Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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36 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Vista is the future, but be careful of jumping on too soon, 9 Nov 2006
I've deliberately given this review a 3 star rating based on my experience of the Release Candidates as an official MS Beta Tester (no one has a full retail copy yet).
One thing I would point out at the very beginning is that you should be very careful with reviews of this product simply because there are a number of people who are profoundly unable to put aside their rabid anti-Microsoft hatred to give an impartial review (see above for a prime example from a Linux zealot). As such you should take all "end user" reviews (including this one with a liberal pinch of salt).
Right now I would say that Vista is more of an investment for the future than a "must have upgrade". Since Windows XP/2000 is the dominant platform it will continue to be for some time (at least 6 months I'd wager) before Vista because mainstream.
As far as gaming goes it is widely known that DirectX 10 (Microsofts device standardisation platform) will ONLY work on Vista. This means two things - graphics cards that are DX10 compliant (the cutting edge ones will be soon) will ONLY show benefits on Vista, and games that use DX10 features will ONLY show these features when running on Vista. Is this enough reason to upgrade from XP/2000 now? Probably not, at least not until a few months after the January release. Crysis, which was billed as one of the games that will exploit DX10, has already been pushed back to the middle of 2007.
It is also worth bearing in mind that as of now whilst driver support is getting better every day there are still a number of devices with "limited support". ATI Crossfire and Nvidia SLI is - at time of writing - unsupported, and you may find that older hardware has no support at all. It would be highly advisable to check to see what driver support is available for hardware you already have installed or intend to purchase BEFORE buying Vista.
The "crazy hardware requirements" that are often billed by nay-sayers only really pertain to using the full "Aero" interface in Vista. Vista scales automatically according to the hardware you have in your system and in my experience worked just as effectively on a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz PC with a lowly FX5200 graphics card as it did on my home PC, which is considerably higher spec.
It is true that the default install of the *Release Candidate* of Vista will use around 10GB of space. This is a completely default and unoptimised install, and in any case 10GB is a trivial amount of hard disk space in most PCs, despite what anyone else may suggest.
The above said and done Vista is definitely a forward-looking progression of the Windows platform and is pleasing to use. Since Microsoft is the dominant desktop software provider it is arguably a "safe" purchase from an investment and support point-of-view. Right now however, and I suspect straight after the January launch, there is little to recommend it as an upgrade over XP/2000.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Vista, 30 Nov 2006
I have received vista candidate 1, i had a play round with it and i can say it appears to be a nice OS.
The interface is again different to that of windows xp, you can change it back to the 98 interface, but i would try and make an effort to learn the areo interface.
The new user settings and methods of security are a nice addition, but may require a higher level of technical knowledge to understand and use correctly.
Microsoft have added a sidebar feature, with the ability to add gadgets. These have many different functions like clocks, alarms and games.
I am a little concerned about the compatibility issues, the tests i did on the OS were ok, like driver install for all my hardware. But i don't know how some other software will deal with Direct x10.
As i have only previewed the ultimate ( rc1 edition) all my opinion can be based upon is that.
I personally would recommend the operating system, but i would still wait for a few months after release to allow Microsoft some time to fix unseen bugs that may arise.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
It will be excellent but it isn't yet, 30 Nov 2006
I completely agree with the other reviewers who advocate a wait a while approach to Vista. There are many many things about the new system that are wonderful but - if the pre-release versions are anything to go by - there are also many things that need sorting.
To take one example, the new Windows Explorer interface, toolbars and animations are incredibly annoying and unwieldy. Things that are easy using XP - like invert selection for example - are a nightmare in Vista because you are bombarded with semi-transparent, hysterical toolbars that all seem to offer you something other than the thing you want. My Documents has also been fractured and tweaked for no apparent reason.
The whole software, as other reviewers have said, is also very demanding on systems. I hate reviewers who shove in a load of details about how well-endowed their PC is so I'll just say that my computer is reasonably powerful and DID run Vista well but going back to XP made everything seem to whizz.
So, to sum up, I really advise waiting. Of course there's a certain satisfaction and sense of kudos in having the latest thing - I was sad enough to buy XP on the day it came out - but I think that those feelings will, in quite a short space of time, be replaced by building frustration and annoyance.
I suppose, in the end, the thing to remember is that - really - there isn't actually anything that wrong with XP.
Apart from the fact that it doesn't make new billions for Microsoft.
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