Windows Vista RC1 is the official Pre-release version of the next major update of Microsoft Windows, due out in January of next year. Without too much effort, anybody can apply to become a Beta tester of Vista, and I decided to take the plunge; after all, as a Windows expert, I decided it was probably not a bad idea to get a head start, because soon the whole world will be using Vista.
The first step, after signing up to become a beta tester, was to download the DVD image and create the Vista installation disc. The image is 3.9Gbytes, and the download took about six hours on my ADSL account. After the image had finished downloading, the next step was to burn the image to a DVD (CD’s are rapidly becoming obsolete as DVD-RW’s have become the norm). I had decided to use my home desktop computer, which I recently acquired from Futureshop for $450, for the upgrade, and not my laptop; I depend on my laptop as my daily computer and I didn’t want to risk messing it up. I did, however, use the DVD burner in my laptop to create the install disc, and this provided me with my first challenge in the process… The new install disc booted as expected, but then told me that I needed a special driver for my DVD drive. This was a surprise, as windows has not required any special drivers for CD or DVD drives for many years, they are automatically recognized. After some reading on the Microsoft Vista forums, I decided to try reburning the image using my other DVD burner, the one on the actual machine being upgraded; lo and behold, this solved the problem.
Before installing Vista, I used Partition Magic to create a new 20 Gbyte partition in which to install Vista, and make my PC dual-bootable, maintaining my old Windows XP configuration in case the new Windows experiment failed; I would advise other experimenters to do the same. After that, installation of Vista took about an hour, which is a bit longer than it would take Windows XP. The installation wizard was easy, the only questions asked are the desired name of the computer, and what username and password to use. Strangely, after taking so much flak for its security flaws, Microsoft still does not force the use of a password – a real no-no. This is one of the major differences between Windows and Linux; you cannot create an account in Linux without a password, one of the reasons Linux is still more secure than anything Microsoft has to offer.
The first boot after installation was painfully slow, it took about another half hour for Vista to configure itself for first use. This came as no real surprise, I remember Windows XP did the same way back when, and Windows 2000 before that… the best explanation for this is that current low-cost hardware is fine for XP, but not really enough for Vista, and the next generation of processors and other hardware will run it just fine. Also, my machine has a paltry 512Mb of RAM, which is listed by Microsoft as the minimum for Vista.
After Vista finally settled down and presented itself to me for the first time, the first thing I really noticed was the speed, or lack of – that is to say, with only 512Mb of RAM, Vista is sloooww. Again, my first impression of Windows XP was the same 6 years ago, but as the hardware caught up, Windows XP started to seem snappy – I’m sure the same will be true for Vista. Next week, I’ll give you the low-down on the features of Vista and whether they really are worth all the fuss.
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