Microsoft Windows Vista review

After five years and a budget reckoned to have neared $10 billion, Windows Vista is here. It’s promised to be many things along the way – some of it’s made it through to the final product, some has fallen by the wayside. But the code is now locked down and we’re finally left with the successor to XP.

We’ve been using the Vista beta code for more than two years, much of that on machines we use every day. Over the next seven pages, we reveal what’s good, bad and what still has to prove itself.

The compatibility question

Despite some of the hysteria surrounding Vista’s hardware requirements, if your PC runs Windows XP without problems, it’s almost certain to run Vista without issue too. Even Aero’s visual effects aren’t particularly demanding – the integrated graphics of a modern entry-level notebook (Intel’s GMA 950 or more recent) will cope. The one caveat to this is RAM – while XP may scrape by on 512MB or less, Vista benefits hugely from 1GB or more.

Other good news is that there are significantly more drivers packaged with Vista than in XP, as well as many more on Windows Update (you can check this before you install). If you own a PC from the past two years with nothing outlandish in the way of hardware, you can reasonably expect a fully populated Device Manager. Most networking hardware works immediately and we’ve yet to find a USB printer that won’t work.

Beyond that, it’s currently a mixed bag. The default Nvidia and ATi drivers have exhibited bugs, integrated Realtek sound chips and many of Creative’s discrete cards are incorrectly handled, and some common RAID controllers still don’t have Vista drivers. We expect another round of releases in late January, and we’d advise checking for new drivers on a weekly basis for the time being.

When it comes to software compatibility, the biggest problem comes from installers that simply don’t recognise the operating system and stop. The compatibility mode (similar to that in Windows XP) sometimes helps but it isn’t guaranteed – again, check with manufacturers, since many installers already have patches. Other problem areas include hardware-specific applications (such as notebook hotkey utilities), disc-burning software (including Roxio and Nero’s latest versions), and those that sulk over the Aero graphics engine (such as iTunes). With some of these, Vista will switch off Aero globally, re-enabling it once the application is closed.

The other big issue is security software, as most existing applications won’t work with Vista’s new security model – particularly in the x64 versions. If you feel uncomfortable without anti-virus software installed, upgrade to the latest version first.

The Aero experience

All the versions of Vista you’re likely to come across, except Home Basic, will support Aero. This is Microsoft’s name for Vista’s “next-generation desktop experience”, the most obvious sign of which is the Windows Aero theme: this offers transparent windows, dynamic reflections and sophisticated animations. According to Microsoft, this makes it easier to focus on the active window, but we haven’t noticed a dramatic increase in our productivity as a result. It looks nicer, though.

Just to confuse things, the “Aero experience” isn’t simply the Aero Glass theme – Aero also enables live taskbar previews (so you see a “live” preview of the minimised program when you hover the cursor over the taskbar) and niceties such as Windows Flip and Flip 3D. Flip is the evolution of the old and trusty Alt + Tab, but with live previews instead of the icons in XP. Flip 3D takes things one stage further by stacking the Windows obliquely in a pseudo-3D environment.
Aero uses the new Desktop Composition Engine to render graphics in hardware, rather than the software-based GDI and GDI+ of previous Windows versions. This both reduces the load on the CPU and, in conjunction with the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM), makes badly written drivers less likely to take down the entire Windows kernel when they crash.

Some will dismiss the majority of Aero as a purely aesthetic frippery, but disabling the slick visuals could theoretically slow down Vista, dumping the composition load back onto the CPU. If you don’t like the transparency effect, you can tweak its opacity or colour over a wide range, or turn it off completely.

For PCs without sufficient 3D clout, you’ll be presented with the Vista Basic theme (or the very similar Windows Standard if you buy Vista Home Basic). That does away with the more complex graphics handling and transparency effects, but it still looks more mature than XP’s default Luna scheme.

In the longer term, the rewriting of the graphics engine also has some significant ramifications for developers and, in turn, the look of applications they can produce. Being able to utilise the power of graphics hardware via more sophisticated APIs gives interface designers more freedom, and Aero is just scratching the surface.

Another big change is that system text and icons are now vector-based rather than being bitmaps. This makes it much easier to scale the Desktop (and compatible applications) up and down in size, to suit your preferences and the resolution of your screen.

