VistaJuice

It's been one month now since I first installed Vista on my Sony Vaio SZ-370 Notebook. Here is what I found that I really love and hate about Vista. Please make sure to read "The best things about Vista - My Two Cents". What I wrote about there still stands. In this post I will just expand more on things I do like - as an add-on to the previous post mentioned, and talk about some things I do not like.

Installation

I knew right away, a thing that's been buzzing around the net for a week or so now, Microsoft's Express Upgrade will be all but Express in the end. It is just logical, so even though I qualify for en Express Upgrade from Sony, on the 24th of January I went down to the Microcenter and got myself a nice Vista Ultimate OEM. I should say my girlfriend Sali actually bought it for me since I could not stop bragging about it for months before (thanks babe).

I did not want to upgrade my XP, since from earlier experiences with upgrading other operating systems to XP the outcome was a bloated machine full of crap. This was before I knew, and before ExtreemeTech did a benchmark of Upgrade vs. Clean Install (remember, I mentioned it here). The update does not actually slow down your computer as it was a case before.

So, the first step was to back up everything. Call me skeptical, but I did not trust Microsoft to transfer my files and settings using the Transfer Wizard which came on the DVD, rather, I opted for a good old manual file by file and folder by folder backup to my Western Digital 500GB HDD (I love that little black "book"). At the time, Windows Easy Transfer Companion did not yet exist, so backing up all of my applications was out of the question. Not that I would use it anyway - but hey :) It just shows all the cool little things Microsoft has put out in the meantime to ease the upgrade/transfer process.

After that long 4-5 hour backup process, I was sure everything was safe and secure, I popped in a Vista Ultimate DVD and told it to clear everything off my computer and do a clean install. I was prepared to wait for an hour or so for Vista to install itself, I sat down to watch the Orange County Choppers on Discovery HD, and boom - after 25 MINUTES Vista was up and running on my computer! I was really pleased about this! I event thought something went wrong - but it didn't.

Therefore, installation went really well.

Initial Setup (Drivers, Core Applications, etc.)

Even though Vista comes with with million or so drivers installed - I knew some things will not be detected. It's just logical.

I prepared myself for this by doing a thing I learned while testing Longhorn Alpha and Vista Beta builds... On my backup drive I copied the original Windows XP "Windows" and "Program Files" directories with everything in them. This was to effectively back up all of the drivers from XP without worry if the original application put them under Windows or Program Files folders. I know I could have been more specific on this, but heck - I got a lot of space and it saves me a lot of time by just copying everything :) This was also before I found out about DriverMax 2.0, a nice program I mentioned couple of days ago - which will back up all of your drivers for free.

Windows started up and it began looking for drivers. Sony of course had no Vista-ready drivers at the time, so I pointed the Driver Wizard to the Windows and Program Files folders form the old XP on the backup drive. It worked like magic - within minutes all my devices were detected without a hitch. Thank God I said! ;)

Next, since the network was up, I started the Windows Update and let it check if there was anything out... There were some updates for the Windows Defender, etc., if I recall it well, and I think a day or so later there was an update for my Nvidia GeForce 7400 Go graphics card, but nothing major.

Next on the to-do list were the applications. Vista of course comes with a bunch of new useful stuff, the Photo Gallery, improved built-in CD/DVD burning capabilities, nice Media Player, but I like to have some of my usual apps. With business on my mind in the first place, I installed Apache web server, MySQL Database server, Dreamweaver and Photoshop and Office 2007 immediately. They all still seem to work just fine (except for the DreamWeaver which hiccups at times - usually when using DreamWeaver's File->Open dialog box).

Windows Gallery looks fine and all, but I prefer a nice free Image Viewer from FastStone. It is just great - you Have to check it out! They also have a nice free Image Resizer application which I use constantly. Windows XP had a really nice PowerToy from Microsoft which enabled me to resize photos on the fly, but until an equivalent for Vista comes out, I'll have to rely on FastStone's Image Resizer...

