Well, following Michael's post last month about our collective Vista experiences, I write this as the proud installer of Vista SP1 RC, a.k.a "a-bit-better-than-beta". And I have to say I'm noticing a world of improvement.
Unzipping my test 1mb / 1000 image file showed a significant improvement on Vista's previously flakey zip function. An action that previously took an astonishing 20 minutes (compared to WinRar's 15 seconds) now took a mere 18 minutes!
Network copying of files was noticeably improved, now only giving me chance to get as far as the milk-adding stage of my cuppa.
Stability of applications also seems more solid, with Dreamweaver only giving me an out of memory error if I have Illustrator open and Outlook, which is forgiveable given that my Core Duo only has 2GB of RAM to play with. And the icons on Photoshop's tool palette now only inexplicably vanish at most 30% of the time, which has significantly improved my workflow.
There's plenty of other improvements too, and more I'm sure will emerge over time. But suffice to say I'm glad I held out for SP1, and didn't lose heart entirely.
... now... where did I put that standalone XP disk?
Vista humbug aside, the festive season is close upon us. So I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients, suppliers, friends and colleagues a Merry Christmas from us all at Wordsun Web Works.
December 18th, 2007
/ Comment / Tags: Grrrr Vista, Christmas / Trackback
OK so hate is a strong word and should really be reserved for special occasions but I think in this case it actually is appropriate. I switched to Vista at the beginning of the year attracted by promises of improved speed, stability and security. In all three of these areas it has fundamentally failed:
Speed - Vista is slow to start up, slow to shutdown, slow to open applications, slow to copy files, and slow to unzip files.
Stability - Vista is buggy, unstable and crashes frequently. It is not uncommon for me to have to reboot 2 or 3 times per day due to crashes. When programs freeze, task manager often refuses to open so you can't even force quit a troublesome app.
Security - Bitlocker sounds great but you need a computer with a TPM chip, a copy of Vista Ultimate (very expensive) and a degree in geekery to get it working. Oh and if your OS came preinstalled, you have to wipe everything off your hard drive and reinstall to get it working, as I discovered after loading all my apps and docs onto the system.
I'd love to say "apart from that it's great" but that would be a lie. My network card software fails to load every other boot, the WiFi card turns itself off every few hours, the video driver always forgets my multiple screen configuration and swaps the monitors round after a reboot, and the fingerprint scanner fails to be recognised approximately 1 in 3 boots.
Since I have been using Vista, my productivity has nose dived, but at least I can flip through my error messages in translucent windows with a 3d animation effect.
If you're wondering whether to stay with XP or try out Vista, my advice is to buy a Mac. You can't stay in the past with XP forever and I've seen an awful vision of the future with Vista. Even if you hate Macs you'll probably hate them less than you'll hate Vista.
November 9th, 2007
/ Comment / Tags: Grrrr Vista / Trackback
