I'm sure as I.T. professionals many of you have come across that random Windows ME machine and you were surprised at how horrible that edition really was compared to 98 or 2000 (at the time).  I was wise enough to steer clear of Windows ME when it was being offered with new machines.  However; some of my counterparts in the other IT section weren't so wise.  I was flabbergasted at how horribly ME ran on the (then) new hardware. 

Well...I've had the opportunity to play around with Vista.  No I haven't played around enough to write a book on the ins-and-outs of the operating system.  I loaded it up, poked around a little and scratched my head.

For starters, the installation took an extremely long time on brand-new hardware.  Not too much of an issue but it was noticeable.  Upon first book I received a BSOD!  I had to boot into safe mode, remove the Microsoft Version of the ATI X600 driver and reboot into standard mode.  I went out to ATI and pulled down their Vista Beta driver and all was well...sort of.

My next stop was to install Live Messenger, as we use it daily to communicate with team members.  I followed the shortcut from the Start Menu, downloaded and installed.  For whatever reason it failed to connect to the server.  Each time I would attempt to login it would immediately return an error saying the Live Service is unavailable.  It didn't even seem as though it was trying to contact the server.  I played with compatibility settings, firewall etc. and finally downloaded version 7.X which installed and ran fine.

Then I wanted to dock my smart-phone with Windows but realized I needed Active Sync.  I downloaded the newest version of ActiveSync and attempted to install only to receive an error that stated something along the lines that "Older versions of Active Sync cannot be installed...Use Windows Update to download Windows Mobile Center".  I tried to follow the instructions but this download wasn't offered on Windows Update.  So I did a search on google, found the software and downloaded it...Beta again.  The new incarnation of Active Sync (Mobile Center?) was too much for me to deal with.  Me and Vista were off to a bad start.

Next I loaded Office 2003 because I didn't have 2007 available yet.  The installation went fine and I attempted to connect to my test exchange environment which was sitting on its' own domain.  I had not yet joined any domain on the Vista machine.  Well...Vista got pretty angry about me trying to connect to a domain exchange box without being part of the domain.  It crashed out Outlook every single time I tried to enter the exchange server information...never prompting me for username/password.  I succumbed and joined the test domain and Outlook was happy.

So, a few minor glitches along the way but it was running.  I checked my system index (system performance) and I got an awesome 3.6!!!  This is a 3.79 GHZ Pentium 4 with 4 gigs of ram and an ATI X600 video card with 256megs of ram.  WOW!  That is pathetic.  My old toshiba laptop with a mobile P4 2.2 / 512ram was indexed at 1.0.  My colleague has a dual Xeon Workstation, less than 6 months old and he indexed out at 5.0.  Another colleague has a new AMD machine with 4 gigs of ram etc. etc and his index was 4.5

Well, being the type of guy I am, I'm not big on all of the eye-candy and aero-crap, fade-in/fade-out menus etc.  So I turn all of that nonsense off.  What am I left with?  Basically a Windows 2000/9X desktop...so the "eye-candy" within Vista is not a selling point.  Anything that uses that much resources is pointless.

Speaking of pointless...when you get Vista loaded up, take a look in the control panel.  I absolutely LOVE how "Add/Remove Programs" which has been around since when?  Windows 3.1?  95 at the latest...it's been replaced with a new icon and now is named "Programs and Features".  The same goes for our good old friend "Accessibility Options" (magnifying glass, keyboard etc).  Microsoft really applied the horsepower, renamed it and added a new icon "Ease of Access Center".

All in all, there might be some changes under the hood but Vista really appears to be XP with some new icons, a flashy new appearance and nothing more.  I am really quite pizzed about MS renaming stuff simply to rename it.  Now we as professionals get to support this.  Nothing like making an easy transition.

While I agree with you on some of the comments, I have has a fairly good experience with Vista. I have been testing it since last summer and it's come a long way. I agree that the Vista rating is kind of frustrating. I have a HP laptop with a P4 3.4 GHz processor, 128 MB video RAM, 2 GB RAM and a 4,200 rpm drive and Vista rates that as shown below.

I'm expecting a new Dell XPS laptop any minute (seriously) with ALL the bells and whistles, so I am eager to see what the difference will be. I agree that the control panel is a bit different and I'm not sure why Microsoft changed many of the names. Just like I don't understand why Microsoft had to change the My Documents folder and internal structure. I can't seem to get used to it, so I have a My Docs link to the D partition with all my files. Not a bad idea anyway to keep files in case the OS crashes...

