There’s been a lot of commotion over Vista.  It’s all over the press, people are writing about it extensively, and we’ve covered it in-depth here at WinCustomize through news postings and feature evaluations by some of our developers.  Through the forums and our associated blog site, JoeUser, many of you have talked about your personal experiences with the beta and then release candidates made publicly available by Microsoft.  Well, Vista has been released to manufacturing, and is available for purchase to business customers.  Vista is now "in the wild" so to speak and people are starting to play with what is essentially Vista 1.0.  What is out now is likely to be what’s available at consumer launch in January of 2007 and likely won’t change much until Service Pack 1 comes along in a year or more.

We here at Stardock have access to the RTM build of Vista.  Today, I’m going to take some time to write up my experience with the "finished" version of Vista and talk about it from a user perspective.  I’m not a developer, and I’m not a guru on the inner workings of the Operating System or computer itself.  I’m a power user who spends a lot of time working and playing on my computer.  If you’re looking for a critique of WPF, the new driver model, or even much in-depth coverage of the new security model to Vista, look elsewhere.  This article is about Vista from the viewpoint of a power user.

The entire article spans nearly 20 pages, which is far too long to post all at once.  Instead, the larger article has been broken up into five sections, starting with this introduction, and finishing with a general wrap-up and my personal thoughts on Vista after spending a week writing this series.  The articles will be posted every Tuesday starting this week and going until Vista hits consumer release at the end of January.

1.  Installation

We don’t have any DVDs burned at the moment, so I’ve put the RTM build from MSDN on an external hard drive and connected it to my secondary test machine.  This is the box I’ll be evaluating Windows Vista on:

Intel Pentium 4HT 3.0GHz
1GB RAM
X600 Video Card
On-board sound
75GB HDD

It has a "Score" of 3.6 according to the Vista Ratings tool built into the OS.  My averages were actually closer to 4, but the score isn’t an average.  Instead it’s the lowest overall score your computer achieves.  My lowest was a 3.6 on the Gaming graphics area.  Not a surprise considering I’m running with an X600 ATI card.  This means I can run glass without any trouble.  Not sure how it will work with games though.

The Installation process itself was pretty painless, all I had to do was set my installation type (upgrade versus custom/new) and let it go.  I told it a few things like what time of day it was, and what wallpaper I wanted, and I was off and running.    The new image-based install system speeds things up substantially.

Starting up a PC with Windows Vista seems like it’s considerably faster.  I was to the logon screen only a few seconds after my monitor had warmed up enough to display an image.  This blinding speed however is instantly lost when you actually go to login.  It launches into a "Preparing Your Desktop" window that churns for a while as the rest of the OS is loaded.

Once I made it to the desktop I was greeted by the now familiar Windows Welcome Center.

First things first, I wanted to see what exactly came in Windows Vista Ultimate, and why I might possibly want to buy this for home use later on.  So I go and click on it and I’m presented with an immediate Windows Update.  Turns out it wants me to get the latest Windows Defender definitions and apply sound drivers (the only hardware install didn’t auto-detect).  And I’m greeted with the first of what I assume are many UAC (User Access Control)  pop-ups asking me if I’m REALLY sure I want to apply the updates.

At this point I received some error.  I’m curious as to what this error is about, since I’m doing what the OS told me to do, so I click on the "details" button to get more information.  The message I received was complete gobbledygook, so it’s nice to see Microsoft is keeping the long-standing tradition of useless error codes and dialog messages alive and kicking.

3.  Exploring the features of Vista Ultimate!

Patches applied, I dig again into the advantages of Vista Ultimate.  It talks about cutting-edge programs, innovative services and unique publications that I won’t be able to live without.  Well, maybe I can’t live without it… lets download some!

Whoops, nothing new for Vista Ultimate just yet.  I kind of expected this since the consumer release, what Ultimate is targeted at, isn’t for another month.  But I’m still a little disappointed as I was hoping to have a more complete evaluation of Ultimate.  Even the link to learn more about the services and publications doesn’t go anywhere aside from the currently unhelpful Windows Vista website.

So what else do I get for using Ultimate?  Well, there’s Windows Media Center.  Now, I don’t have a tuner card on this machine, so I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be able to do with this just yet.  Immediately on opening Media Center it asked me if I wanted to run setup, I just let it do its express setup thing, since I don’t have any media on the box I could control with it.  Funny thing is several coworkers who are running Windows Media Player 11 were treated with a message asking if they wanted to share their media with my Vista machine.  What’s odd is my XP box running WMP11 received no such message.  Seems kind of arbitrary.

Windows Media Player is another area where it looks like there are placeholders for services that just aren’t available yet.  Specifically in the "Online Media" tab which looks like it’s set to become a storefront and distribution channel for purchased TV shows, movies, music and games through the Live Marketplace.  It’s all empty at the moment though.  This is where you’ll hook up an Xbox or Xbox 360 to use your PC as a digital broadcast box for your home entertainment center.  If I had a 360 in the office, I would test this feature out, but alas I don’t.

Overall, Media Center doesn’t have much for me to play with until I load it on a PC with my media collection.

Vista overall is all about the integration between the Operating System and the Windows Live offerings, an attempt to retake the online services market by Microsoft.  From Windows I can get Windows Live Search, OneCare, Live Marketplace, as well as Live Messenger, Windows Meeting Space etc.

Funny thing though, components as basic as Live Messenger (the heir to MSN Messenger) are not included with the OS and you’re provided with a link in the start menu to download the application.

Come back next week as we begin our journey into the OS itself and begin using it, kicking the tires and peeking under the hood.  We'll talk about the new Start Menu, Aero and the Sidebar gadgets.