FIRST things first: unlike some bloggers in the United States, I did not get a free, high-powered notebook computer from Microsoft so I could try out and write about Windows Vista. At my request and before the brouhaha over the freebies, they did lend me a notebook so I could get a preview of their new operating system ahead of its release to consumers at the end of January.
The notebook, a Compaq Presario V3000, used an Intel Core 2 processor running at 1.66 gigahertz (GHz). To make sure Vista had the room it needed to run well, Microsoft boosted on-board memory to 1 gigabyte (GB). The version of the operating system installed is called Windows Vista Ultimate, which has all the features you'll need for home and office use.
To get an idea of what Vista is like, I used the notebook as I normally would in both environments.
Any copys:
Compared to Windows XP, Vista is pleasant to look at, thanks to its Windows Aero interface. Every window has a glassy, translucent frame and casts a soft shadow on the desktop. Images behind the glass are blurred, giving windows a frosted look. Buttons glow when the mouse pointer passes over them and progress bars fill up with a green gel reminiscent of the blue gel bars on the Mac.
The task switcher presents small preview screens of all programs running in a 3D stack that you can cycle through. The task bar, too, gives you a small preview of programs that have been minimized.
Vista's cool visual effects require a minimum of 128 megabytes of video memory on your graphics card, 1 GB of system memory and a processor running at 1 GHz. On a less powerful system, Vista will revert to a plain vanilla look called Windows Vista Basic that throws out most of the bells and whistles.
Sometimes, an incompatible program will kick you out of Aero into Vista Basic, too. Among the programs that did this during my tests were the file-sharing program LimeWire and the instant messaging application Trillian. Vista takes you back to Aero once the offending program is closed, however.
Although Microsoft says it has done a lot of testing, expect to run into compatibility problems from time to time. I had no problems installing and running a bunch of non-Microsoft applications, including Firefox, WinAmp, ObjectDock and uTorrent. But I ran into trouble when my daughters tried to run the game Sims 2.
Launching Sims 2 from the desktop shortcut led to this warning: "This program has known compatibility issues." Vista offered three choices: check for solutions online, run the program or cancel it. I ran it and Sims 2 quit with an unhelpful error message: "Unspecified error." All I could do was hit the OK button. I checked solutions online. After a minute or two, another message: "No solutions found for The Sims 2." OK.
Quite by accident, my 12-year-old discovered an awkward workaround. To get Sims 2 to run, she found, you need to insert the play disc and run the setup program when prompted. Then the program will run. Later, I found another way: right-click on the shortcut icon, open up its properties and choose to run it in XP compatibility mode and as an administrator.
Of course, to do any of this, my daughter needed an administrator--me--to type in a password, thanks to the improved security on Vista. On a computer shared by many people, those with standard accounts may not install programs or gain access to certain directories without administrator approval--a good safeguard against viruses and spyware being accidentally introduced into a system.
This feature is helpful at home, where parents may wish to set up standard accounts for their children. Parental controls--new in Vista--also allow you to easily set limits on what days and time the computer may be used and block certain Web sites. This worked fine for Internet Explorer, but blocked even unspecified sites when I tried using Firefox.
Out of the box, Vista is more multimedia-friendly than XP. Pop in an audio CD and one of the options in Windows Explorer is to rip the tracks into MP3 files. Windows Media Player will play--ahem, "budget" DVDs--without demanding you commit the drive to any particular DVD region, at least on the test machine I used. It still won't play most downloaded AVI files or automatically fetch the DivX codec you need, so you'll still need to set that up on your own.
A curious problem I encountered reminded me that it will take some time before all the kinks are worked out, even on Vista-capable machines.
After using the HP Presario V3000 notebook for a few days, the built-in Altec Lansing speakers suddenly and mysteriously fell silent. No amount of fiddling with the speaker controls and the mixer would bring it back.
A number of online forums traced the problem to the computer's high-definition audio speakers, for which no Vista driver was yet available. Microsoft suggested I use the XP drivers, but when this failed to revive the speakers, they simply sent me a replacement notebook that worked--alas, also a loaner.
Next up: Vista in the office
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