In my humble opinion, Microsoft will always come out with something new. It's a way to freshen up an older OS and to be honest, most of the new applicaitons (like SMS and Longhorn Server) will have new technology that is being built into Vista, such as NAP.

Aero is nice, but as you said, not required. I think it's going to be a while before the masses really see the benefit of Vista in the business sector. The biggest problem I have now is the RAM utilization. running at 1 GB without much open is rough even if you have 2 GB total. I hope the XPS's 4 GB will help with the Virtual PC 2007 images.. that's what I really need.

I would have to agree, my vista experience has been less than spectacular. however there are a number of benefits if drivers ever become available. 

We are a dell shop and I did some testing with Vista on my precision M65.  Dell has most of the drivers out, which made the install pretty painless.  The biggest issue I had was with 3rd part applications, VPN Clients, VoIP Softphone Clients, and administration tools.  After some searching I was able to get the Server 2003 Admin tools installed and working, but... not all the tools worked properly. 

There are a lot of new bells and whistles which originally I though were all fluff, but when you get going they are actually beneficial.

I guess what irritates me the most is the fact they Vista has been "coming" for so long yet no one is ready for it.  Even Microsoft hasn't updated all of their application / support tools to work with it.

Is it just me or does this seem weird?

Charles,

For me, I had many of those problems last September and October when there were no applications to support Vista. Since then at least Microsoft has made a bunch of applications available in Beta (such as Virtual PC 2007) which made it easy for me to stick on Vista. I hade gone back to XP a few times, but I think all the applications I use are fully supported mow and my systems run great. When I first tried Vista over a year ago, it would not run on my machine, but a few others in my office could get it to run. It was frustrating, but if you still have driver issues, I think it's going to be a short term issue as Dell and others are really pushing the envelope to get up to speed.

I still have vista running on my laptop (indexed at 1.0) and heck...if I get a new laptop this year I might even load Vista up on it just because I'm adventurous like that.  But honestly, I love Microsoft and Vista is still a tough sell to me.

I can understand Aero and trying to spice things up a bit, but the majority of my displeasure is due to the changes that were made that didn't seem as though they needed to be changed.  If something isn't broke...why fix it?

If we all sat down and wrote out what we thought was great about XP and the 2003 platform...and also expressed what we would like to see improved upon, I doubt that we'd end up with anything remotely like Vista.  When resources could have been spent actually making a better underlying operating system...Microsoft had them building AERO.  WTF is that?

And as Tuck had stated...why change the My Documents directory structure around?  Why rename icons?  Why change stuff where what USED to take 3 clicks to get done now takes 10?

It's frustrating...and the 1 GB of ram usage...that sucks.  I did read something cool about the way memory is utilized in Vista though.  Apparently you can add a USB memory device and enable it to be used as ram-like.  That's kind of cool.

Brian,

What are the specs on your XPS? Did you get it yet?

I was thinking about picking one up...Boss approved an Inspiron XPS M1710 / 2ghz Processor, 4 GB ram, 512 Nvidia Geforce 7950 GTX, 100GB 7200 RPM SATA disk, Sound Blaster Audigy etc.

I got the M1710 as you mentined with everything. I got the 2.33 processor which I highly recommend. It's the only one you can overclock in the bios. Check out my post http://www.blogcastrepository.com/blogs/brian_tucker/archive/2007/02/14/dell-xps-m1710-vista-ultimate.aspx

One thing I may suggest. Buy the machine with as little RAM from Dell. It's really expensive. I bought my 4 GB seperate from Arch Memory http://www.archmemory.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=26044 and was delivered in 2 days. When I got the laptop, they have Samsung memory installed and what I got from Arch was the same brand, just bigger RAM. Very good deal.

I love the laptop. You can play with the over clock and I have it set to 2.83 GHz and this thing smokes. You can go to 3.16, but anything over what I have it set to makes the fans run loud all the time. What I have is a nice middle ground.

The screen resolution reallyt looks the best at the higest resolution. Anything less is kind of a disappointment. If you are ok with everything looking a little small, then you are good to go. I was disappointed in lower resolutions.

 Hope you get the laptop. I do NOT think you will be disappointed.