Install la Vista Baby!
I've finally managed to put aside some time to do tend to one of my favourite extreme passtimes: installing betas. Beta operating system. A beta operating system from Microsoft. On a machine I use daily. I'm waiting for the Jackass gang to give me a call. Admitedly, it is a release candidate version (RC1), so some will in all likelyhood doubt my elitness purely for calling it a beta. It's not finished, it's got a disclaimer, it's a beta.
Admirably, the whole thing installed unattended, while I was sleeping. Next thing I knew, I had woken up to a brand new, shiny, transparent, somewhat overbearing OS. It looks interesting but I feel the chrome takes too much attention away from the actual applications. It really gets to me when the OS tries so hard to impress, I just want that to work, let the applicationss impress me, make the OS transparent... and not literally. But I guess when you've got Apple-envy you might be pushed into applying too much lipstick and rouge where you really shouldn't be. So yeah, Windows Vista is a tad bit slutty.
As always with Windows, you just need to keep peeling the wallpaper to find old crap behind it. Dig a bit and you'll find dialogs that look like they came straight out of Windows 95. It could be a beta thing but looking at Microsoft's history I think it's just the way it's gonna be. It doesn't entirely feel like a new OS. It doesn't feel like MacOS X after Mac OS 9. I'm purely commenting on feeling here. I'm kicking the tires. If you want a review and some benchmarks, you've come to the wrong place friend.
Overall, I don't dislike it. After tweaking the interface and installing some key applications I noticed that it actually flows quite well, especially on a laptop. Stopping and restarting sessions is very, very fast. Shutting down has become even more redundant. Searching is good. Performance seems on par with XP on the same machine. And, while I'm not a huge fan of the look in general, some elements have been reworked quite succesfully.
I will try to migrate some work applications to Vista and see how it copes with daily news. Gaming will also be tested over the next few days and with Microsoft's new-found commitment to PC gaming this should prove interesting. Hopefully more interesting then this Gamespot page I stumbled upon during my Vista research. Forget the article and go straight to the comments. I thought it would be a good idea to go through them and read up on people's experiences. I left with the urge to drink myself silly. I will spare you 5 minutes of torture and give you a quick digest:
"Vista will ROCK! YA!" -- "You suck because you like Vista. M$ just wants make money and Linux is good but no games so I still use Windows but Vista sucks so you suck." -- "SHUT Up! Apple OSX is much better also Windows copys apple for everything" -- (pretentiously) "Apple copied Xerox" -- "Vista has flashy graphics so my conclusion is that it will not work properly." -- "XBox 360 is the best" -- "OSX is crap because it's just linux made pretty" -- "PCs rock because if you spend all your money on them the graphics are better than Xbox 360." And so on and so forth...
Utterly depressing when you consider that not everyone of these posters can possibly be under 13. No more Gamespot comments for me. I usually don't read comments on gaming sites, is this the case everywhere? Is the venerable Edge Magazine correct to regularily mock gaming news websites? OMFG! Could the gaming community just be full of people like this guy? No wonder people think you're loser when you talk about your love for video games.