I do not seem to care much about Windows integrated CD/DVD burning capabilities either, so I was relieved when Sony issued a new Roxio Easy Media Creator app! This is just one of the nicest programs for all your DVD recording needs! I used to like Nero before, but it became a bloatware! I like a nice, functional and easy to use applications - Nero went form just that, straight to the biggest bloatware around. Just like Norton Antivirus - Geez, that thing uses more resources than anything else - Thank God for AVG!

This brings us to the AntiVirus. Of course I installed it, heck, everyone should have one on a Windows machine. AVG Free from Grisoft.com has a relatively small memory footprint and it is never annoying. Check it out.

With this I had my core drivers and most common applications installed. This was one of the reasons I prefer the Clean Install vs. the upgrade. I finally get a chance to get rid of all of those stupid little apps I installed before and never got around to uninstall them. My computer can breathe!

Experience

Does Vista bring the WOW? For me, it does; constantly. I really like that some things were really improved upon. Let's talk about things I like first, and afterwards, about the things I really do not like.

#1) NETWORK
First thing you will notice are the network improvements! IPv6 is finally supported and the whole network stack has been rewritten. The way users connect to networks - either wired or wireless - is really amazing and quite straight forward. Also, I love how Vista detects the network connection and in an instant everything is set up for me; I can open a browser and surf. I was really amazed when I plugged in a network cable into my laptop and at that VERY moment, Google talk notified me of new emails. It was INSTANT!!!

Wireless works just the same way. You are notified that there are networks around, if you decide to connect - a list of all networks is shown. You choose the one you want, type in any security key if such is required by your network, and ta-da, DONE. Within couple of seconds Vista will ask you what type of the Network Location this network belongs to - Home, Work or Public. Depending on what you choose here, every time you connect to that network again, Firewall and Network Sharing settings will be automatically set for you in the best and most secure way. Really nice!

#2) UI (User Interface)
Aero is really amazing. I will not brag much about it since everyone is, but just so you know - I digg it. I changed the default color from Blue to Black - it just reminds me more of the beautiful Longhorn themes I am already used to :) The glass effect is nice, and the best part of the User Interface are DreamScenes (with DeskScapes from StarDock) and the beautiful Vista SideBar.

I had DreamScenes on from the day one - but there were no nice "dreams" available for download. Right now - there are aplenty at dream.wincustomize.com. Really nice thing having an animated desktop background. You can see how it looks in a nice, but short, preview I made.

SideBar is still short on good gadgets, since most of them are simply converted over to Vista's gadget format from other side bars around (like Google's). This is not a big deal though since most of us do not use 30" displays, so the SideBar fills up with gadgets quite quickly. I use couple of nice ones which you can see and read more about later on in the recommendations part of this post.

#3) Backup and File Versioning
I'm a big fan of an easy to use backup solution. Most of the ones I find around are just too complicated for novice user to use, and for me, on the other hand, even though I love to play around with pretty much anything computer related, it makes me uneasy if I am not 100% sure that my backups are all in order. Vista solves this problem for me. I have a daily backup running every night at 2AM - and it seems to work just fine. I also run a Full System backup (which enables me to restore the whole system as it is right now) every month. Together with the Daily Backups - I think this does it. The process is really straight forward, even my grandma could follow it through. Also, it's very nice that if my backup location is not available at the moment, Vista reschedules the backup for a later time and keeps on checking if the backup location is accessible; that's nice.

File Versioning is another really nice feature. It happened to all of us that we go delete a file, or work on a document or a photo, make changes and save over the original one. In Vista you can still do this and not get a headache because Vista saves different file versions on every change. At any time you can simply revert back to a previous version. This definitely comes helpful if you are retouching a lot of photos like I do. Vista will save an old version so in case you need to restore an original - it's now just a few clicks away.

#4) Speed
Many mention how Vista requires a really fast machine, maybe even a new computer in some cases if you have a really old PC. This is true to an extent but it all depends on what your expectations and needs are.

