{"id":105,"date":"2007-01-23T14:55:38","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T19:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/2007\/01\/vista-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly\/"},"modified":"2019-01-28T19:56:08","modified_gmt":"2019-01-28T09:56:08","slug":"vista-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/2007\/01\/vista-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly\/","title":{"rendered":"Vista &#8211; the good, the bad and the ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone else has their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/vista\">Vista<\/a> reviews up, figured it was time to put mine up seeing I get all worked up when I read some of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2158037\">junk<\/a>\u00a0that is out there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>DirectX 10.\u00a0 <span class=\"postbody\">Nothing is going to truly use it for a while though and you need a GF8800 to take advantage of it right now.\u00a0 Eventually, it will be the only version of DX worth writing to though.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Aero interface. I don&#8217;t care if it uses more resources, it&#8217;s pretty and smooth.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">New streamlined graphics driver model. Allows multiple applications to make efficient use of the graphics card capabilities at the same time.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Search engine. Like Google Desktop&#8217;s search, but much better integrated into the shell &#8211; there&#8217;s search boxes everywhere that are practically instantaneous to use. I particularly like the search on the start menu &#8211; no more browsing through start menu folders \u2013 just type the first few letters and hit \u2018Enter\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">ReadyBoost. Moves disk cache to USB memory sticks and aggressively prefetches common applications and files. Questionable benefit for gaming, but superb for office and development work.\u00a0 By the way \u2013 most reviewers write this up as \u201cproviding extra memory\u201d.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 It\u2019s disk cache only.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Reworked memory manager. Theoretically better, especially on multi-core and multi-cpu systems. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Reworked kernel and base system for more multicore efficiency. Again, theoretically better. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Sidebar. Gimmick really, but I do like the weather there, especially the weather in Brisbane, Australia&#8230; <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Much faster boot times. Seriously.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">More secure, especially if you can put up with the message box popping up every time you want to do something to the system that might lead to insecurity. Similarly, IE runs in a mode where it has no access to your system so malware can&#8217;t get to it (again, theoretically). <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Virtualized sound drivers. This gives you an individual volume control for each application. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">User mode USB and audio drivers. Bad USB drivers now only crash themselves, not the whole system.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Networking improvements, especially for laptops. System recognizes your network and adjusts security accordingly (Home, Work, Public etc.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Improved power management. All systems sleep by default now, laptop battery use is improved, system doesn&#8217;t wait for bad apps when trying to sleep the same way XP does.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Theoretically equivalent 64 and 32 bit versions, though this is not really different from XP&#8217;s 32 and 64 bit versions.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Awesome new version of Minesweeper!!!!\u00a0 (My wife loves this)<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Full drive encryption if you have a Trusted Platform Module on your PC.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Previous versions of files.\u00a0 Accidentally saved or overwrote something?\u00a0 There\u2019s a good chance the old version is still there!<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Supports WebDAV over https.\u00a0 I know \u201cWeb Folders\u201d worked in XP, but you couldn\u2019t map a drive to a https URL.\u00a0 In Vista it works.\u00a0 Weirdly enough, I\u2019ve not seen Microsoft publicizing this at all.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span class=\"postbody\"><strong>The Bad<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Even more intrusive activation\/genuine advantage stuff.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Flashier UI does use more system resources (though if you want you can turn it all off). <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">64 bit versions requires all drivers to be signed (indirectly) by Microsoft. No more quick beta updates or Omega hacked drivers.\u00a0 Note that some people think this is \u201cgood\u201d because it stops users putting untested stuff on their machines.\u00a0 I disagree \u2013 it\u2019s your machine, you can crash it if you want.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">All the bugs that come with a new OS.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not fool ourselves.\u00a0 Bugs will come out for a while.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">New audio, USB and video drivers mean you have to make <em>sure<\/em> all your stuff is supported before upgrading. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">Some incompatibilities with older apps, especially when using the Aero interface. Java pre-1.6 is a prime example as it likes both turning Aero off, and annoying you every few minutes to give it permission to check for an update.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span class=\"postbody\"><strong>The Ugly<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"postbody\">DRM (digital \u201crights\u201d management, more accurately termed digital restrictions management).\u00a0 Lots of DRM.\u00a0 Incredible amounts of it that can disable your machine, steal your sports car, kill your dog and marry your grandmother.\u00a0 If you haven\u2019t already read it, read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cs.auckland.ac.nz\/~pgut001\/pubs\/vista_cost.html\">this<\/a>\u00a0for a very accurate and from what I can tell unbiased report on what the DRM junk they\u2019ve coded into Vista is all about.\u00a0 If there\u2019s anything that\u2019s going to encourage people to get ripped copies of their movies, it\u2019s the stupidity they\u2019ve put into Vista.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span class=\"postbody\"><strong>My Summary<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"postbody\">I\u2019ve been running the release version of Vista on my laptop since November\u00a0and I\u2019m quite happy with the way it\u2019s turning out.\u00a0 Some of the new stuff takes a bit to get used to but it\u2019s every bit as responsive as XP was and has only had limited incompatibilities.\u00a0 I\u2019m waiting for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.saitek.com\/\">Saitek<\/a>\u00a0to release drivers for their P2600 gamepad and X52 joystick before I think about the upgrade on my home machine, but I\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ll do it as soon as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"postbody\">What I won\u2019t be doing is using Vista for any sort of multimedia\/video applications.\u00a0 The DRM levels are just silly, and it\u2019s pretty much encouraged me to finish building my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mythtv.org\/\">MythTV<\/a> box for a free alternative to Windows.\u00a0 To echo the thoughts of one reader on the DRM link above, I won\u2019t be going anywhere near a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive until I can either rip movies to disk and play them how <em>I<\/em> want, or HD-DVD\/Blu-Ray are the minimum you can.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyone else has their Vista reviews up, figured it was time to put mine up seeing I get all worked up when I read some of the junk\u00a0that is out there. The Good DirectX 10.\u00a0 Nothing is going to truly use it for a while though and you need a GF8800 to take advantage of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.chase.net.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}