Zack Rippy

I had intended to do a much more through review than this. Unfortunately, I have just not had the free time to devote to it. So, I have written up some initial thoughts. Time permitting; I will post a revised version in the future. I will also be adding screenshots tonight. I forgot to upload them before I left this morning.

Windows Vista Beta 2 was released to the public last week. After downloading the 3+ gigabyte image file, I decided to take the plunge. I burned the image file, backed up my data, rebooted and prayed for the best.

First of all, the installation went smoothly, however it was a very lengthy process. After rebooting off the Vista DVD, I was presented with installation options. I chose to format my hard drive and install a clean copy of Vista, though I did have the choice to upgrade. The rudimentary disk manager interface was better than previous incarnations, allowing me to delete my current partition, create a new partition and format it NTFS. I left 20GB unformatted (have to have someplace for Ubuntu to live ). The format was very fast, after which I was prompted for the product key. I like that Microsoft has moved this step earlier in the process. It used to occur much later. There have been a few occasions in the past where I have installed Windows XP on a machine, getting more than halfway through the process, only to realize that I did not have the product key handy. It was my fault, of course, but if a product key is required, it is should be required at the beginning of the process. After inputting the key, the install routine continued. The first major action was copying files – and it was definitely a major process. It took 45 minutes to copy all the files. It then continued through the background install steps that required no user interaction. The system presented me with the regional options, asked my name and prompted me to enter a password. It never asked me any networking information, which was different from previous versions of Windows.

Once I logged into the system, I immediately noticed the overhauled user interface. The familiar Start Button no longer displayed the word “Start” and featured only the new Windows logo. The Gadget Pane was on the right side of the screen, displaying a clock and an RSS feed reader. Interesting, indeed - more on that later. The first thing I did was plug in my USB 2.0 external hard drive, containing all my crucial files and applications. The system immediately detected the device and presented me with the User Account Control dialog box. This is one of the new security features of Windows Vista. Essentially, all users (even when logged in as an administrator) run with limited access/rights. When a process or application requires administrative access, the system immediately locks and grays the screen and presents you with the User Account Control (UAC) box, asking if you want to allow the requested operation. While I admire the intention, the implementation needs a little work. It is very jarring and not very intelligent. For example, when installing certain software, I was prompted multiple times by UAC for various things – writing to C:\Program Files, modifying the registry, etc. It should be intelligent enough to understand that if I allow an installation routine to start, then I intend to allow it to perform all the necessary functions. I tolerated it for a while, but eventually disabled UAC altogether. Additionally, it is not where one would expect it to be located - in the Security Center. No, it is actually disabled through the System Configuration utility or through the User Accounts Control Panel applet. You can also modify its behavior via Local Security Settings.

The new Aero glass interface looks very nice. Windows and dialog boxes fade in and out with variable transparency. Windows seemed to open, close and move around with no real slowdown compared to Windows XP. There are some applications that do not work well (or at all) with the new interface. In those cases, the system defaults back to the default Windows desktop and disables all the new visual features until that application closes.

The gadget pane is an interesting new feature. Basically, you can plug in floating mini-apps to the desktop, such as clocks, CPU/memory monitors, timers, stock tickers and RSS readers. The only real use I would have would be having multiple clocks at work. I have to work on and manage servers located all over the world, so having easily-viewable clocks displaying multiple time zones might be beneficial to me. The RSS reader functions nicely and scrolls through a feed, displaying the headlines as it moves. Clicking on one of the headlines opens your default web browser and takes you to the topic in question. Kudos to Microsoft for using the default browser in this instance. I half-expected to see Internet Explorer open, but to my pleasant surprise, it was Firefox.

Virtually all of my “critical” applications installed and ran fine:

Firefox 1.5.0.4
Thunderbird 1.5.0.4
Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2
Adobe Photoshop CS2
Portable Gimp
Trillian Pro 3.1
iTunes 6.0.4
PowerDVD 7.0
FlashFXP 3.4 RC3
Nero 6.6 – (Nero 7 would not work)
NewsBin Pro
ISOBuster
CutePDF

One sad casualty appears to be Xnews, my favorite newsgroup client. It is older and has not been updated in a while, but I use it all the time. Unfortunately, under Vista, there is a major problem with it. When opening multiple groups, it is next to impossible to get individual window controls on each group’s window. This makes it very difficult to close out a single group. I tried in every compatibility mode offered from Windows 98 to Windows XP Service Pack 2. No luck. The application itself actually works fine; you just don’t get the individual window control (Close, Minimize, and Restore). By clicking feverishly through open group windows, you can eventually get the controls on a window or two, but it is intolerable and a pretty big hindrance to the way I use the application, so unless I come up with a workaround, I might have to say goodbye to Xnews. Farewell, old friend. You have served me well.

