PEGRITZ(.com)!

Pegritz’s 100%-Hype-Free, No-Bullshit-Allowed Guide to Windows Vista

January 22nd, 2007

Hey, folks! Guess what’s happening on the 30th of January–just eight more days into the future! Alfonso Ribeiro will be announcing his triumphant return to primetime television? Nyet. Yo’ mama will be telling you that you’ll soon have a new little brother/sister/whatever? Mmmmm…not quite. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will finally release a statement addressing the rampant rumors that they were lovers in college, and that the long-running battle between Apple Computers and Microsoft is little more than the decades-long fallout over a reacharound issue? Nooooooo…but you’re close!

Windows Vista is finally going to be released to the general public on Tuesday, January 30th, 2007! WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

*sound of crickets chirping*

What…you’re not mad excited? You’re not frothing at the mouth and growing faint as all the blood surges weinerward from your brain at the very thought of The Long-Awaited New Version of Microsoft’s Tried n’ True Windows Operating System?! C’mon, people…y’all were queued up in Star-Wars-matinee-esque lines in front of Circuit Citys just slavering at the opportunity to rush on in the second Windows 95 went on sale at midnight, August 24th, 1995! Where’s the excitement now, huh? It’s like you’ve all…Idaknow, forgot about Dre Windows!

Well, that’s no doubt because the release of Windows Vista is quite underwhelming. Win95 really was revolutionary compared to Windows 3.1, which was just than a glorified DOS shell. All Windows releases since 95 have been little more than refinements of the basic OS model that debuted with Win95: fundamentally, even Windows XP–to date my favorite version of Windows ever–is a polished, updated version of Win95. Though Microsoft is touting that Vista is the Oughts version of Win95–the next big evolutionary step in Windows–it, too, is just another iteration of the Win95 concept. Oh, there’s plenty of stuff changed under the hood: the “Start” button has been replaced with a shiny Pokemon power ball, search is better integrated with every aspect of the OS, and so forth…but take a second and look at it, people. It’s still more or less the Windows you’ve come to know since 1995, just…prettier–and, hopefully, somewhat more secure. Sure, some items in the Control Panel have been shuffled around and now you have to give the damned thing an ultra-encrypted secure “OK” anytime you even want to move a .doc file from one folder to another, but you click the Start button Pikachu ball and there’re your programs and all your pr0n.

Windows Vista looks pretty, and some of its functionality is quite nice–but is it an absolute must-have upgrade? Will the Rapture take place on January 30th if less than 5% of Windows users rush out and snatch up Vista? Will your life become instantly richer if you plop down $150 to $250 on Microsoft’s Great White Hope? No cubed. If you’re perfectly satisfied with Windows XP, there’s not one compelling reason to rush into upgrading to Vista. Vista simply does not offer any great advantages over WinXP.

But what if, like me, you’re a glitz junkie or an early-adopter who just wants to snag the OS on Game Day because that Aero interface is so effin’ sweet? Keep in mind, folks: you will need to upgrade to Vista eventually, as Microsoft eventually begins to phase out WinXP–and any new computers you buy at Best Buy or Staples or WalMart from here on out are going to have Vista preinstalled. Let’s say you want to upgrade to Vista as soon as it’s available. What do you need to know? GASP! WILL YOUR COMPUTER EVEN BE ABLE TO RUN IT?!?!

Face it: every new version of any OS is going to be a little more resource-hungry and demanding than previous versions–it’s the nature of the beast. Win95 was a whole helluva lot more resource-intensive than Windows 3.1, and well do I remember the many, many, many articles I read before I bought Windows XP that warned how much of a system hog that upgrade was. Googling “Windows Vista system requirements” will get you hundreds upon hundreds of articles detailing just how badly Windows Vista is going to beat your machine into the ground and suck up so many processor cycles it’ll take Solitaire a week and three days to start up. Microsoft’s own breakdown of system requirements to run Windows Vista almost makes their own OS out to be some kind of Azathoth-like blob that demands at least a gig of RAM, a video card comparable to that in a Sony PlayStation 3, and a “soul co-processor” that apparently utilizes a user’s own cerebral cortex as extra swap-file space.