I think that those older Pentium 4 CPU's at 2.something and 3GHz or so will do just fine. The thing Vista needs is RAM and these days - this is a really inexpensive investment compared to other hardware. With 2GB on board, DreamScene on, and all settings set to show the best visual effects Vista occupies 53% of my RAM (remember I do have web and SQL servers running as well). They say 512MB is OK, 1GB is recommended by many, if I'm not mistaking, but my recommendation is - GET 2GB! I read somewhere just couple of minutes ago that you should get 4GB - c'mon people! 2GB is just fine!

If you want full beauty shown you should have a nice Graphics Card. With my Nvidia 7400 Go with 64MB RAM - I am doing just fine. Everything is as smooth as it gets. If I had a choice, I'd get a nice 256MB higher-middle-end card - but heck - can't put that in my laptop. This is more required for Games, but for pure Aero Experience 64MB mid-range graphics card will do just fine! The only game I play is Counter Strike Source - which is quite demanding - and it works just fine on this Nvidia card.

Now we finally come to why #4 thing I like is speed. On a nice machine with my recommendations up there, Vista is really fast! Things tend to open up really quick, even Photoshop and Dreamweaver (probably thanks to the Pre-Fetch technology) are quite snappy. On XP I used to have Photoshop open at all times since it would just take too long - and I require it every now and then. With Vista, a press on a windows button and a short typing of the word "photo" followed by an [Enter] button brings it up instantly. Vista IS fast.

I did defragment my disk 2 times since the first time everything was installed (a really long process with no indication when it will finish), but it was worth it. Defrag is really good (as mentioned earlier), and together with it's automatic defragmentation - I think my system is nicely optimized. So, speed is definitely an improvement in Vista over XP.

In short I am not going back to XP any time soon. Most of the computers which can run XP can run Vista, so in case I have to use an older computer - I'll just put Vista without all the bells and whistles Aero brings when it is fully on. Vista simply IS more than just looks - after a month of constant use - I can confirm that. For more about what I like in Vista you can check my old post from January 31st titled The best things about Vista - My Two Cents.

Things I do not like

After a month I finally found some things that do annoy me though. Interestingly enough some of them are directly connected to the things I like about Vista :)

#1) Network (lol)
At times it does piss me off! The concept is great, as I explained in the likes above, but it is bugged. When I switch from networks (Public one at Panera Bread) to a Wireless at Home, even though my Home network is set to be Private (meaning network sharing and discovery should be on) - at times it is not set automatically. Not a big deal - but it bugs me.

The most annoying bug is in the view where you list Wireless Connections. You can set the priority of the network (higher or lower) but there is NO WAY of sorting all of the networks by priority - only by Name, security type, network type and mode! So in the list of couple of Wireless Networks I cannot tell which one has a bigger priority than the other? I can only tell this to MS for this: Test, test, test- stare at the application, and then test some more! This is like submitting an essay without proof reading it!

Another thing about networks that I love and Hate are Location Types! I have not found a way to create my own Location Types. All networks simply cannot be put into 3 groups: Private, home and work. I need a way to create my own network locations - say Home with Sharing ON, and Home location with sharing OFF.

One more annoyance is that in the Network and Sharing Center - if I'm connected to more than one connection, say Panera Bread's Public Network, and my Home-Server's Private over VPN - I can control Sharing and Discovery only in one place - globally. So, I am connected to my home server over the VPN - I need the network discovery and file sharing ON in order to access the remote shares - but it is all set to OFF by default since I am connected to Panera's Public Network. If I try to enable it - it will effectively enable the discovery and file sharing for Panera - and screw it up by making this connection PRIVATE - and not Public as I would like to keep it.

I am a web developer, not a windows application developer, so I do not even know if and how such thing could be done - but it would be great that sharing and discovery settings can work on Per-Network basis. Say - I disable sharing and discovery for Panera - the public Internet access point, but if I connect to my home server over the VPN - sharing and discovery for this network connection only should be on. I don't think I want too much :) or if such is possible - but I know one thing - It sure would make more sense!

Not to brag too much about Network - the truth is that it is really easy to simply click and turn on and off the file sharing globally at any time - so it's not a big deal - but it would be a nice feature (in Service Pack 1, at least?)