Windows Explorer

With an increasing number of files littering our hard disks, Vista introduces new ways of finding and organising them, as well as easier navigation. The new-look Explorer windows dump the cartoon icons of XP, hiding most of the options behind drop-down arrows. The menu bar is also hidden by default. The “breadcrumb trail” bar at the top of Explorer Windows takes some getting used to, but it’s a much easier way of navigating deep folder structures, and presents a friendlier nomenclature than XP’s absolute paths. The absence of the Up button is the most frustrating change, but you can generally achieve the same effect using a drop-down menu.

The window itself is divided into a number of optional panes. The new Links menu on the left-hand side of windows is a great addition – you can re-order, add, delete or rename shortcuts there, and it’s by far the quickest way to skip between folders. Disappointingly, however, you can’t Ctrl + click to open a new window instance from it. Underneath, there’s a Folder tree list, which can be slid up to join or replace it. It’s handy to have both, but isn’t an elegant implementation, particularly at lower screen resolutions, and it’s easy to end up with a mess of shortcut buttons.

The Properties pane at the bottom of Explorer windows is a handy way to view or edit metatags (supported on all file types), and you can also set a preview pane on the right-hand side. This will preview Office documents, or supported media formats, although it’s often only marginally quicker than invoking the actual application.

XP’s passive column headers have been replaced by more complex versions. Drop-down arrows allow you to sort or filter by name, date range, type or practically any other attribute. You can further sort into Stacks (effectively virtual folders, with a single item representing each division) or collapsible lists. In conjunction with the multitude of “view by”, “sort by” and “group by” options, you can display folders or files in hundreds of ways, with little regard to where they’re actually stored. As this uses the Instant Search index, you can create a Saved Search from this, and immediately recall a dynamically updated version in the future, complete with the same formatting. It’s a very powerful tool.
Instant Search

Windows XP’s search feature was painfully slow and cumbersome, and although both Windows 2000 and XP had indexing services, they were turned off by default. That’s all changed in Vista, with an index acting as its principle source for search results. All Explorer windows (and many of the integrated apps) contain a search box at the top right, and results appear almost as soon as you start typing. Once you train Vista to your way of working (by adding extra folders to the index or including non-indexed locations and system files), it’s much, much quicker than XP – and there isn’t a bounding puppy in sight, either.

There’s also an Instant Search box integrated into the redesigned Start menu. With the focus switching to it immediately, hit the Windows key and type in part of the application name – “calc”, for example – and the standard program list is replaced by search results. Applications are prioritised (in this case showing Calculator uppermost), with emails or documents displayed beneath. For browsing programs, the All Programs link now uses scrollbars to display large numbers of items, rather than XP’s cascading approach. The end result is both neater and quicker to use.

User folders

All the patronising “My” prefixes have been dropped from user folders, replaced with the concept of User and Public files. There’s also been an overdue rearrangement of the default hierarchy: the user’s “Home” folder, named after your user account, contains Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos folders, as well as per-user Desktop and Favorites folders. New to Vista are Downloads, Contacts (holding .contact files), Links (with the shortcuts used in the Favorite Links pane), Searches (for Saved Searches) and Saved Games. It’s a welcome attempt to rationalise things, and makes previously hidden-away data more accessible for transferring or backing up – assuming that applications take advantage of the new structure.

Each one of these “special” folders is location-independent, with a Properties tab allowing you to move them elsewhere, either locally or on a network. It’s a great feature, but not very robust: you can’t move the root user directory, for example, which would have been a great way of rapidly setting up an OS-independent file store. It’s also easily confused, and can end up losing the links altogether if you’re not careful. Worst of all, using network locations invokes Vista’s Sync Center to try to keep a copy available for offline use (not helpful for a music server, for example), and it can easily all get rather complicated. It should be friendlier than this.

Sidebar and Gadgets

The Windows Sidebar has been something of a motif for Vista since the early days of Longhorn. Its final implementation is comparatively modest, acting as a docking bar for Gadgets – small, generally single-purpose applications that can also be free-floating on the Desktop. Some Gadgets come pre-installed, with the more functional including a clock, weather information, a picture frame and Post-It-style notepad.

Sidebar is enabled by default and, providing they have enough Desktop space, we’re sure most people will keep it active. The RSS reader is particularly useful and, while the clock and weather Gadgets are hardly revolutionary, they’re both worth keeping.

