A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft released a beta of Windows Vista into the wild -- Beta 2, to be exact, or as I lovingly call it, Evaluation Copy Build 5384. I only have a year to evaluate it before it self-destructs, so as you could imagine I hurriedly and excitedly dove right into the operating system, trying to manage my time with the plethora of amazing new features before my time was up. I mean, there's just so much interesting stuff in here, I don't think a year is nearly long enough.


Vista 1-ups Mac OSX with a slightly more colorful rock wallpaper

Installing Vista without a DVD burner

Upgrading from XP was fairly harmless -- for reference, Microsoft provides the download as an ISO (disc image) file to burn onto DVD. I don't have a DVD burner, so I mounted the image using Daemon Tools and ran the installer from another hard disk (internal). It works like a charm, so don't worry about not having a DVD burner. You just need to use another drive, or make a partition on your C drive to install it from. The install process begins from within Windows XP and gives you two options -- Upgrade and Custom. Upgrade, as you would imagine, keeps all your Windows XP stuff and just updates the necessary system files. I'm a total badass, so I went with the oddly-named "Custom" option, which removes Windows from your system, but backs it up in a folder creatively dubbed "windows.old", and then installs Vista. My computer restarted roughly 89218940 times during the installation process, and finally I was staring at a familiar sight: a Windows Wizard to set up my user account. It is after I make my account and log in that I run into my first problem: I can't connect to the internet. While I can't expect Windows to magically recognize my WiFi card and install the necessary drivers, it was a little disheartening to know that the very un-fun process of installing drivers remains with Microsoft's latest OS. Since I couldn't connect to the internet, I had to scour around for the CD. Thankfully, my card was compatible with Vista, and I was soon online. Unfortunately, Vista's support for wireless networks is no more streamlined than XP's -- it's still a bulky, annoying mess, whereas in OS X it automatically connects to a network of your choice and changing networks is done through a simple drop-down menu. Here, I have a huge window with white space everywhere and some text in the middle telling me that I'm not connected. No duh. A small link shows a list of available wireless networks. I click mine, and a warning message pops up saying that my network isn't secure. No duh. I click "Connect Anyway" and I'm finally online. Sadly, I couldn't find a way to connect to the same network automatically, and I had to repeat this process every time I restarted the computer.

Internet Explorer forbids exploration

Now, prior to connecting to the internet, I was actually pretty impressed with Vista. Sure, I had the same annoying pop-up bubbles on my task bar telling me my computer is vulnerable and how dangerous the cyberworld is, and how I should have Malware, Phishing, antivirus, and firewall software enabled, but at least it looked nice. It's better organized than XP, the redesigned explorer is intuitive and easy to use, and the integrated search seems to work well (remember, I have a clean install so there wasn't much to search). Plus, that giant Windows Orb on the task bar looks cool. No, it was when I booted up Internet Explorer that my frustration really began.

My computer pretty much exploded with fury, a parade of windows telling me "YOUR COMPUTER IS AT RISK!" in synchronized fanfare. I don't have any speakers connected, but I'm confident that emergency horns would have been blasting at the loudest possible volume that my sound card could output (provided it was compatible with Vista!). The "security zones" from previous versions of IE remain intact, but now they serve one purpose only: to completely cripple your browsing experience. Apparently, Microsoft is afraid that every single website, including the default homepage MSN.com, may just pose the biggest system-threating security threat you have ever seen. You see, Microsoft's stance on security is not to make sure everything is running safely and without any cracks before the fact, but rather to set its holey ship to sail with a warning that it might sink if you go in the deep end of the pool. Vista has no idea what is going on and as a result is afraid of everything. Try to download a file and Internet Explorer will block it -- another unnecessary step I do not need to take to download something from a trusted source. This is before the "are you sure you want to download this file" dialogue box, by the way, and also before the myriad warnings during the download and installation process of just about anything. The worst thing is, I can't seem to figure out how to turn these stupid security warnings off! I disable my firewall, Windows is still asking me three times if I want to delete a shortcut from the recycle bin. I kid you not -- the pictures below show, in order, the process of deleting a shortcut to FireFox from my desktop. Apparently, Windows doesn't even trust its own firewall software and I need to give it permission for it to give explorer permission to move the shortcut to the Recycle Bin. What the hell?

New and changed in Vista

Besides the ridiculous implementation of security features, many of the other changes and additions to Vista seem superfluous as well. The sidebar, for example, misses the point of OS X's dashboard -- it's more of a part of the desktop than on its own layer, and it's constricted to the side of the screen. Microsoft's so-called "Gadgets" (read: Widgets) offer some of the same functionality as OS X's dashboard, which means it's just as much of a novelty here as it was there. That is, to say, you'll find it new and exciting for a few days and then realize you only use it to check the weather or look up an address once a week. The control panel is now organized in a more complicated manner -- Icons, headers, and bulleted lists -- instead of simple, quickly recognizable icons with one or two words underneath. Clicking on "Computer" (this used to be called "My Computer" in previous versions of Windows; obviously the change is the result of extensive focus grouping) brings up the new explorer window, which, for the most part, looks pretty nice. However, there's a blue bar underneath the address/search panels with a random assortment of links: properties, change or remove a program, change a setting. I guess taking a few random options from the control panel and slapping them onto explorer is one of the many innovate features of Vista. It is in the explorer where I realize that Vista's built-in search, while leagues better than previous Windows incarnations, is much, much slower than Mac OS X's spotlight, at least on my 4-year old PC. Finding the instant-messaging program GAIM, for example, took well over 30 seconds, as my computer's fans kicked in and chugged along hopelessly.

Performance

You may be wondering how Vista runs on a 4-year old PC. The answer? Surprisingly well, in most respects. In fact, on my 2.0GHz Pentium 4 Sony Vaio with 768MB of RAM, Vista runs comparably to XP -- most of the time. I couldn't get glass to work despite having a 128MB video card, but performance is more than adequate for me to keep it on this machine. I did notice, however, that CPU usage was through the roof -- often at 100% -- while doing nothing particularly intensive. It should be noted, also, that pressing Control+Alt+Delete no longer brings you directly to Task Manager, but rather takes up the whole screen with a slew of options I don't care about (see below).


Of course it's important to realize that Windows Vista is still in beta -- and it's blatantly obvious in many areas. Some wallpapers, for example, are placeholder images, and there's a few instances where a developer put in "maybe something cool can go here lolz" placeholder text. I'm sure some applications can use further memory optimization as well. The point is, it still feels like Windows, which is either a good, or bad thing depending on who you are. If Microsoft stops being so intrusive about security, and makes an effort to keep things consistent and organized, Vista wouldn't be half bad.