This post would be titled differently, but I’m not allowed to say the V word, so it’s just Windows Impressions.

I decided to give my gaming rig a reformat this weekend, and thought as an experiment (and because I don’t use it much) I’d make use of the MDNAA software available to me through my university and install a fresh copy of Windows Vista (I cannot be bothered to avoid the V word) Business 64-bit, which is perfectly capable of being Vista, it just doesn’t contain some of the fun stuff such as the Media Centre, or Movie Maker, yet still comes with the Games Explorer, so is perfectly capable for being on my gaming rig.

After some initial install problems (I decided midway through setting stuff up that I wanted to use a different drive, and cloning didn’t go well, and it doesn’t seem to like installing on a logical partition) everything was working fine. I’ve been using it on and off for a few days now, so I thought I’d give my good and bad points that I’ve experienced so far:

The Good:

• Windows Update is now a piece of software, and can install optional updates through an easy to use interface. It also finds 3rd party drivers where it can – for example my onboard sound, and the nVidia graphics drivers. It did not seem to find the Nforce4 drivers at all, but they aren’t compulsory for operation. It also didn’t install the Creative X-Fi drivers, however ‘Windows Solution centre’ listed it as a solution to a problem, so that’s half way there.
• It looks so much nicer than previous version of Windows. It’s no where near as good as the consistently beautiful Mac OSX, but it’s a step in the right direction. The main thing that brings it’s looks down is the complete lack of consistency. Not only from 3rd party applications but within Windows itself. I’m writing this in Windows Live Writer, which has a sort of blue-green style gradient. Windows Live Mail also has this, but nothing else appears to – some of Vista has a similar one, but the crazy thing is it’s not exactly the same, the colours are subtly different! Plenty of applications still have grey menus, which totally do not fit. And then of course some windows (such as ‘My Computer’) have no menu at all unless you press Alt. When x5315 was over and using Vista, he repeatedly was clicking ‘cancel’ on dialog boxes, because in Mac OSX they are always a certain way round, whereas in Windows they can be in different places Thanks Chris, Windows Vista Human Interface Guidelines actually have a recommendation, and it is the reverse of Apple HIG. This is something Mac OSX has over Windows and Linux – it has good developer tools that produce very consistent looking applications, and Apple have released very thorough user interface guidelines. But overall, it’s the best looking Windows yet.
• Gaming performance is now nicely on par (if not better) than Windows XP, thanks to improved drivers and Service Pack 1. I’ve had no problem with any games – all Steam games seem happy, even Age of Empires 2 runs (and appears in the Games Explorer!)
• Hardware support seems pretty good. To give an example – I was running Skype (which by the way, drops calls all the time on Vista for me…), I plugged in my Logitech QuickCam Fusion, and within about 15 seconds it had installed it and Skype was ready to use it. Later, Windows Update informed me that there was an optional update available to install, and it was the proper drivers for the webcam. Can’t complain at that. It also already had the printer drivers for my HP DeskJet 5552. Mac OSX can also do both of these things, and XP could probably do the trickery with my webcam, but it’s nice to see Vista doing it so quickly and efficiently; no prompts necessary for my webcam.

The Bad:

• It takes up a lot of space compared to Windows XP. I’m not sure where all that space is going, but it’s a hell of a lot, probably above 10GB just for the installation.
• The afore mentioned lack of a consistent GUI style is a huge issue for me coming from OSX, I forgot just how inconsistent Windows is with it’s interfaces.
• The Network and Sharing Center annoys me. ‘Repair’-ing a network connection appears to have disappeared from existence, and the mapping system is just a gimmick, I can’t see how it would ever be useful.
• Running as unprivileged and being prompted for elevated privileges is fine, but it would be nice to have facilities available to make things easier for programs that don’t support this method of raising privileges. For example, I use OpenVPN, and the client requires elevated privileges to add network routes to the system but fails to ask for them, so I have to remember to right click on the shortcut and select ‘Run as Administrator’, I’d like the ability to set this as a shortcut property. Also, there needs to be a command line way of escalating privileges (like sudo), as far as I can tell there isn’t one, and it’s annoying to load a command prompt to do something only to be told ‘This requires elevated privileges’ and having to go back into the Start menu and choose to run cmd as administrator again. It’s like Microsoft had good intentions with UAC but needed to flesh it out a little bit more, it doesn’t surprise me that so many people turn it off. I hear that Windows 7 isn’t going to be so intrusive with prompting, which is good news (though it doesn’t bother me too much anyway).
• What is the point in having a ‘Program Files (x86)’ folder if that just means ‘anything not installed with Vista’? I installed iTunes 64-bit version and clearly there’s no way to detect that, because it still installed into ‘Program Files (x86)’, it’s just an unnecessary split. I’m being picky, but still…
• I’m not a fan of IE7, I’ve been using Google Chrome extensively and prefer it a lot to IE7. IE7 seems bloated compared to Chrome, and it’s interface also feels inconsistent.