At launch, however, Sidebar was a little buggy. The RSS feeder didn’t update automatically on one of our sample PCs, while the whole Sidebar proved to be a memory hog on another.
Security

With the amount of negative publicity Windows XP has endured around security, it’s been a key focus during Vista’s development. There are far too many changes to go into detail here, but for a full picture, take a look at www.pcpro.co.uk/links/149_vista2

You’ll soon become acquainted with Vista’s most obvious security introduction – User Account Control (UAC). Every time a potentially harmful process is launched, Windows locks down and a UAC dialog box will demand your attention. It’s proved to be one of Vista’s most controversial features, and a source of vocal complaints throughout the beta programme. While it remains intact in the final product (and can certainly be annoying in the early stages of an installation), it becomes less intrusive in everyday use.

Equally important, Vista makes it far easier to run as a Standard Account than XP, with its equivalent Limited Account. It will allow you to do all the day-to-day jobs such as running most programs or deleting your own files, but not access anyone else’s files, install or uninstall software or delete files that the computer needs to run. And games, which rarely ran under XP’s Limited Account, should all run too. Even experts should run a Standard Account when they don’t perform admin-related tasks, although you’ll have to create one manually.

Vista also sees a huge boost to the Windows Security Center. This is broken down into four components: Firewall, Automatic Updating, Malware Protection and Other Security Settings. If you buy anti-virus software, for example, Microsoft intends it to “plug into” the Security Center console, and be controlled from there.

The new bi-directional Firewall is also far more configurable than its XP equivalent, and will operate almost silently – that is, it pops up with a message only when it needs you to take action. Best of all, we don’t see any need to install a third-party firewall at all, especially if you’re using a router to connect to the internet.

The Malware protection section covers both spyware and viruses. Vista includes Windows Defender anti-spyware, which is installed by default and runs silently in the background, using Windows Update to download new definitions. In our tests, it hasn’t quite managed to beat some standalone offerings, but it should be enough to keep you out of trouble. The omission of virus software is controversial, but free anti-virus software such as AVG’s (http://free.grisoft.com) is already available and Vista-compatible.

“Other security settings” is the place to go if you want to switch off User Account Control or change your internet security settings – closely tied in with Internet Explorer 7. This also benefits from an optional phishing filter, which checks sites you’re visiting against blacklists, as well as forcing windows to display an address bar, so you can always tell where you really are. It also runs in the new Protected Mode (not available in the XP version of IE7), effectively denying the browser access to your files and the Registry.

Parental controls are another nifty new feature. Much like the current crop of internet security suites, these allow you to control the amount of time users can browse, the sites they can visit, which games they can run (for example, by age rating) and which other programs they can run too – such as blocking instant messenger apps.

The final notable inclusion is BitLocker drive encryption, which is only included in the Ultimate and Enterprise editions. It can either use a TPM (Trusted Platform Module) built onto a motherboard or, via a more convoluted process, a USB thumb drive. There’s little to lose by opting for the former (performance is barely affected), but the possibility of the thumb drive being lost or failing leaves us uneasy about recommending the latter.
These changes are all broadly welcome, but we do have issues with the clarity of some. UAC, in particular, adds to the existing barrage of panicky dialogs from browsers, installers and Windows itself. Often, there’s little indication of what process has prompted them, and even less information about what to do.

It’s also currently impossible to be definitive about how secure Vista will be. Microsoft’s attempts to bait the hacking community have so far been largely academic – the serious test will be when there’s money to be made from exploiting it. The other issue is that “user error” is by far the biggest problem when it comes to security – opening unsolicited attachments, downloading dubious “utilities” and clicking “run” when you know you shouldn’t. UAC and Standard accounts put up barriers, but it’s disappointing that people aren’t steered into using a Standard account day-to-day rather than an Administrator.

The Backup Center

The ancient backup utility in Windows XP was functional, but hidden away and not particularly easy to use. It’s been completely replaced by a new Backup wizard, which will allow you to back up individual drives, directories or file types on a schedule. Although it hasn’t proved entirely robust in our testing – it’s easily confused by the power being cut to a removable drive, and occasionally reports errors that aren’t actually true – we expect these bugs to be fixed.

It’s certainly a big step in the right direction, but there are some limitations. There’s next to no granularity in which files or locations are backed up (all or nothing of Documents, for example), and it also insists on backing up your system drive. Different versions also offer varying levels of support, with only the Ultimate edition supporting the new image-based Complete PC Backup – this is a key feature that really should be rolled out across all versions.

The Shadow Copy feature from Windows Server 2003 makes its way into the Ultimate and Business editions, in the form of Previous Version. Every time a file or folder is changed, a backup copy is stored, allowing you to revert back in case of emergency. Accessed via the Properties dialog, it isn’t terribly user-friendly (there’s no Preview option, for example), but should nonetheless be welcomed by businesses.

