Experience with Vista

The new book has to be written in Vista because it isn’t going to be updated for 2 years, and I’d like to avoid it looking outdated before it really is. So that meant I had to get Vista. The thought of going through the learning curve with a new OS wasn’t really appealing, but it was one of those things I just had to do.

So.

I’m going to let you follow me around for a while while I get acclimated to Vista. Just so there can be some benefit from me going through all of this.

Which Version

The Which Version question seemed easy, until I got to the store. It was clear that it had to be Ultimate or Business, from the SW website. SolidWorks does work fine on XP Home, when XP Pro is all that is recommended or officially supported. I’ve never seen support denied or the software just not work because of using XP Home. When you see those cheaper numbers, it’s very tempting to cut a corner here or there. The Vista Business edition did have one feature that helped me choose it. This was the Remote Desktop function, which if you’ll remember from posts about a year ago was my ideal solution to my multiple monitor/computer problem. Vista Ultimate was $100 more (for a grand total of $399 – yes, that’s for an operating system).

Then there was the question of whether I wanted to upgrade or just buy a whole new version. I had heard horror stories of upgrades, where you had to reinstall the old OS to verify activation, and then upgrade it. Yech. What I really wanted to do was to install onto an external drive, and then just detach the external to get a dual boot system which maintained my clean XP, and allows me to ditch Vista easily.

Ok, for this test, it is Vista Business, the $299 version, and the lowest recommended OS for SolidWorks.

The Setup

Like most folks in this field, I’m pretty much self-taught when it comes to system maintenance and stuff like that. I’ve learned mainly by recovering from mistakes. Windows XP was an easy install unless you had to mess with something like installing scsi drivers during the install. It still wasn’t too bad. I’ve heard bad stories again about Vista installations with missing drivers, so I thought I was prepared for that.\n\nI started the install from an active session of XP, and it told me I had the option to install to either my older 320 GB external drive or my brand new 750 GB external drive. So I told it to install to the 320, the 750 would be used for backup and storage. When I actually tried it, though, Vista decided neither external drive was worthy, and cancelled the installation and restarted it automatically, without those two options available. It should be noted that neither drive worked when the OS was finally installed, and searches on websites show that my brand new Western Digital 750 GB external drive is not compatible with Vista. Whooda thunk. In the end, I had to enter the product key 3 times.\n\nAnyway, the second go at installation seemed better. I had a 300 GB internal drive with some space to install to, which sufficed. The system is still a dual boot, with XP on C and Vista on E.

The test “Boxx”

I should make note that the computer being used for this installation is a Boxx workstation, with an AMD 64 FX-57 single core processor, with an nVidia nForce chipset, a FX3450 graphics card, and 3 GB of RAM. The computer is not quite 2 years old. It was a very nice workstation 2 years ago, and is still more than adequate for most of the SW work I do.

The installation seemed to be ok until the first reboot, when it wanted the OS disk, and took another 20 minutes to install more files. Then it rebooted again. After a few reboots, it seemed satisfied. I learned by accident that any USB device attached would cause it to hang at reboot. I couldn’t get it to see my thumb drive, external drives or my USB wireless adapter. I had to rearrange things and get a hub close enough for a wired connection to work. Once I had the wired connection, connecting to the internet was no problem, but seeing and being seen other computers on the network was not as straight forward as XP.

Contrary to many reports I have heard, I was able to get a Vista specific driver for my nVidia FX3450 video card, and it seems to work well with SolidWorks 2008, without the slowdowns I’ve had in XP with the FX Go 1400 using the fancy Real View features in 2008.

For drivers, my bad luck at this time is restricted to a Belkin wireless network adapter and my nVidia nForce audio.

The Confirmation

Oh, and the confirmation. It seems everything you want to do system wise requires a confirmation. I have not yet looked for the switch to turn that off, but I assure you I will. It’s like having a paranoid Victorian nanny at your side at all times.

“The Experience”

The much vaunted “experience” of running vista is just a bit of a barrage on the senses, in particular the sense of sight, since my audio card doesn’t hav an available driver for Vista. Everything has a chalky pastellish kind of color, or the look of polished translucent polycarbonate. Dialogs fly, and zoom, and fall back, and there is a lot of transparency. There are warnings for just about anything useful, including overwriting files.Windows Explorer is significantly different in Windows Vista. It will be hard to say if it is better or not until I’ve used it for some time, but I am getting used to it. I still haven’t figured out some simple things like displaying file extensions.

Overall, I must say that the interface is pretty snappy, meaning that it reacts quickly for the most part. There are times where it seems to hang for a few seconds for no reason, but overall, I think it is faster. Of course this is a fresh installation without much clutter added yet (ftp software, SolidWorks, Avant Browser, snagit, BitDefender).

For the book screen captures I have to run at 1024×768 resolution with specific display settings, which is more than a little annoying, since it does not make the best use of the interface. Still, it allows me to get a feel for the OS a little.

Summary

This isn’t much of a review of the functionality of Vista, but it should give a little flavor for what it’s like to get started with it. I will follow up in a later post with the experience of running SolidWorks in the Vista interface.