Well, a lot of has been said in last few months about Windows Vista. Forums on Internet are flooded with comments, both positive & Negative, about it. And it was bound to happen, because of the amount of hype that was attached with this new OS. Microsoft was touting its features everywhere possible, Radio, Television, Newspapers, you name it. For the first time, i have seen so much publicity from Microsoft.
But after it hit the market, the response was a little unexpected, at least for me (Don't know about MS guys :-)). People are shouting everywhere that its slow, buggy etc etc. There are positive feedbacks also, but they are rare.
I am one of those people who love to give every piece of technology its fare share of chance. I don't believe in criticizing pointlessly. So i decided to test it out myself on my laptop which is a bit old. Its a 1.6 GHZ Celeron with 1280 MB of ram (256MB+1GB), 40 GB HDD and a Intel 915 graphics chich (it sucks!).
I must say, my experience with it was not as bad as i thought. After downloading some drivers and installing a fe known performance updates, my laptop is rocking. the interface is clean and looks very good. The new start menu works great with integrated search. UAC (User Account Control) is a bit annoying, but i like it coz its the secure way to do things. I don't have the AERO interface on my laptop, but have it on Desktop at office. It looks amazing although i am not much fascinated by the Flip 3D effect. Taskbar thumbnails are good, if you have 2 windows with same title open, its a good way to distinguish them. Overall the interface aesthetics are pleasing, and its functional too.
The thing that surprised me was that on many forums people said that it was a memory HOG. I would like to say that using these terms is a bit ambiguous. If a software is not giving the features and performance after using more memory, then you can call it a hog. But Vista! I am sorry but it runs 10 times faster than XP, at least in my experience. For the benefit of others, i would like to explain it fully.
First of all, Vista is a new operating system and Microsoft has touted the system requirements right from the beginning. Why are people so surprised, i don't know. Its got so many features that at least software developers should understand, that it requires more memory.Secondly, Using the AERO interface is not a requirements. Its a luxury and for that you must have the hardware to enjoy it. I think people should accept the fact. Nothing comes for free in this world and the tag attached with vista is improved hardware. The Basic interface is also very functional and quiet fast also.I've been using it for a month and found no problem. I think most of the people who are having problem with Vista's performance are using low end machines and trying to run AERO on it. That won't work.Another thing that surprises me is that people count on the MBs of3memory free and say its a memory HOG. For everybody's information, Vista has a feature called SuperFetch which analyses your usage patterns over time and then preloads software into memory to give the faster experience. And all this memory used like cache is never pushed into pagefile. If a program wants more memory, like a game, it instantly free up the memory and fulfill the program's requirements. How can anyone use the term Memory HOG for that. 1 GB memory is a basic requirement for running vista, and after that there is no need to look at numbers. It manages everything. Internet Explorer and all the other programs startup so fast in vista. Even firefox runs more smoothly. The problem with file system performance has been coped up with in performance updates. I play GTA San Andreas and Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix on my laptop with a little performance boost on Vista then on XP. So in the near future, when Direct X 10 games will become mainstream, it will outperform XP for sure, no doubt along with right kind of Hardware.
So all in all, there are issues in Vista, but its certainly not a failure as an OS. Its got great features along with some glitches here and there, but hey, that's true with every piece of software.
Oh yes, no offences guys! :-)
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