The 64-bit question

When you buy any edition of Vista, you’ll actually receive two versions on separate DVDs: the standard 32-bit version and the 64-bit or “x64” version. While it may seem that the 64-bit version is inherently better, for the vast majority of home users the 32-bit option is far preferable.

In theory, 64-bit Vista allows for a higher specification PC by allowing – in the case of the Ultimate edition – up to 128GB of system RAM if you have a 64-bit-capable processor such as an AMD Athlon 64 or Intel Core 2 Duo. In practice, that’s a moot point for all but a tiny percentage of present-day PC users. As it is, all 32-bit versions of Vista will allow for up to 4GB of RAM, which will be more than sufficient for several years to come.

Once everyday applications do start hitting the 4GB limit, hardware and software manufacturers will naturally move to developing 64-bit hardware drivers (these need to be custom written) and applications as a preference. For now and the medium term, though, manufacturers will concentrate on producing 32-bit-compatible products first and 64-bit compatibility will come a distant second. Believe it or not, there’s still a significant amount of 16-bit software around too, particularly in things such as installation routines. Vista x64 won’t run 16-bit code at all, and many of 32-bit Vista’s legacy application compatibility features also aren’t present in x64, so many older applications will be incompatible.
In addition, the x64 edition doesn’t allow “unsigned” device drivers to be installed and run – they all need to be approved and digitally certified by Microsoft. Many drivers aren’t signed, particularly for low-price hardware, because the certification process costs time and money. For mission-critical servers and workstations, the refusal of x64 to accept unsigned drivers is a good thing, since the majority of unrecoverable OS crashes occur due to errant drivers. But for the average home user, it means that many device drivers for everyday hardware – your low-end but perfectly usable scanner, for instance – will refuse to install on x64.

Networking boost

The networking stack has had a massive overhaul, principally to improve security and reliability. It’s also introduced native support for Internet Protocol 6, important for the future, but of limited use right now.

The new Network and Sharing Center handily gathers together most of the common settings, and should make less technical users more comfortable. Connecting to a new wired or wireless network is much simpler, with informative dialogs quickly guiding you through the process.

The new Windows Meeting Space application is a kind of wireless ad hoc virtual-conferencing application, allowing participants to share documents as “handouts”, see each other’s Desktop, and even assume control of another participant’s system if the need arises. The idea isn’t to provide a remote teleconferencing system but for a supplemental, shared resource to augment physical meetings and reduce the need to swap USB sticks at the end of presentations. Meeting Space is included in all versions of Vista, but Home Basic only allows you to join existing meetings, not organise them.

Power management and mobile features

Power management has received a major overhaul. For a start, advanced power settings now give greater granularity, so you can tweak everything from wireless adapter settings to maximum processor states. Both AMD’s Cool’n’Quiet and Intel Enhanced SpeedStep should work without extra drivers too.

The power-saving states of Windows XP (Standby and Hibernate) have nominally been merged into one Sleep state. By default, desktop PCs will go into a standby state after 20 minutes. Notebooks will initially go into this state, but if they’re unused for longer, they’ll go into Hibernate to save more power.

With luck, the company that you’re buying your Vista PC from will have tested all this. However, if you’re installing Vista yourself, there’s no guarantee that all your hardware will play nicely when it comes to flipping through these power states. Expect to do some manual adjustment.

Another oddity is that the default “off” button in the Start menu is actually mapped to Sleep, which may cause some confusion. (If you’re interested in the history, visit www.pcpro.co.uk/links/149_vista3.)

Power management isn’t the only enhancement for notebook users. Commonly used mobile settings are grouped together in the new Mobility Center, including sound, power management and, where supported, screen brightness. There’s also a Presentation mode that allows you to change a number of settings in a single hit – switch to a more professional Desktop backdrop and lower resolution to suit a projector, for example.

One notable change for users of Windows Mobile devices is that ActiveSync isn’t compatible with Windows Vista. Instead, there’s the Mobile Device Center – not actually included in the default installation, but available to download in a beta form. It will also be pushed out via Windows Update when finished. Even now, it’s a big improvement over ActiveSync, offering clearer support for importing pictures and other data from mobile devices. It also copes with multiple devices more effectively.
Tracking reliability

Hidden away in the Control Panel, there’s a new console to help track down system problems. This includes a much-extended resource monitor and a reliability monitoring graph that tracks your system’s stability over time. Starting at a nominal ten, the system’s “score” is reduced each time there’s a problem – a failed driver install, application hang or blue screen. Over time, it then creeps back up towards ten, visually indicating how stable your system has been. More usefully, it shows exactly which applications have gone wrong and when. There’s also the Problem Reports and Solutions tracking utility that can be set to notify you in case there’s a known solution. This should prove a real boon.

