Windows Vista: An impressive package with 'rough edges'

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 09/25/2006 9:23 AM  |  Life

Arnawa Widagda, Contributor, Jakarta

Earlier this month, Microsoft finally released its long-awaited Windows Vista RC1.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the RC nomenclature is short for ""Release Candidate"", meaning Microsoft is a step closer to a full, final version of Windows Vista.

It looks as though things are looking better than expected for the Redmond-based software giant. Many industry analysts believe Vista will be ready by the end of the year.

Unlike previous beta versions of Vista, Windows Vista RC1 has a more ""finished"" feel. We've managed to play around with an installation of Windows Vista Ultimate and generally we're pretty impressed with the whole package.

There are still some rough edges here and there -- hopefully something that Microsoft will address in the finished product.

To help users determine if their machine is capable of running Vista, Microsoft have included a performance tool with Vista and as a separate application available for download.

This tool measures five aspects of any system -- processor, memory bandwidth, graphics card performance when running the desktop, graphics card performance for games and applications and hard drive/storage performance.

The score range from 1 to 5.9, with 1 being the lowest and 5.9 the highest.

The emphasis on graphics for Vista is understandable. Vista comes with a major redesigned user interface, so while everything may look the same, there are some notable differences to Windows XP.

Much of the eye candy is done by Vista's Aero engine, making use of 3D capabilities of the graphics card to render the desktop. If you're not fortunate enough to have a graphics card that's Vista-ready, you can choose a much simpler, Windows Classic interface.

Windows have always been riddled with security issues and problems, so Microsoft is taking drastic measures in Vista. Vista comes with Windows Defender, basically a tool that protects Vista from spyware, malware and unwanted changes to the system without user approval.

Vista still doesn't come with an antivirus, but now Security Alerts will offer to download one. Do keep in mind that you have to upgrade your antivirus software to Vista-compatible versions -- older versions for Windows XP won't work in Vista.

The most glaring security hole in Windows XP is startup applications and the ability for programs to ""infect"" or ""piggy back"" critical system programs at startup.

Windows Defender in Vista will minimize that risk by validating each program, even system critical ones. Viruses, worms, trojans and spyware often exploit this, so Vista is definitely better in this regard.

One feature that parents and system administrators will like is parental and user control. This feature allows system administrators to limit which application can be run by users, at what time they can use the PC, or even determine whether or not a user can play games.

Parents can control what games may be played or websites viewed, either via a rating system or by specifying keywords and exact application/website names. Though this is not new, this is the first time such degree of control is present on client systems. It's also much friendlier to use and manage.

Application-wise, Vista is a multimedia powerhouse. Windows Media Center is included with Vista. With it you can play music, watch movies, videos, TVs, run a slide show of pictures with music on the background, even play some desktop games if you want.

For more traditional users, Windows Media Player offer the same functionality with extra features like music downloads/purchase, ripping and burning your own audio and MP3 CDs, and syncing multimedia files to your MP3 player or Microsoft's Portable Media Player.

You can also share your music, or any other media files through the Internet or the network, very much like Apple's Podcasts.

For personal archives or projects, you can make DVDs, complete with animated menus.

Microsoft have also beefed up Vista with a more powerful image viewer, allowing you to make quick adjustments to your digital images.

For a more natural interface, Vista includes speech recognition and synthesis engine plus handwriting recognition software brought from Microsoft's Tablet PC platform. This means not only will Vista be compatible with Tablet PCs, but you can use an off-the-shelf tablet/digitizer if you want to.

They are much cheaper than before, but they usually don't come with handwriting recognition software, which makes their use limited to drawing and simple annotations and as a mouse replacement.

With all the things going for it, Vista in general is pretty heavy. With all the bells and whistles, 1 GB of RAM is minimal, 2 GB is recommended.

Virtual memory used is also larger than XP -- 1536 MB compared with 768 MB in Windows XP, and those are default values. We used Vista RC1 in a Core Duo notebook with 1 GB of RAM and Intel GMA950 integrated graphics.

The machine was ranked with a Windows SPR rating of 2, mostly because of the Intel GMA950. There is definitely more than one occasion the system felt ""sluggish"", though it's still responsive to user input. Remember, this is just running built-in applications and the desktop, which is pretty lightweight.

On the bright side, we didn't have a single error during our limited time using Vista RC1, which is way better than Vista Beta 1 and 2.

Windows Vista should be ready for release by end of this year, at the very least the beginning of next year.

Like many major updates to Windows, there will be much hoopla and fuss over the launch. But from the look of it, this might just actually be the best Windows yet.

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