I signed up to try out the pre-release candidate of Windows Vista. For the most part I my primary OS is Mac OS X. I only use Windows XP to test my web work out on different browsers on that platform. I enjoy participating in beta test whether it be a web application or a desktop application. I like to see what other programmers are developing and sometimes it even sparks ideas in my own work. After using Vista for a few days now, I still think Mac OS X will continue to be my platform of choice, but I am pretty impressed with the improvements of Vista over XP. Overall I don’t think one platform will ever completely replace the other even though Windows dominates the OS market. I think there can be multiple OS platforms that give people a choice.
Since all of my PCs are pretty old, and my Macs are pretty new, I decided to use Apple’s Boot Camp on my MacBook to install Vista. I tried installing in Parallels Desktop, but the software is not compatible with Vista as of yet. The download was about 2.5GB and I burnt that image on DVD with no problems. Operating system installs take a long time to install nowadays. That’s something you live with with all the features they are packing into the releases. The installation went smoothly and for the most part Vista recognized my hardware. I had to use Apple’s Boot Camp drivers to install some hardware and some of the drivers included are not compatible with Vista.
I had to configure all my preferences and this was pretty easy to do. I had plug in a mouse because I’m lost without a Windows right click and the driver to enable a keyboard shortcut via Boot Camp did not work in Vista. After this, I switched my settings to classic mode just so I could figure out where all the settings were. It’s much easier to do thing when you know where they are, but I guess the grouping of preferences in Vista should make it easier for newbies to use.
My MacBook has a 2.0GHz Core Duo processor with 2GB of RAM and a 160GB perpendicular technology hard drive. The machine is very speedy in Mac OS X as well as the pre-release candidate of Windows Vista. I had to enable the Aero features on the machine, but I’m pretty sure the MacBook supports all the graphical effects the operating system has to offer. I have to say I am impressed with interfaces. I’ve been doing UI for the web for a long time and I can appreciate the work it takes to make things look especially nice. Windows Vista does a good job of adding cool features like this and sometimes I get the feeling that they overdid it and there’s too much 3D or animated effects. Overall using the machine with these effects is pretty cool and I like them.
Performance is pretty good. I pretty much use Windows to test web pages, but I wanted to install more on the machine so I setup email using Windows Mail, downloaded a few web browsers including Firefox, installed iTunes so I could stream music from my other machines, and installed the latest version of Trillian for instant messaging.
I figure that would be typical programs I would need for everyday use. This release is very usable. I didn’t find any problems installing applications or using them. The OS crashed a program once, but I figure that could happen at any time beta or not.
I like keeping my machines up to date. I think when the final version is released, I will purchase it for one of my Macs for testing. I like it better than Windows XP but it might just be that I like the latest and greatest and to me Windows XP feels old. If you have an extra PC and have a chance to sign up for the beta test I would give Vista a try. It’s not ready to use as a final OS yet, but I think they are pretty close.
