Vista officially got to RTM. I'm using Vista since it became Beta 2 with several upgrades on the way. Today I installed fresh Vista RTM on my laptop and I want to share few of my fresh thoughts about it.
First – installation procedure. Damn, it is quick! If You remember all these installation procedures since Win 3.11 to Windows XP and 2003. XP sometimes needed hour to load on new machine. With Vista RTM it took me 25 minutes from starting my work on installation to log on to my domain account on installed and updated system with all drivers. Looks really OK for me.
User Account Control – working as non-admin user during installation is really … painful. Especially if You are lunching setup files form network shares and Your admin account isn't domain account. Number of times You have to type passwords and accounts can give You a headache. After installation it is better, but there are few cases when I thought "What the hell?". Favorite scenario: try to create new folder in all users Start menu, starting from non-admin account (but even with admin account it will give You prompts, but providing password isn't necessary in this case):
- Start -> programs -> Explore all users, right click New -> Folder – UAC prompt, typing username\password
- New folder is created with "new folder" name, type something instead of "new folder" -> UAC prompt, type username\password.
- Folder was created to move some icons into it, select icon, drag to this folder -> UAC prompt, type username\password.
Don't understand me wrong – I think UAC is great mechanism and I will keep it enabled on my machine (and I'm strongly encouraging You to do the same) but sometimes it may be a little "bothering".
BitLocker – I was trying to enable it on my Toshiba Tecra M5 but it failed as my BIOS isn't currently compatible with it. I will try to get updated BIOS and enable it, as BitLocker for me is one of key values in Vista.
Media Player icon – I don't know when but WMP icon has changed. I know, maybe this isn't most important thing but .. I liked previous one :).
Memory usage – if you remember my previous Vista posts I said that this baby is a beast on memory. It's better now, after boot it is not XP level (330-350 MB) but around 500 MB. Definitely if you want to use Vista and You have only 0,5 gig of RAM some upgrade is recommended.
General performance – this isn't result of some performance test but only my personal experience but it is fast. Definitely faster then RC1, but this was expected.
I haven't encountered problem with any of my applications till now – I was using Office 2007, VS .NET 2005, IM clients (Miranda, Skype), web browsing, system tools and few others. Everything was installed smoothly and is working great.
When it comes to Office 2007, and to Outlook 2007 in details – comparing to previous versions it gives You great experience on installation (I'm using it with Exchange 2007). Just run it and Your mailbox will get configured. You don't have to do anything.
OK, it's late – more information will come. Vista is out there and real answer is it great system will be provided by users when it will hit market. For me Vista RTM works great.