By Rob Haskins

Ahhhh, I love the smell of Vista in the morning…..once it has started up that is! The reason I say this is that it takes about the same amount of time to start my laptop running Windows XP, as it does to start Windows Vista Home Premium on my desktop computer. Not a problem perhaps? However when you compare the specifications of the two computers then Vista doesn’t look all that good. My laptop has a healthy 2.4 GHz Intel Celeron processor with 512MB of RAM, however my desktop computers runs a comparably huge 5.2 GHz AMD 64 bit Dual Core with 3584MB of RAM. Even if this means nothing to you, you can still see the vast difference in the figures and the laptop is still a very workable machine in the market today.

As with most new Operating Systems, when they first come out it looks and feels a bit different, taking a bit of time to get used to. I remember Windows XP getting a cold reception when it first came out, however I also remember Windows 95 getting a cold reception from people who did not want to upgrade from windows 3.1!

There are in fact 12 different versions of Vista have been released, however you are only likely to ever really hear about 4. Each Vista install disc comes with al the versions on it, which version installs is determined by the product key you are supplied with on purchase. Therefore if you wish to upgrade to a new version in future, you simply buy and enter a new key rather than having to buy a new disc and start all over again.

Windows Vista Home Basic is the entry level operating system. It has all the security and organisation enhancements of Vista, plus some additional features. However it does not include the exciting Aero feature as detailed below and is basically a slightly enhanced version of Windows XP.

Vista Home Premium is the ideal version of Windows for most users looking to upgrade, as it supports digital imaging, TV, movies, music, games, communications and productivity scenarios better than Vista Home Basic.

The two other main versions of Vista on the market are Vista Business, which is aimed at small and mid-size organisations, and Vista Ultimate, which basically combines the power and security of Vista Business with the entertainment functions of Vista Home Premium; not really worth the high price tag, unless you are serious about computing.

In our workshop we have been running Vista for about a year now. We received Vista RC1 last summer, which was a pre release testing version, upgrading to Windows Vista Home Premium at the end of January. Visually Vista is quite stunning to look at and so is aptly named. After the annoying niggles of the first few months with several peculiar hitches, many of which we quickly were able to deal with, Vista has now turned into a joy to use.

After testing Vista over the last year we have found that there are in fact a lot of programs that do work without problems. For example I am quite happily writing this document in Microsoft Office Word 2002, which we have installed on Vista, and it is working fine. Unfortunately older versions of Norton Internet Securities are not compatible with Vista and this is true of other software back up programs. However we have discovered that some games made for Windows XP also work under Vista, although it is best to check specifically with the ones you have in mind if you are thinking of upgrading. If you are unsure if a particular piece of software will run on Vista the best way to check is to either visit the manufacturer’s website or do a Google search for details BEFORE UPGRADING!

Having said that there does appear to be a little confusion about compatibility, even among some of the larger companies. Two months ago one of our customers was told by there internet service provider that their Broadband modem would NOT work under Vista. However we found that BT’s website had drivers (the little programs that make hardware work) which sorted this out with no problems. Again if you are unsure then research is the key. Don’t just take it from one source that something won’t work in Vista, as there is probably going to be a patch or driver out there somewhere for it.

The question of getting old hardware to work with a new operating system, such as Windows Vista, is an old one. I remember scratching around for a modem driver for my ultra fast 33.6 dial up modem when Windows 2000 first hit the streets. This problem will continue will Vista, and like XP, most of the problems encountered will be solved by the various technical companies or by Microsoft themselves in their Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Vista, which is allegedly due out before 2008. However for those who don't understand the difference between ‘real time’ and ‘Microsoft time’, ‘2008’ probably means before the end of the decade…depending on what goes pear shaped before that.

If you are one of the computer users who remember the problems encountered with Windows XP and are waiting for Service Pack 1 before taking the plunge with Vista, there are actually some good features in Vista that are not too gimmicky and some that are very useful, which are worth taking a look at now. For example, if you have a spare USB memory stick you can plug this into your PC and the system will use it as additional virtual RAM thus speeding up your machine – great. The ‘Aero’ feature of Vista Home Premium and above is perhaps slightly gimmicky, but also useful. By pressing the ‘windows’ key and tapping the tab keys on your keyboard, every open window is displayed in a slanted fashion in the centre of the screen, enabling you to simply scroll through all the programmes you have open and chose the one you want. Finally if you hover your mouse over the open pages on the task bar, a small picture of what the page looks like is displayed. This can be extremely useful to differentiate quickly if you have a lot of similar windows open.

However all of these smart new tasks take a lot of memory to run. As I said previously, the workshop PC is currently running 3.5GB of RAM and it appears to cope adequately. The Motherboard in this computer is actually capable of taking up to 8GB of RAM, however most people will not be lucky enough to have this sort of capacity. Many older Motherboards are limited to just 2GB of RAM and whilst this WILL run Vista for everyday use, the more programs you load on the more it will slow down, just like with Windows XP; and even running  defrags and registry cleans etc wil not really help. On the whole I would not recommend attempting to run Vista with anything less than 1GB of RAM, and even then you may have time to make a cup of tea while Vista attempts some of the more memory hungry tasks.

If you do want to upgrade to Vista then RAM/Memory upgrades are simple to do and fairly cheap nowadays. It would definitely be wise to look at your Motherboards maximum capability and take the RAM up to this limit before installing Vista to make life simpler in the long run.

Microsoft are most proud of the enhanced security that Vista has to offer and it is true that there are some very nice features here, including extremely responsive spam filters and enhanced user access controls. However I do think the insistent ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ box that appears at every turn is a little bit of overkill, although this can easily be disabled.

All in all while Vista was not a necessary change, the enhanced feature do make it worth a look. Wait for SP1? We are, along with many other people, running windows Vista successfully without the need to wait. However, the choice is ultimately yours…