the inclusion of a number of new Digital Rights Management technologies aimed at restricting the copying of protected digital media, and the usability of new features such as User Account Control.



@Khat lovely review.

@DK - drivers like crazy uh?. lmao. :D

my god. your a wikipedia-er aren't you. with little linkin injections here and there. haha.

@ khat. yeh i wouldn't say fedora definatly an overal linux thing. vista not that bad though i guess to get better you gotta mimic your oppenents who are better than you.. cause though windows is the most popular they definatly aren't the best in the os market osx have that lock for ease of use and power beneath the prettiness u zimmi. however maybe windows will be able to make a name for its self because i think there was also talk of a windows shell being made so there can be similarly to mac and linux shell scripting for the sys admins who aren't afriad of the terminal.

i using vista right now..evaluation version, and i not having ne problems with it. runs good and thing.

State which apps and such and what you're playing on it, so we can know what to expect with it.

PeAcE.

when you try playing video games then you'll understand. I'm not much of a gamer so it doesn't affect me "pc games that is". but some friends had to rever to xp immediately because of that. khat explained earlier about the new direct x requirment. vista means for the rich people. :rofl

I think you more mean for the "computer user" people. Those who go in, use MS-Office, check e-mail, and that's it.

PeAcE.

well at this time the only game i still play is WarCraft and that works fine.
i mainly use Visual Studio 2005, Macromedia Studio 8, SQL server 2000..other than that its standard stuff, browse the net, music, videos, microsoft office, and some accounting packages.