ThermalRunaway
New Member
I recently signed up to beta test Windows Vista, the next-generation version of Windows due to be released in early 2007. I understand that the version of Windows I'm trying is a beta2 version and therefore does have a few bugs (I've already found and reported a few), but it's pretty late into development now so I would think most of the major problems have been ironed out and that basically, the version of Windows I'm running now will be very much like the public version when it comes out with regard to functionality, features and performance.
I have to say that my first impressions of the OS are quite negative. I was hoping that Microsoft would take a long, hard look at their Operating System and finally make the decision to improve on some really poor parts of it. As a rule I'm not a huge fan of Windows, but I do feel it has a lot to offer (especially since XP) and that if only it wasn't so bloated and out-right annoying to use, it'd be a really good system. But having tried Vista over the past week, I've found that not only have they not improved on the things I don't like about Windows, but they seem to have made them worse!!!
One of the things I really hate about Windows is the long start-up and shut-down times. Unless you spend your days continuously un-doing the work of the OS and optimising the startup, you'll find that as you install more programs and more things are done during boot-time, the time taken to startup and shutdown your computer will get longer and longer and longer, until finally it becomes really annoying. I had heard that the new version of Windows would tackle this, and I had even heard that they'd made it so good that you could pretty much turn on your computer and a few seconds later the desktop would appear in all it's glory!!!
Either I heard wrong (perhaps they were talking about starting up from a sleep mode or something) or the beta2 version doesn't have that feature yet, or they've made a right pigs ear of it because even after a fresh install of Vista, with no further programs installed, it takes quite a long time to startup and shutdown. God knows what it'll be like after I've installed all my stuff!!! I'd go as far as to say that the startup time seems to be even longer in Vista than it is now on XP (these are first impressions of course).
One of my other real bug-bears with Windows is the sheer size of the thing. It's so ridiculously bloated that even simple tasks can grind to a halt if other things are going on in the background. My computer isn't the fastest in the world, but it's certainly no slouch and yet the performance can be made to look pretty bad if you start asking XP to do multiple things at a time. Certainly, compared to a good Operating System (and a good OS should never be bloated), I think it's fair to say XP performs quite badly in this respect.
Guess what? Vista seems to be even WORSE!!! All the windows are animated and there's all kinds of swirly patterns and things going on in the background, and even the progress bar for file tasks has a kind of star-trek style animation going on with it. Of course you can turn all of that off, which I have done, but it's still noticeably less responsive than XP was. And bloat, you've never seen anything like it. After a fresh install, Vista had consumed 15GB of my HD. I understand that 15GB is not very much when compared to the Hard Drives currently available on the market, but still the whole OS feels very bloated and claustrophobic so I'm not really too impressed in this area either. Infact, if this is how the end-user version is going to turn out I think I'll probably end up sticking with XP.
Call me paranoid, but Vista wouldn't let me install Firefox - it responded with a complaint that it couldn't complete the operation because of an unknown error. Is this on purpose?!?!?!
Let's hope that Vista Beta2 still has a few problems and a few features not implemented that will improve on the performance. Otherwise we'll all have to upgrade our machines again, and mine's not even a year old!!!
Brian
I have to say that my first impressions of the OS are quite negative. I was hoping that Microsoft would take a long, hard look at their Operating System and finally make the decision to improve on some really poor parts of it. As a rule I'm not a huge fan of Windows, but I do feel it has a lot to offer (especially since XP) and that if only it wasn't so bloated and out-right annoying to use, it'd be a really good system. But having tried Vista over the past week, I've found that not only have they not improved on the things I don't like about Windows, but they seem to have made them worse!!!
One of the things I really hate about Windows is the long start-up and shut-down times. Unless you spend your days continuously un-doing the work of the OS and optimising the startup, you'll find that as you install more programs and more things are done during boot-time, the time taken to startup and shutdown your computer will get longer and longer and longer, until finally it becomes really annoying. I had heard that the new version of Windows would tackle this, and I had even heard that they'd made it so good that you could pretty much turn on your computer and a few seconds later the desktop would appear in all it's glory!!!
Either I heard wrong (perhaps they were talking about starting up from a sleep mode or something) or the beta2 version doesn't have that feature yet, or they've made a right pigs ear of it because even after a fresh install of Vista, with no further programs installed, it takes quite a long time to startup and shutdown. God knows what it'll be like after I've installed all my stuff!!! I'd go as far as to say that the startup time seems to be even longer in Vista than it is now on XP (these are first impressions of course).
One of my other real bug-bears with Windows is the sheer size of the thing. It's so ridiculously bloated that even simple tasks can grind to a halt if other things are going on in the background. My computer isn't the fastest in the world, but it's certainly no slouch and yet the performance can be made to look pretty bad if you start asking XP to do multiple things at a time. Certainly, compared to a good Operating System (and a good OS should never be bloated), I think it's fair to say XP performs quite badly in this respect.
Guess what? Vista seems to be even WORSE!!! All the windows are animated and there's all kinds of swirly patterns and things going on in the background, and even the progress bar for file tasks has a kind of star-trek style animation going on with it. Of course you can turn all of that off, which I have done, but it's still noticeably less responsive than XP was. And bloat, you've never seen anything like it. After a fresh install, Vista had consumed 15GB of my HD. I understand that 15GB is not very much when compared to the Hard Drives currently available on the market, but still the whole OS feels very bloated and claustrophobic so I'm not really too impressed in this area either. Infact, if this is how the end-user version is going to turn out I think I'll probably end up sticking with XP.
Call me paranoid, but Vista wouldn't let me install Firefox - it responded with a complaint that it couldn't complete the operation because of an unknown error. Is this on purpose?!?!?!
Let's hope that Vista Beta2 still has a few problems and a few features not implemented that will improve on the performance. Otherwise we'll all have to upgrade our machines again, and mine's not even a year old!!!
Brian