Windows Vista Home Premium

A couple days ago I went into store and picked up a Windows Vista I had ordered. It's Home Premium OEM edition, since prices for Retail editions are insane (like douple just because Microsoft put 32Bit and 64Bit DVDs on same package) OEM package was only reasonable choise. I wanted my mother to enjoy Windows Vista instead of Windows 98SE the computer had installed already. I had upgraded that machine's hardware already with 135€ (includes nVidia 6200 and 512Mb DDR memory).

Full specs are now for that computer I call "Exile" these:

1,333 Ghz Athlon "Thunderbird" (I'd personally call it Firebird or Phoenix as it's really hot headed guy. ;] )
768Mb DDR RAM (Motherboard cannot fully utilize that 512Mb 400Mhz DDR RAM)
Geforce 6200 256Mb
A7A266 as motherboard
Audigy 4
DVD Burner

that's all noteworthy things of Exile. It's originally built up at 2000 and it's not the most powerful computer as you can see here.

Well, I went into installing Windows Vista onto it. I started with backing up thing to second partition. Then I backed up the most important things of my younger brother and mother's files off that computer. :P

And I finally get into installing Windows Vista.
Well the whole process was a simple, I agree with the license agreement by opening the box, then I will stick the DVD in and follow the stuff on the screen. I have installed windows hundreds of times and not just Windowses but also many Gnu/Linux distripution, MacOSX, Solaris, BSDs... etc. So I know how the stuff works. To be honest althought it wasn't a big suprise that Windows installer has changed _a lot_ from XP it manages to keep the position of most intuative installer. It doesn't ask any stypid questions and installation process it pretty much about just clickin "next", "next", "next"...

Mac OSX installer is the best since it allows you to have some control over the stuff you are installing but Windows installer which imitates mac installer _a bit_ doesn't allow that. Instead if you put in a incorrect cd-key or no cdkey at all it asks for a which distripution of Windows shall be installed? -type of question. Since I have a real cdkey and real license agreement I was forced to install Home Premium.

It asks for a style of installation for Upgrade or Clean, I had to do clean since I didn't want to upgrade. Win98 sucks big time these days. ( XP sucks more if you ask me, lol )

And of course I wanted to format the C: drive.

Install process was simple after formatting. I waited for about 15 minutes for windows installer to copy files and make bootable windows. Installing Windows Vista is not a new thing to me but I want to explain the process here for people reading this. Most notable change in Windows installer is that it's bit like Gnu/Linux installer. It doesn't start with DOS which installs the installer which install the windows. But instead they have taken Linux approach here, they have windows on the dvd and it's booted on start up, then this windows will start windows installer from the dvd which will copy a image of the windows into hdd and configure it to make it bootable.

after installation was finnished it was supposed to reboot the computer but first problem popped up. Windows Vista doesn't seem to support APM power manargement systems. So non-ACPI compliant computers like this old A7A266 doesn't stand a chance to be shutting down in a usual sence. I had to press and hold the power button for a four seconds to make it shut down. And then I put the power back on.

Installation continued with creating account and selecting wallpaper for user account.

When I got into desktop it was bit like in RC2 with the exeption that most things worked well. Sidebar is grea utility but I didn't see any point in it so I toggled it off. I'v heard from my younger brother that he actually likes the sidebar and my mom doesn't know how to use it but thinks positive about it. I don't like sidebar, it consumed too much from that old computer but if my family likes it then it's ok.

My brother has found Media Center pretty good as he don't have to install any other 3th party tv and video software apart from the codecs. I'd recommend CCCP as a codec pack for everybody, but also K-Lite Mega Codec pack is great. So far only codec pack I can for sure say to work at least 90% well in Windows Vista is CCCP.

Apart from the hardware driver's point of view. nVidia drivers need improvements, and not just small ones. I have expected nVidia to have _a lot_ higher quality drivers than ATi cards which these days belong to AMD. :P

I don't have anything to acctually where to complain about. nVidia drivers shipped with Vista do their work ok, but drivers we can have from nVidia.com do a bit better job. And I recommend people getting those drivers ratcher than sticking with the ones in Windows Vista.

Activation process was simple and I got change to update windows with 8+ updates. Some how I felt that I had bought broken product. Windows Vista was released like yesterday and it already was broken and needed patching? where the hell is this world moving towards?

I haven't much used Windows Vista since I installed it but my brother has and he likes it more than Windows XP. He told me that he gets bit better performance with it in some games also but apart from that he says it's slower or as slow as Windows 98SE and XP. It looks pretty he added. Well my opinion is that visuals are imitated from Mac OSX so it's not really new thing and the new functionality my mom's been fancy about has been found from Gnu/Linux long time ago.

I installed most of the programs for them so they didn't need to see much of UAC/UAP popups.

So far I'd give Microsoft 7/10 for good hard work. Windows Vista is _a lot_ better than Windows XP and it's distriputions. I think that while most of the functions are taken from other OSes the thing is that Windows Vista is big improvement over XP and there fore if not anything else must buy for at least its security improvements.

I'd recommend people buying Windows Vista Home Premium OEM, it's price is ~110€ and more or less you shouldn't cost. You will get all the stuff you used to get with Windows XP Professional. I need Ultimate since I develop Unix stuff and I need advanced backup functions. What I would have loved to have in Home Premium is Volume shadow Copying. I could have avoided Ultimate OEM which costs like ~200€ in shop.

For a final words I want to add that if you don't have a need to play Games on Computer. I'd recommend skipping Windows Vista and getting OpenSUSE or someother GNU/Linux distripution. Possible choises for a beginners are Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Mandriva, RedHat Desktop. I'd still say that if you need more out of the linux installing Gnu/Debian, Gentoo or Source Mage will be like whole new universe of freesoftware. You can do all the stuff you can do know on XP you can do with Linux and even more.