However, we have some reservations around Vista’s stability: it’s impossible to be definitive at this stage about whether the graphical and audio glitches, networking issues and all-out system crashes we’ve seen are fundamental problems that will need patching from Redmond or, as we suspect, are rogue driver or application issues. By the time Vista hits the mainstream, though, we expect most of these problems to be resolved.

DirectX 10

DirectX 10 will only be available for Windows Vista. By making it exclusive to its new operating system, Microsoft is clearly hoping to entice gamers to upgrade and take advantage of what could finally be “cinematic gaming” – the industry jargon for games that look so good you could be watching a film.

Although DirectX 9 offloads a lot of work from the CPU to the GPU on the graphics card, the CPU still has to do more graphics-related work than games developers might like. DirectX 10 introduces a more generalised graphic architecture, meaning developers won’t have to fall back on CPU programming as often as they currently do. This leaves the CPU free to handle other game-related functions such as AI.

DirectX 10 works in concert with the new hardware architecture of the very latest graphics cards, which unify the old system of separating pixel-shader and vertex-shader operations into one super-flexible graphics pipeline. This will make it much easier to add details to objects, more realistic animation and real-time motion blur, for example. The end result will certainly be more immersive games.

But there are two potential stumbling blocks: to reap the benefits of DirectX 10, you’ll need a graphics card that supports Shader Model 4, which currently means Nvidia’s 8800 series (see issue 147, p49 for our round-up of suitable cards). Plus, you’ll need to wait for the games to actually appear, or for DirectX 10 updates to existing games. The most anticipated game is Crysis, but this won’t arrive until April at the earliest.

Performance

It’s early days for judging Vista’s raw performance figures – only once drivers and applications have bedded in can we get a true picture. Happily, though, we’ve seen no discernable difference to Windows XP at this stage. RAM is the crucial element here – 512MB is the absolute minimum you’ll get away with.

Vista also boasts ReadyBoost. When you plug in a USB flash drive, Vista will use the inherent performance advantage of flash memory over hard disks to store small, frequently used system files. While it’s no replacement for real system RAM, it’s a cheap and convenient option that’s easy to try for yourself – we’ve found it particularly effective for notebooks.

3D performance is more complicated. We’ve seen some games halve in speed, some others run marginally faster. Again, this is likely to be driver related, and it’s something we’ll keep a close eye on.
Conclusion

There’s no denying that Windows Vista isn’t the revolution we were originally promised. However, the changes to the interface compared to XP make it feel a lot more mature and capable, while the new navigation and search features significantly speed up everyday tasks.

It isn’t all good: some powerful features are a little roughly implemented, such as relocating your User folders, whereas facilities such as the integrated backup have been trimmed back for the sake of ease of use. It’s in these places that Vista can occasionally feel like a work in progress: you can see where it’s going, but it isn’t there yet.

What’s more, anyone contemplating upgrading their system faces a dilemma. The price Microsoft is charging for the retail versions of Windows, for example, £128 exc VAT for an upgrade to Home Premium, is far too much to expect people to pay. You can get round this by purchasing an OEM version of Windows Vista, which costs around £60 exc VAT from sites such as www.scan.co.uk. The chief disadvantage of an OEM version is that this ties the copy to the particular computer you install it on (so you can’t uninstall Vista and then load it onto a new computer) and it doesn’t include any technical support from Microsoft.

Although there are many things to praise in Vista – the enhanced security, the much-improved search and file handling, plus the whole look-and-feel – there’s nothing compelling enough to make anyone happy with their existing system to hurry to upgrade. Even people desperate to play DirectX 10 games will have to wait for new releases. Plus, Windows XP will be supported for a good few years yet – work on XP SP3 (expected in late 2007) is already under way.

Nevertheless, after our many man-hours of running Vista, we couldn’t contemplate going back to XP – it seems clunky by comparison. And, for those buying a new PC, the decision is clear – unless Vista won’t run an application you simply must have, there’s no reason whatsoever to stick with XP.

Details
Software subcategory	Operating system
Requirements
Processor requirement	N/A
Operating system support
Operating system Windows Vista supported?	yes
Operating system Windows XP supported?	no
Operating system Linux supported?	no
Operating system Mac OS X supported?	no
Other operating system support	None