#2) Inconsistent and restrictive UI
I like how new user interface looks like, but it is not consistent and some things about Windows Explorer (not Internet Explorer) are just plain dumb. Namely, Microsoft was really smart and they figured out that not everyone wants to browse through the File Tree, and that it would be really great to let users have their Favorite locations in the Windows Explorer. So they did it. See the image below:

The favorites in Windows Explorer

A great thing is, as you can see from the screenshot, I can have my network shares and specific folders like (Projects and Websites) always available to me on the left side. Now, you can move around the links in favorites to suit your needs - I like to have Desktop First, then system folders next, then network shares, and then other stuff like public and websites. When I want to run an application using the Run Dialog (Windows button + R) or if I just simply go to File->Open dialog in any of the applications, even though the little explorer dialog box looks similar to the one when I open say My Computer folder - it's favorites are restrictive and unorganized! See below:

The Open File dialog box - does not allow moving of favorites

First: my favorites should resemble the favorites as they are shown in the My Computer window - they are all still there - but not ordered in the fashion I like them to be. This does make it a pain in a butt when I want to find my files since the location of the favorites is just not consistent. Furthermore, in this type of Browse/Open dialog which you get from any application - you cannot even move the favorites around as you are able to in the main Explorer window - so simply, there is no way to set things right. If I try to move desktop higher in the hierarchy of the favorites, It tells me that I cannot place it in Links :( It is not a BIG deal - but this type of things should not even be happening.

#3) Firewall
Windows Firewall is great and all - but useless in the end. I mentioned this earlier, the issue is not with the Firewall itself so much as it is with the default policy set by Microsoft. All outbound connections are Allowed by default. They say this was so users do not be bothered with the popups the very first time when a lot of our applications are trying to connect to the Internet - but I say this is crap. I rather click and know exactly which of the applications on my computer should or should not have access to the Internet than have to click on the UAC pop-ups so many times... Not that I mind them - but I rather know I'm ok on the Firewall side - computer I can manage myself.

#4) Space Consumption
This is not really a too bad of a thing in this day and age of huge 500 gig hard drives and such, but thanks to the enhancements such as File Versioning, Vista takes even 30% of your hard drive space for such tasks. Not a biggy as I said - but it is something you should know.

#5) SONY
I must admit, Sony has been rally good about putting up the application updates for all of their software and drivers for the hardware I have on my Vaio. Every day or so there is a new Vista-compatible update which gives me back the features I had with my laptop in XP. They could be faster - but I won't brag about that - the thing that really upsets me is that they got a bunch of the updates right there on their site to download - and many of them require one-another. There is NOWHERE to be found - what should be installed first - and just a little bit MORE of a description what the update I am downloading is really for. I had to go and guess pretty much what should be installed first - and I still do not even know what some of the updates I downloaded have enabled/enhanced on my computer. Thank God - now my Fn button works, but I still do not have use of the EVDO SonyEricsson modem for Cingular. This is in no way Microsoft's fault - so BAD SONY! :)

#6) Nvidia!
They are facing a class action suit as you may have heard over incompatible and quite badly implemented drivers for Vista. They really suck. Since I downloaded the drivers for my Nvidia card from Sony (provided to them by Nvidia I suppose), from time to time my display driver dies. Windows Vista is a lot smarter than XP when it comes to this, so it restarts the driver and brings everything back to place - without giving that blue screen of death - or interfering with my work. A huge + for Microsoft on how this is being handled! But on the other side - a huge minus for Nvidia... I reverted back the driver to the one made by Microsoft - it all works fine now... I'll stay with this one until Nvidia publishes a more stable drivers for Vista... I wrote about the latest one in the previous post, but I do not know how this one behaves. I still have to wait for Sony to get them form NVidia and wrap them around their own installer... Geez!

I thought there would be more negative things and things I do not like about Vista, but these mentioned pretty much do it. If anything else comes to my mind I'll make sure to make a post about it.

