Vista revisited
Posted on Thursday 13th September 2007
Now, more than 6 months after the official release, I’ve had another go. This time it’s worked much more successfully and the laptop has taken Vista without too many grumbles. Inevitably there are a few bugs that I will have to work out, but most of the functionality is available.
I know this sounds like a volte-face from my previous attitude, but I was prompted by an email from Lenovo reporting the availability of driver software for Vista.
As I stated previously Vista is much like XP. In fact many of the core modules and applications are precisely the same. In fact if you look under the hood Vista identifies itself as “xpsp3″, in other words XP Service Pack 3! The major difference is to security. The Windows firewall has been significantly beefed up and now screens outgoing traffic as well as incoming data. This is a much needed upgrade over the version available with XP. Vista also stops programs running without permission, a feature which can be annoying, but will stop any malware before it can cause problems.
The best feature of Vista is the visual richness. Window borders are now transparent and the overall appearance is very clean and sleek. The new sidebar allows placement of utilities on the screen all the time, and I like having an analogue clock rather than the standard digital one. Here is a screen-capture of what it looks like:
It sounds like the good advice would be to hold off on upgrading unless you are willing to put in a fair bit of effort. However I’d counter that for an investment of time it is worth it. The first service pack won’t be available till next year, and unlike XP’s 2nd Service Pack, won’t include major alterations to the OS. Instead Microsoft will be rolling out upgrades on a continuous basis. Remember that XP is 6 years old and Microsoft will drop support at some point in the future. It might be worth jumping before you get pushed!
Hi Ric looks the state of the art like your desktop picture