This concludes my Windows Vista Experiment. Last week I took the plunge and upgraded my computer with more RAM (1 Gbyte), and suddenly Vista burst into life. With 1 Gbyte RAM, Vista zips along very nicely – even with the Aero interface enabled. My graphics card is quite basic and shares system RAM, which is why my system bogged down with the Aero interface enabled. Systems with high-end graphics cards, like the kinds used by gaming enthusiasts, will probably run OK with only 512Mb of system RAM. However, my graphics card worked fine once the RAM was upgraded. I was wrong to say Vista is slow – it isn’t. Just remember one word – RAM.
One of the really great new features of Vista is the search tool. A few years ago, Apple Computer introduced their Tiger OS, which had a search tool named Spotlight - a search far superior to that of Windows XP. Microsoft has responded with Vista’s new Desktop Search. The search window is now the very first item above the Start button, and when you begin typing the search term, the results appear instantaneously as you type. The new tool not only searches for file names, but also content within files, email subject lines, and email content; all of this at speeds that will astonish. Add to this the ability to do Boolean searches, (the use of “and” and “or” to link search words) and this new search tool really shines; now you can find the item that you need in a fraction of a second. It’s one of those things that you didn’t think you needed until you try it, then find that you cannot live without it.
Vista has upgraded Internet Explorer, an upgrade which is long overdue. Mozilla’s Firefox browser has taken a fairly large market share away from Explorer, mainly because it’s a safer browser and resists spyware infections much more effectively than Explorer 6.0; add to this a few extras that Explorer hasn’t offered in the past, the most obvious of which is the tabbed browsing feature. The new Explorer, version 7, is reported to be much more robust in terms of security features, and also includes tabbed browsing (see a pattern here? Microsoft is not so much an innovator as it is an imitator; when other software companies innovate, Microsoft simply copies the concept. Microsoft has been doing this since MS-DOS, which itself was based on QDOS, and Microsoft bought it from a university student).
Vista includes a new thing called a Sidebar, and in the sidebar are things called Gadgets. With the Sidebar, your favourite Gadgets are readily available as an integrated part of your Windows Desktop. Vista offers eleven Gadgets to start, and more are available from Microsoft’s website. I’m sure that other software vendors will offer many more. The Gadgets I chose are Weather, a Calendar, a CPU and Memory meter, an RSS news feed, a Google Search box, an analog clock, and a Currency Converter.
Speech recognition has been around for many years now, usually as an add-on, but in my experience, very few people actually use it. Anyhow, Windows Vista has it.
In conclusion, I’d say that Vista will be a worthy successor to Windows XP, which is growing old and is ready for retirement. If you are thinking of buying a new computer in 2007, it will most likely have Windows Vista; if you want to upgrade your existing computer, just make sure that it is no older than a year or two, or you’ll likely be disappointed with performance. Vista is nice, but it’s a bit piggy.
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