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I’m using Vista right now on two different computers - my media PC at home, and my laptop. I thought I’d give my impressions so far.

Firstly, I gotta say on a powerful PC with a good video card, Windows Vista is beautiful. It just looks great and handles like a dream. And when I ran a YouTube video, then did that cool WindowsKey+Tab thing, I was really impressed when the video CONTINUED PLAYING as I Aero cycled through the different applications. Very cool! The laptop is a different story.

So, why am I not as impressed with my laptop? I’ve been using a Dell Latitude Laptop D600 series - it ran Windows XP really well. It’s a 1.73GHZ with 1 gig of ram. So I was pretty excited when I installed Vista to see the difference and how it would handle Microsoft’s new flagship OS.

One of the interesting differences in Vista compared to XP is the installation method. Vista doesn’t install - it decompresses an image of an install to your computer, much like ghost. I did this, and read the Marketing Blurb, which seems to get simpler and more "6 pack Joe"-like every version of Windows.

After it finished doing that, I booted up. I’m still not decided on whether I like this new pastel, washed out Windows theme. In any case, I excitedly checked my "Windows Experience" score : 1. My score on the other PC is 3.7. If you score 1, Aero isn’t available - which is the fancy MacOS Style graphics I loved on the other PC. Strike 1.

I then tried to install some Dell specific drivers - uhoh, nothing available for Dell Latitude on Vista yet. I’ve had patchy problems that should be fixed with proper drivers. As of now, there are still problems. The system just isn’t working properly. Strike 2.

I then tried the new "Vista Sleep", which is where you push the power button and it hibernates by writing the entire state to memory, rather than the hard disk. This means that when you boot it back up, it’s super fast. Sounds great in theory. But on a Dell Latitude? Not so fast. It crashes continuously, I always get odd messages, like : "Your system recovered from an unexpected error" after it eats the state and boots fresh. The other thing that is crazy is if I try to hibernate when its connected via my wireless internet card, it crashes every time. It just doesn’t power down - it turns the monitor off, and sits there with the power on. I have to hard reset, and it’s very, very annoying. Strike 3.

Cisco VPN Client support is crap. I installed it and continuously get the error : "Couldn’t enable Virtual Adapter", and it just bogs out. Extremely annoying. Strike… 4!

The Windows Search built into the start Menu (and Windows Search in general) is broken, and it doesn’t work properly. And it’s slow. Did I mention it was broken? Uhoh, Strike 5.

Well, thats Strike 5 so normally Vista would be out. The thing is, these problems nonwithstanding, it works pretty well. For the most part its quite stable. I’m still getting used to the new look and feel, but I think I like it. And the new file/device sync features are very nice.

So in the hopes that Dell will improve it’s driver support, and that Windows will magically one day update itself and fix all these stupid irritating problems, I’m going to leave Vista installed for the next few weeks.

Microsoft, Dell, get your act together, and you’ll have a loyal customer on your hands. Piss me off, and I’ll be taking the plunge into Macland. Please don’t make me go there. I hear it’s full of people who talk like the "Mac Guy".

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