Apps I use and which you will also probably like with Vista

Vista comes with a lot of improvements and a lot of apps/add-ons depending on which version you get. Here is a list of the applications I found really useful and which you will probably like:

1) RocketDock - one thing I always liked on Mac OS was that beautiful shortcut launcher at the bottom which zooms the icons in when you mouse over them. Since long time ago RocketDock existed and I used it in XP as well - but it really seems that it's right place is in VISTA. It fits like a glove and it comes in quite handy since it lets you unclutter the desktop of all those application shortcuts - so you can enjoy the beautiful Dream Scene and DeskScape's backgrounds. Best of all - it's completely free! Here is how it looks on my machine, it's a full screen shot of my desktop; the RocketDock is at the very top.

I love it!

2) Feeds Plus is a great little add-on if you subscribe to a lot of websites through the RSS feeds. It sits in a taskbar and notifies you of any updates to your favorite sites - like VistaJuice.com :) I mentioned it earlier, so make sure to get it.

3) I am a big fan of Internet Explorer for some reason. I like FireFox and use it as well, but I find myself always "at-home" when I'm within the IE. There are of course some features IE is missing, but one small free little app (available for both XP and VISTA) is set to change that. I wrote about it just couple of days ago, so make sure to get IE7Pro Add-On! It will make your life so much easier. Among other things, it lets you use the right mouse button to draw different gestures which perform pretty much anything you need. Simply check out the video and you'll see what I'm talking about - IT'S A MUST HAVE! A true time-saver!

4) Another little add-on comes straight from Microsoft, and it is called Snip-It. It lets you select any content while browsing a web site, right click - and email it with ease using most popular email programs (even Google and Yahoo).

Simply select content and email it

5) If you like FireFox more - then make sure to get this beautiful Vista-Like theme for FireFox! It's just amazing.

6) AVG Free Antivirus from Grisoft! - nicest little Antivirus you can get, in my opinion.

7) If you are into reading the newspaper - check out New York Times Reader - a great application! This is the only way I read my news now! You simply must check it out.

8) DeskScapes from StarDock - a Vista-Ultimate-Only add-on to the DreamScenes from Microsoft. It just makes you DreamScenes experience so much better + there are more "dreams" to download at WinCustomize.com than there are "scenes" form Microsoft :) Check out how it looks below:

Animated Wallpapers

9) Gadgets I find useful you can see from the screenshot below, and in the order they show up, here are more details:

1. Clock - everyone's gotta love it and it comes with Vista
2. Photos - nice little thing which always plays my favorite photos from the album
3. Battery Monitor - a must have for a mobile/laptop user (get it here)
4. MultiMeterD - dual core CPU/RAM monitor - I love this one (get it here)
5. Uptime gadget - a very nice thing which shows me how long since my last restart (get it here)
6. Weather - included with Vista - always know what's it like outside :)
7. Game Server Monitor - a very nice gadget for monitoring how many players are on your favorite game servers. It can monitor a bunch of different types of On-Line games and here I use it for my Counter Strike Source server which I run. You can find out more about my server at css.peconiHosting.com, and to get a gadget click here.
8. Currency converter - included with Vista - a very nice thing. I always need to know Dollar-Euro ratio - this makes it easy.
9. Stocks monitor - included with Vista - a beautiful little thing I keep on my desktop since I like a bigger view at my stock investments.
10. Notes - included with Vista and located all over my desktop, great thing for keeping my to-do list always accessible. Sorry, you can't read what I gotta do ;)

My gadgets - the prettiness on the right.

This was my overview of 1 month with Vista. As you can see there are many nice things, some minor annoyances - but overall - it is the best operating system I ever used. I am exposed to Linux, XP and at times OS X on daily basis - so I do know pro's and con's of all of these. I love Linux and let it run all my servers, I like OS X but sadly I do not own a Mac (too expensive), but in any case - for a day-to-day tasks, browsing, writing this article, developing web applications, etc. - I always turn to Windows and this time to Vista. I'll let you know how my second month with Vista goes by in a month. Until then ... tune to VistaJuice.com for all of your Vista news, tips and tricks - I'll keep on posting about them until we squeeze everything out of Windows Vista experience.