Clete’s Blog

Hey everyone! I am on Vista right now. I’ll post my opinion on it at the bottom, but without further delay, pictures!

Did I mention that you can also view live video in a view such as the one above?

Click on them to enlarge them. Now, I know that I am a Microsoft hater and a Linux fan, but I am going to give my unbiased opinion. It’s short:

1) Looks pretty, but if you want pseudo-3D effects, XGL with beryl (formerly compiz-quinnstorm) is better. Aero does the basic effects that anyone would enjoy. XGL+beryl is excessive for some, but is highly customizable.

2) Uses a lot of RAM. The Linux kernel is designed to keep files in RAM even if you close the program, but it drops them immediately when space is needed, so RAM usage is always high, but that is different. Vista runs my games just as well as XP did, but uses a lot of RAM. Do they do the same thing now? I doubt it, because I close something and it removes the RAM that was allocated. Not a big deal for me, as my games run the same as XP.
3) A little buggy. It crashes about as much as Windows 98 did for me. Maybe slightly less, but it is still in Release Candidate stage. Microsoft told us that RC1 would go final and now that RC2 will do the same, but I think there will be at least one or two more.

4) They added a feature to stop the annoying security center popups! That made me really happy. I don’t use virus protection or a firewall. I generally scan using an online scanner. I never come up with anything either. I backup often.

5) They added User Account Control, which asks you every time you change something critical in the system or do anything potentially hazardous. (e.g. open an executable or install a program) It’s a good feature in theory, but very annoying when installing things.

Also, my bet is that something like the blaster worm will be released in mass that will effect people using a beta version of Vista (I hear it’s active until June 1, 2007), forcing users to upgrade. I don’t plan on buying Vista until games are Vista-only. I won’t rant about that now; I’ll save that for another time. Bye for now!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 8th, 2006 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.