Speaking of Xnews, it revealed an interesting new feature of Vista. As you probably know, many applications run as if they have complete control over the operating system, writing to protected directories updating files and other potentially dangerous activities. Vista seamlessly alters this behavior and redirects such calls to a hidden, user-specific directory. Here is an example. In Xnews, I sometimes download binaries to a \temp directory under C:\Program Files\Xnews. Well, I did that under Vista, but could not find the files. I searched and searched and simply could not find them. However, in Xnews, they were clearly visible. Hmm? After some digging, I discovered what was happening. Since Xnews is an older application that does not necessarily play nice with regards to the operating system, Vista redirected its requests to alter C:\Program Files to a private directory under my user profile. Xnews was attempting to “alter” C:\Program Files by adding downloaded files to C:\Program Files\Xnews\temp. What Windows did was redirect that to C:\Users\Zack\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Xnews. When this is done, Windows adds a new button to that application’s directory called “Compatibility Files.” When you click that, you are redirected to the hidden directory. This is a very intriguing operation that I actually think could be quite useful. It forces older applications to play in their own little virtual “sandbox” in the file system. However, I do think that it should be made more obvious the user. For instance, Windows should have alerted me to the fact that Xnews was being redirected. Regardless, this is a nice feature that, with some tweaks will be very welcome.

Another minor change is that user profiles have moved from (for example) C:\Documents and Settings\Zack to C:\Users\Zack. This makes the structure a bit more logical and makes sense to me.

For antivirus, I used Trend Micro PC-Cillin 14.55 for Windows Vista. It is free for personal use and testing until October 2006. I am only using the real-time and email virus-scanning features and it works great and has a small memory footprint on my system.

There is one major issue I had and that was the networking. Microsoft has completely revamped networking under Vista. When I first booted into the operating system, both my wired and wireless adapters were detected and appeared to work normally. Microsoft breaks up networks into separate areas now. You can tell the system that a particular connection has access to the internet, local network or both. I had to give my wired connection access to both and then I could browse the web, access my desktop PC, etc. Vista also had drivers for my wireless card and could detect my wireless network. Unfortunately, it told me that it could not connect to the access point. I suspect it had to do with the AES/WPA I was running, because if I removed all security from my access point, it would connect. That was not a viable option though, so I downloaded the latest Windows XP drivers for my card from Dell and installed those with no problem. Once I did that, I could connect to the access point. Great! Things were looking good…but then the real fun began.

I needed to upload a bunch of small files to my blog (the Wordpress 2.0.3 upgrade). I fired up FlashFXP and started uploading. It was zipping right along, when all the sudden I was greeted by the trusty blue screen of death. Once I got back into Windows, I tried the same thing again – this time using CuteFTP. Same result – BSOD. I tested uploading a single, large file and that was successful, but any time I tried to do multiple small files quickly, the system halted. I disabled my wireless card and plugged in to my network directly. Everything uploaded fine. OK, so I assumed that it had something to do with loading Windows XP drivers for my wireless card and them not being totally compatible. I could live with that for now…if that were the only networking oddity. It gets better though. Once I actually got the blog upgraded, I could not reply to comments. I could post, edit, do everything – but NOT reply to comments. I kept getting odd database connection timeouts. This happened in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. I was very concerned, thinking that I had somehow hosed the blog. I finally had to give up trying to troubleshoot the issue for a while. We headed to my parents’ house for dinner. While there, I tried replying to a comment…and it was successful. When I got home, I tried replying to several other blogs from Windows Vista and I got the same kind of errors. Then I realized what was going on. For some reason, Windows Vista’s networking was the problem. I did a netstat and saw a ton of packets in TIME_WAIT and FIN_WAIT. I need to investigate further, but the problem was definitely confined to the Vista machine. I have no idea why, but I am very curious to find out.

It also seems that Microsoft has made accessing network options very convoluted. By default, you have to go to Network > Network Center > Manage Network Connections to get to basic network settings like IP address and DNS servers. Additionally, if you notice any issues with network-aware applications, you should check out the Windows Firewall. The new version includes both inbound and outbound blocking, as opposed to the inbound-only protection offered by Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Overall, I am generally pleased with Vista Beta 2. Visually, it is a very attractive operating system. Microsoft seems to finally be trying to take advantage of hardware graphic acceleration for the operating system itself. Of course, you can default back to the older, standard Windows interface if the new Aero glass does not work for you or your hardware. Once you get used to some of the new interface tweaks and how certain functions are accessed, I actually think maneuvering through the system makes a bit more sense in this version of Windows. Vista also appears to be relatively stable, given that it is beta software. I have had no lockups or blue screens, with the notable exception of the network-related issues I mentioned. I think Microsoft has some work to do with their new network stack, but I’m sure it will get better in later betas. My critical applications all work well except Xnews. I had to use a slightly older version of Nero, but it worked flawlessly and I have no doubt that the latest versions will be compatible soon, because Nero has been certified for the Windows Vista Logo Quality Program. I had no major performance problems or any configuration issues that would prevent me from using Vista. I used Windows XP as my primary OS from Beta 2 onward and it looks like I will be doing the same with Vista. So far, I have had a generally positive experience. If you enjoy tinkering with the latest software, head on over to Microsoft and download Windows Vista Beta 2. With it being beta though, I definitely recommend you back up your data first.

You’ve been warned.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 15th, 2006 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Reviews, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.