I took the plunge. I installed Windows Vista yesterday. Not as my primary OS; that would be madness. I'm dual-booting XP and Vista. For those not familiar with the term, it means that when I turn my computer on, I get a choice of which OS I want to use. I've been trying out Vista since yesterday afternoon and I must say it's really a pretty good system. Great, actually. I have no major complaints. My only issue so far was that Vista asked me to confirm almost every action. When I installed or ran a program for the first time, I had to confirm that I trusted the software. Got annoying. But it was pretty easy to disable that through Control Panel. Since then, it's been smooth sailing. I'm actually considering switching over to Vista permanently. I won't make that decision until I've been able to fully try it out and decide that I'm absolutely certain it's a good move.
The main complaint one hears about Vista is that it hogs system resources. Admittedly, I haven't been able to test that out to its fullest yet because I don't have much room on my Vista partition to install lots of software. Thus far I've only installed Firefox, Chrome, iTunes, and AIM. The basics. Plus any Windows Updates, because this copy of Vista is a little old, so it needs to be made current. At some point today I might install Photoshop or another program that requires a lot of system resources and then we'll see how Vista fares. But so far, it's actually consistently faster than my XP partition. Plus, because of the way I have things set up, I actually have access to all of the documents and files that are in my XP partition even when I'm running Vista, so I'm not really handicapping myself. The only problem is that I can't run programs off of my XP partition for use in Vista, and there isn't enough room on my hard drive to install everything in both XP and Vista. Maybe I'll try and use my external hard drive for that.
Anyway, overall I'm enjoying Vista very much. I'm inclined to agree with my good friend Shannon, a full-time Vista user and the only person I know who is totally fine with it. I'll keep you posted as things develop. Before you go, a screenshot:
(Click to Enlarge)
I know, only 1GB of RAM. It's disgraceful. But by Christmas (if not earlier) that will be expanded to my motherboard's maximum of 4GB. And it will be glorious. That's when I'll REALLY know if Vista is worth my time. If I like it enough with 4GB of RAM, I might start uninstalling stuff from my XP partition and switch to Vista as my primary OS.
Incidentally, I'm really excited for Windows 7, the next OS from Microsoft. That's set to drop in late 2009 or early 2010. Beta versions have leaked onto BitTorrent and I am more than a little tempted to try them out. The trick is finding a legitimate version that WON'T turn out to be a lovely piece of malware. If Vista doesn't work out for me, I just might have to grab a copy of Windows 7 and dual-boot it along with XP. We shall see. Any good/bad Vista experiences anyone wants to share? Use the comments box!
The main complaint one hears about Vista is that it hogs system resources. Admittedly, I haven't been able to test that out to its fullest yet because I don't have much room on my Vista partition to install lots of software. Thus far I've only installed Firefox, Chrome, iTunes, and AIM. The basics. Plus any Windows Updates, because this copy of Vista is a little old, so it needs to be made current. At some point today I might install Photoshop or another program that requires a lot of system resources and then we'll see how Vista fares. But so far, it's actually consistently faster than my XP partition. Plus, because of the way I have things set up, I actually have access to all of the documents and files that are in my XP partition even when I'm running Vista, so I'm not really handicapping myself. The only problem is that I can't run programs off of my XP partition for use in Vista, and there isn't enough room on my hard drive to install everything in both XP and Vista. Maybe I'll try and use my external hard drive for that.
Anyway, overall I'm enjoying Vista very much. I'm inclined to agree with my good friend Shannon, a full-time Vista user and the only person I know who is totally fine with it. I'll keep you posted as things develop. Before you go, a screenshot:
(Click to Enlarge)Incidentally, I'm really excited for Windows 7, the next OS from Microsoft. That's set to drop in late 2009 or early 2010. Beta versions have leaked onto BitTorrent and I am more than a little tempted to try them out. The trick is finding a legitimate version that WON'T turn out to be a lovely piece of malware. If Vista doesn't work out for me, I just might have to grab a copy of Windows 7 and dual-boot it along with XP. We shall see. Any good/bad Vista experiences anyone wants to share? Use the comments box!