Don’t be alarmed. Chances are, unless your computer is fifteen years old and powered by a team of hamsters running in a big wheel connected to a generator, you’ll probably be able to run Windows Vista.

Microsoft provides a very handy little tool, the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, to let you discover just how good your “Vista Experience” will be, as well as to get a surprising amount of useful information about possible driver conflicts and other routine hazards of upgrading to a new OS version. The Advisor will tell you which edition of Windows Vista is best for you, provide you with a breakdown of hardware that may have problems with Vista, a breakdown of software that may be incompatible with the new OS, and a list of drivers that you’ll have to update to Vista-capable ones after install. It’s smart to run this li’l beast before even thinking of upgrading to Vista, just to be sure Vista won’t render your TV tuner card useless or break your favorite programs. If that happens, put off upgrading Vista until the proper driver and software updates are available that will work in Vista. Naturally.

The Upgrade Advisor will also tell you what edition of Windows Vista may be best for you. One of the most deceptively annoying things about Vista is that it comes in so many different “flavors”, each tailored to a different segment of the market. But don’t let the seeming panoply of choices frustrate you, as there are only two editions that are worth having: Vista Home Premium and Vista Ultimate. You needn’t waste your time checking out any of the other editions, as either: A) they simply won’t apply to you (such as Vista Enterprise, which is only designed for massive corporate installations); or B) they’re not even worth considering (like Home Basic, which really isn’t Vista, but Vista’s challenged little diaper-wearing brother). Home Premium is the edition that most folks will want, as it contains the most-excellent Windows Media Center as well as all the really nifty new Vista toys and functionality. Consider Home Premium to be something like Windows XP Media Center Edition on steroids. Windows Ultimate, on the other hand, is just like Home Premium with a number of business-related networking and security apps (like BitLocker drive encryption) added. This is the edition best suited for people who run small businesses, either from home or from a modest office: you not only get all the business functionality of Vista Business, you get all of the nifty media-centric stuff of Home Premium so you can use those computers for entertainment as well when you’re not balancing spreadsheets.

Regardless of which edition you choose, though, take the Upgrade Advisor’s hardware suggestions with a grain of salt. The biggest point of controversy surrounding Windows Vista is how powerful of a video card you need to be able to run the much-vaunted (and totally awesome) new Aero interface without suffering major system slow-down. Microsoft themselves note that to get the best visual performance, you should have a video card that supports “DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, [has] 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum), [and] Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.” Hell, I don’t even know what “WDDM” or “Pixel Shader 2.0″ even is! The absolute minimum graphics capability is listed as “a graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable.”

When you install a Windows Vista upgrade or perform a completely clean, fresh install on a newly-partitioned hard-drive, one of the first things Vista will do is analyze your hardware and set itself up to take best advantage of what you’ve got. Very few of these settings need tweaked afterward–the OS actually does a pretty good job of customizing itself to work well with your hardware–but, more often than not, the Aero interface will be turned off by default (unless you have a top-of-the-line $600 GeForce video monster) because your system “doesn’t have enough resources to run it properly.”

In a word: bullshit.

Unless you have a rusty, broken-down, 64mb-or-less El Camino of a graphics card, your machine will be able to run Aero with VERY little impact on system resources. Witness:

I’ve been running Windows Vista betas (all the way up to and including RC1) on my “test box”, a four-year-old Compaq Presario with a 1.something gHz processor, 512mb of RAM, and a run-of-the-mill, three-year-old 256mb GeForce video card in it. I decided to use that computer, an old beater if ever there was one, to test out Vista because I was more curious to see how Vista would run on an older machine instead of the still-brand-new HP Media Center titan that I purchased last August. (Also, that HP is my primary machine, and I wasn’t about to risk my data by running a beta OS on my work box.) Vista installed perfectly fine on my test box, and, of course, after completing its hardware test told me that I couldn’t run Aero. I right-clicked on my desktop, went to the Appearance tab, and selected Aero from the dropdown menu. Aero ran fine.

Now, Windows Vista on that old clunker is not superfast, by any means. In fact, sometimes, when starting a big program like Adobe Photoshop CS2 or Sony Acid 6.0, it takes quite a while to get the app up and running. But once loaded, even the biggest resource-munching audio apps seem to run fine, even on that old machine.

I did run into some hardware incompatibilities on the test box, but only because its DVD-R drive is quite old. When I upgraded the beta 2 installation of Vista to Release Candidate 1, the problem disappeared. Do be aware, though, that if you have older hardware, you will almost certainly have to go looking for newer drivers. Still, it appears to me that most of the latest WinXP drivers for common, everyday devices like CD-R/DVD-R drives, processors, network cards, and the like work just fine under Vista.

Software incompatibilities are fairly rare, but they do happen. For instance, Adobe Creative Suite 2’s file-managing apps don’t play well with the slightly-different folder architecture of Vista: trying to open a document from, say, Photoshop CS2’s “Open” dialogue causes havoc when you try to navigate from one folder to another. Or, at least, it did. Chances are that this problem has been fixed, or very shortly shall be fixed, through a simple live update of CS2. Windows Vista is not a complete overhaul of Windows, such as OS X was to MacOS: most WinXP applications are perfectly compatible with Vista. The few that aren’t will no doubt be made compatible shortly after the OS hits the streets. The best way to avoid these problems if to seek out the websites for mission-critical apps to see if their authors have anything to say about Vista compatibility.

The Intarweb has been a-babble lately with talk of all the entrenched DRM in Windows Vista. Some folks say it spells doom, doom, DOOOOOOM!!! Others…that it’s merely an annoyance. I am, of course, not at all happy with any kind of DRM, but it’s there and it must be dealt with. Fortunately, that’s easy to do: avoid any and all “protected media” and you’ll be fine. If you want to watch HD-DVD/BluRay discs, buy an appropriate hardware player and hook it up to your TV. Or install a crack for the appropriate flavor of AACS encryption (HD-DVD or BluRay), rip the DeeVamaDee, and watch it in full, unconstricted glory on Windows Media Player 11. Vista’s built-in DRM does take up resources that could be better used by…well, any and all other processes, but as long as you steer clear of protected media, its presence seems like it will be negligible.

And one final note: Vista’s User Account Control. Here’s another one of those hot-button issues that every Tom, Dick, and Harry has something to say about. Simply put, UAC is Microsoft’s hamfisted attempt at simultaneously locking down the OS to prevent “malicious software”–the insidious spy-ware–from installing on your machine without your permission and idiot-proofing your PC so that you don’t accidentally delete your C:\WINDOWS directory while trying to hide the tentacle-pr0n from your dad. For a user who rarely touches system folders, installs new software, or does anything more with a computer than check email, listen to CDs, and surf the web, User Account Control will be unnoticeable–but to power users, like myself, who always like to tinker with their OSes and are constantly installing new stuff, UAC is the most nagging, annoying pain in the ass you can ever imagine. If you do a lot of installing and systems-setting tweaking, turn UAC off completely for your account (you can do this through the User Accounts control panel item). But you may want to keep it active for Little Johnny’s account so the ignorant li’l bastid doesn’t end up screwing up your computer with viruses and demonic souls while trying to find porn-stars on MySpace.

And that’s it, folks. That’s all you really need to know about Windows Vista. If you have no need at all to upgrade to Vista, by all means don’t–you won’t be gaining anything vital. On the other hand, if you do want to upgrade soon, use your common sense first and foremost in order to prepare for the upgrade. That way the incidence of weird, unforeseen problems will be minimized.

Furthermore, do not believe the Microsoft hype, the alarmist bullshit, and especially don’t believe the Linux fanboys and Macheads ranting and raving about how Vista will spell the End of the World as We Know It. It’s just another OS upgrade, like Windows XP. And just cast your minds back to…ohhh, 2001 or so. Remember all the fuss being

made over WinXP’s terrifying “activation” requirements and how that would destroy the very notion of privacy? Didn’t amount to shit, did it? All the fearmongering around Windows Vista is just another iteration of that old harum-scarum routine.

Be cautious, sure, but don’t be afraid. For gods’ sake, it’s just an OS upgrade.