Vista - All it Was Cracked Up to Be.

I never thought I'd be doing this, but I'm reviewing Windows Vista. This one's for you, Stephen.

Well, to tell you the truth, this isn't so much a review of Vista as it is a review of my experiences with Vista, but then you're going into highly unimportant semantics.

The Beginning, or Where Did Dell go Wrong?

The copy of Vista I have is an OEM from Dell. It came with a bunch of Core 2 machines that the school bought for their new buildings. Now this is the part where I tell you all how incredibly stupid the people at Dell are. I know you all want to hear this. Nobody else is capable of seeing all of their stupidities, it seems.

First, the copy of Vista that came with those Core 2 machines was Vista Business 32-bit. Stupid, because Core 2s are all 64-bit processors. Running a 32-bit OS forces the processor to run in compatibility mode at all times (The BIOS on your motherboard may use 64-bit code, but it's most likely 8- or 16-bit code). The second stupid thing that Dell did was to include graphics cards that only have a DVI connector for it - even though all of our monitors use VGA. This cost the district thousands of dollars in DVIm\HD-15f adapters. Third, we have no dell computers newer then ~5 years with PS/2 ports for keyboards and mice, forcing us to adopt technically more expensive USB peripherals. Fourth, we put our own HD images on the computers anyway, so we're paying for copies of Windows that we don't use. Fifth, they gave us laptops with expansion ports open to the environment. Open to being shorted accidentally just by puting them on our electricity-conducting desks. Open to permanent damage to it's internals.

The Middle, or Microsoft is Your Friend (Sometimes)

This part isn't too bad. It's what happens before you install any operating system - you make sure that it'll work.

In this case, Microsoft provides a Vista compatibility tool, dubbed the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. Let me now bash this tool.

Problem one: It needs to be installed. Why would one install a tool that will immediately be erased as soon as the upgrade happens? That's just plain stupid. Don't they beta test these things?

Problem two: It relies on the .Net foundation. The developers at Microsoft are truely demented. Most users won't have .Net because they don't need it. After all, most users don't develop. So, in order to install a tool that will be erased, one needs to install a programming framework that will also be erased once they install Vista. Whoopee!

I downloaded it, installed it, ran it, then uninstalled it. The only thing it told me that I didn't know was that Vista actually supported my graphics card. That was a real surprise. It did, however, recommended that I replace it with a better one. Makes sense, since it's only compatible with DirectX6.

I popped in the Vista disc after that, just to browse through the DVD. There wasn't really anything extra, like previous versions of Windows had (What's Windows without stupid sample videos?). It had a directory named EFI. Great if it supports that (finally)! There was another one cryptically labled SOURCES. There were no source code files within. Some of the executables were able to run on XP, though, so it looks that Microsoft doesn't care to update it's tools, as usual.

Since I've done all that I could, I ^F4, R ed out of there, rebooting.

The End, in Which Vista Proves its Value

Unfortunately, however nice the BIOS was on my PC, it would freeze whenever I'd power on my external USB HDD, which I'd planned to install Vista on. I figured that I had an extra partition anyway, so I just left it off so I could install on the internal SATA drive.

When it had 'booted' the CD, it only gave a simple text prompt saying to press any key to boot this CD or DVD. Badly worded, but well understood. I pressed the spacebar. A short while later, I was presented with a simple black and white display. There was a large progress in the lower section, with a lable that read "Please wait while Windows loads files" or something like that. I liked that screen. A wonderful minimalistic motif plus an even more minimalistic font created art together.

It didn't take too long for that bar to become completely white (A sign that Microsoft's employees are mostly white supremacists). When that happened, the screen went blank for a while, then I got the default Vista background, which wasn't as artistic, and surely not as minimalistic, as it's previous screen. It took less then a second for the mouse cursor to pop up after that.

Then the DVD drive did something amazing! It did this, to the word: absolutely nothing. It stopped reading the disc. My attempt to run Vista, a failure. Maybe it was my fault? Then I guess that the spacebar doesn't count as a 'key' to Microsoft, since pushing that down was all I did. In that case, I'm joining the whitespace revolution to allow the spacebar official recognition from Microsoft. For your information, reader, I do acknowledge the spacebar - it's a wonderful key, and I've used it several times in this article, e v e n w h e r e i t ' s n o t n e e d e d . Untill Microsoft complies with our demands, I will not install Vista.

The Denoument, or Where Akir Says Irrevalent Things

Since this article was nothing but an organized rant, I can't summarize anything but the fact that those who design for computers are out of touch with the world. I can, however, make a conclusion. That conclusion is this: This has been the best experience with Vista I've ever had. Seriously.