Hasta La ‘Vista’, Baby!
My good friend Tarun Singh (www.tarunsingh.com) recently hooked me up with a copy of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest operating system. I really like it so far. At first I had some issues with my hardware, but after installing some drivers and stuff, everything is working fine. ( Except the annoying blue screen that appears randomly and causes me to restart. It happened right when I almost finished this post too, so now i have to start again. but I dont think this is a standard Vista feature :p i had something similar with xp as well.) All my important programs are installed and working, compatibility doesnt seem like a big issue. Sometimes things screw up, but everything will be fine with updates. The most noticeable difference in vista is the load of visual effects added (Aero). The new theme looks better (in my opinion) and the sounds aren’t as annoying. The fades and translucent windows are pretty cool. Vista has windows sidebar, a pretty cool program that lets you keep different gadgets on the side of your desktop. You can also see a real time preview of a window by hovering your mouse over its button in the taskbar, or when pressing alt+tab. Another cool feature is that you can view the windows from a 3d angle and scroll through them. Here are some screenshots and a video clip:
It shows a little laggy in the video, but its actually pretty smooth..
Click here for the high quality video so you can see better.
Besides the fancy graphics, vista is much more secure. You are asked permission for almost everything, so stuff you dont want doesnt mess your computer up, unless you let it. Microsoft also changed the file layout and organization a bit. It might take a little while to get used to, but it seems better. All the windows products are better integrated. Internet Explorer 7 is good, although i still prefer firefox. There are some other improvements too, like how you can open multiple pictures at the same time, and stuff like that. Overall I think Vista is quite an improvement on XP, but nothing revolutionary. Linux can do a lot of the same stuff and more, and as much as i hate to admit it, Mac OS X still owns- (that doesn’t mean i don’t dislike it) So basically, you don’t need Vista, but its nice to have.
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