well… I figured I’d give my first impressions of the new OS as well as it’s upsides and downsides. Microsoft has actually impressed me this time around with alot of nice features and improved security.
First of all, the install was painless… it automatically setup a boot menu making it easy to load any other OS of your choice (be it XP, linux, windows 98, ect). Upon first boot, after the install, it found my internet connections and updated itself accordingly. Then from there, found any hardware that it missed during initial setup.
The hardware specs that were released must of been thrown WAY out
proportion. I ran it fine (using the AERO theme with all the bells and whistles) with my outdated system (amd 64 3000+, 128 radeon 9700 pro, 1gb of cheepo memory, 200 gb WD hdd). Especially with all the new visual features, and with what the previously released requirements stated, it ran just as good, if not better than XP.
my memory usage never went above 54% and processor was never above 30% (that I noticed atleast).
Something that I thought was annoying, yet pretty cool was the prompt it gave you before installing software/running scripts/ect. I guess to combat some of the security issues in XP so trojans and such couldnt be launched without you knowing about it.
The new GUI is great… the “spotlight” search feature is cool too although I havent really used it much yet. Pretty much the same thing as google desktop (indexing)… it’s deffinitly ALOT nicer than previous versions of the search function (XP pro’s search feature fustrates me @ work to no end sometimes).
The animations and shader effects are pretty damn cool too 
Although I think that the new look, as a whole, will take some getting used to. I, honestly, dont like the new start menu all that much. it’s just “wierd”… however it was nice not having a crazy tree expand across the entire screen… again, something that will take some getting used to.
Along with that is the new names… example… there is no longer “my computer”… it’s now just “computer”, same with changing your display settings… you’ll see what I mean (I should note though, that it’s pretty intuitive… especially if you’ve used XP… just strange seeing different menus and such with different names).
One of the smallest, yet coolest things about vista is it’s audio mixer… this has always bugged me about XP. You’ll be sitting there playing a game or listening to tunes, then out of left field someone IM’s you scaring the shit out of you becuase the volume was cranked. Now with vista you can set volume per application :tup: (nice feature when the individule application doesnt have a volume control).
Another really cool feature is the thumbnail preview for each window/app you have open. In XP in can be a pita to try and juggle back and forth between 10 windows that are all named similar (ex: internet explorer). Now it gives you a preview of whats open in that window when you alt+tab it (or if you hover the cursor above the slot in the task bar).
The firewall seems ALOT better this time around too… I only got about an hour to mess with it but in my opinion, it’s gonna be a great OS. I’m not real happy about the backwards compatibility, or lack their of, but as long as it comes standard with the boot menu, I really dont see it as much of a problem.
My one minor gripe is the side bar… it honestly serves NO purpose. Sure it’s nice to see the weather, time and system performance… but it’s really not all that great. I think they threw it in there just for the hell of it… the only real purpose that I’d use it for would be for the calculator function. where at work (or if I’m working at home) I usually have the microsoft calculator open because I do alot of math… with this, it’ll always be open and accessible/visible without having to find it in the taskbar when I need it.
all in all… I give it a 9/10… cant wait to see the final release.
or just a new key to use with it? hook a brother up mang :tspry: