“Vista isn’t that bad…” - Prashanth
Posted by Prashanth | Filed under Uncategorized
Before you go to your optician, allow me to authenticate that statement. Yes, it is written by me. I know you people are remembering all those MS Vista bashing rants that I did on my blog both in posts as well as comments and even dedicating whole pages to this. But now, I (somewhat) eat back (some of) my words. [here, here and here for some old Vista Ranting]
Experience with Vista x64 Build 5600:
I did all that Vista bashing after I used Vista Build 5600 or RC1 (Release Candidate). It was terribly slow and had a very miserable feature on it. It is called SuperFetch. What this silly utility does is, it caches some of your frequently used programs on the memory to boost performance. This is actually pretty good for an average Office user, as his frequently used light applications such as IE, Word, etc would open up faster. But in my case, I used Vista once only to test Direct X 10 compatibility with Direct X 9.0c games. I installed NFS: Most Wanted on it just to try that out. I played for an hour and I got addicted to it. So each time I booted up on Vista, I would play NFSMW. Vista did what the un-smart algorithms by MS coders ordered it to do… Cached MW on memory. The experience was not good. My PC has a gigabyte of RAM, Vista gracefully spared me not more than 50 Mb of memory to open my other applications. It took me an eon to move my mouse from one corner of the screen to the opposite one. Plus, the OS didn’t even empathize (read sympathize) to lend memory for demanding applications in the same way as Linux and older Windows did. I even tried turning off SuperFetch following MS’s instructions on the command prompt in vain.
And those junk features such as Flip 3D, transparency, the fancy sidebar on the desktop on which the most practical feature was found to be the Clock and the notes widget. The system monitor was a neat feature, but only gave me reasons to cry. Although all those features look pretty good, they are not a fair trade for performance. They were extremely resource hungry compelling me to use the basic interface chucking Aero. I repeat - “My PC is an AMD 64 with a gigabyte of RAM.”. Even high end games don’t complain so much about requirements..!! It took me an hour and a half to install it. It consumed about 15Gb of space on a drive that has a long list of homeless files waiting to come in. Moreover, I had to wait for about 2 frigging minutes just to boot the thing up… Even after so much compromise, it forced me to do the three-finger-salute atleast 3 times an hour……. [the saga of complains will be continued sometime later... oh well, forget it..!!]
Vista x64 Retail Version (Build 6000):
Installation, 30 minutes..!?!?! Yes, you read it right. Installation was faster than XP’s and the OS spared me a few gigabytes by occupying just 8 Gb of space which is still a lot compared to Linux or even Windows XP. So, the installation was a breeze with full GUI based operation. The system was up and configured within 2 minutes and average boot time being 30 seconds, which is slightly slower than Ubuntu on my system. The performance was a significant improvement. The so called “frills” of Vista magically turned much lighter on resources. Microsoft showed some more mercy too… Superfetch actually turns off when you tell it to.
Vista Build 6000 works fast, is extremely responsive and zippier than XP atleast for me. Thanks to the file indexing system, the OS locates and displays files much faster than its ancestors did. Since the “frills” don’t cost performance, they actually appear good now. The UI suddenly looks fabulous. And it detected my wireless network without any hassles. Fully compatible with my Windows Xp systems in my house. Networking was a breeze too… I noticed one more thing about Vista. It learnt a really nice feature from the Gnome desktop environment. No more apply buttons in many places where you need to change settings such as the personalization boxes. When you want to change the wallpaper, just click on it and it instantly changes. So is with the themes and all… no more “Please Wait” boxes while the theme is being changed. In all, frequent things have become faster..!!
Windows on-board software work much faster too and there is a decent selection of them in here. The best thing being is that MSN messenger isn’t installed by default. The OS isn’t a nagger any more and doesn’t cry for every click with the User Access Control feature turned off. Its much more customizable and the desktop looks so pleasant that it is a gala time working with it…
Direct X 10, coming to that, 8600GT, the new bloke off Nvidia’s shelves, costs just 9k+… and the GPU prices have been slashed badly. I need to have a fully capable DX10 chipset before I can actually look for the premier DX10 games, Crysis and Halo 2.
And as a side note: If you think I bought the Windows Vista Ultimate Editon 64-bit Retail just try this out, go to the saloon and get your head massaged with Navratna Tel! Its the cracked version that I am using and pity that MS can’t do šhìt about it… (Was this line not supposed to be here?) The Vista Time-Stopper and 2099 trick work great. If you see the screenshot, I am still on the initial grace period. The Time-Stopper works as I have been using Vista since the past week when I freed up enough space on my disk. 
Comments on this extremely skeptical post are expected. 
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7 Responses to ““Vista isn’t that bad…” - Prashanth”
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Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 4:33 pmCongrats about your view changing experience… Me glad to know that there’s a ‘free’ version of Vista.. At least this will help me in playing Halo 2 when it comes out..
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Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 6:00 pmPrashant, I congratulate you for being able to use Vista without a genuine license. I understand that us biased Indians for all sorts of reasons go against Microsoft and are not willing to pay them a penny for their services consoling ourselves that it’s a free market.
Why should Microsoft be interested in a teenager using Vista illegally? Why should they even be worried about what AnkurB or Y! news say about them?
Microsoft is a big company. Consider it an iceberg. Icebergs melt, but very slowly. Microsoft is going to be successful as long as PC-manufacturers support the OEM-edition of their OSes.
Microsoft would only be worried if Dell’s business shows a graph of a freely falling body from a height under acceleration due to gravity.
Since you can afford expensive computers with UberCoool graphic cards, you can very well afford to buy a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium. You’ll only start respecting Microsoft, if you think about what you would do when the software you code is on every PC in the world, without a single penny going into your bank balance or PayPal account.
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Says:
April 27th, 2007 at 6:06 pmI understand that u r against software-piracy. Vista Ultimate Edition is what I want. Home premium has certain limitations. Vista UE costs 19,200Rs. With that money, i can buy 2 8600GTs…
Is the software worth that much of money..??
It would take a large portion of dad’s monthly income to buy that…
There exist equivalent software but incompatibility problems and MS monopoly forces me to go MS again. But then, i feel i can spend the same money on better hardware, books, clothes and other cool stuff..!! -
Says:
April 29th, 2007 at 7:48 amI thought you’re getting a domain for yourself. Changed your mind?
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Says:
April 29th, 2007 at 8:30 amI am actually thinking of getting my blog hosted retaining the same old luminar.wordpress.com domain…
I guess wordpress has such an option… as the owner of this blog, i have full rights on the domain. So it is irrespective of the location of my files…!! -
Abhishek Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 10:33 amCame back to answer your question again. Vista sure is worth all that money. Windows 7, a tad more.
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mARVelous!! Says:
December 10th, 2008 at 11:18 pmI have better than you that gives me more vistaish look but i just want to give desktop icons like vista glass effects.here is the link
http://www.vistafeel.com
