Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
Introduction:
Is the title long enough for you? I'm pretty sure if they could, Microsoft would really trick it out Capcom-style and add "Super DX Turbo Extreme" to the end of it. The fact that there are four different version of Vista with overlapping abilities is (in my opinion) a farce in and of itself. But I digress.
Microsoft's heir apparent has had its fair share of negative publicity since launch. In fact, I dare say it's had two or three operating systems' worth of negative publicity. Since the last versions of Vista I played with were a beta and a release candidate, I didn't really have an up-to-date opinion on the whole matter. Recently I was given the opportunity to purchase a copy of the flagship product, Windows Vista Ultimate, at an employee price from an acquaintance that works for Microsoft. I took it.
Many of you have read my rants and know that I'm not exactly a big Microsoft fan. I use Windows XP for the odd game here and there but by and large most of my daily tasks are performed using Ubuntu Linux. I will not perform a feature-by-feature comparison between Vista Ultimate and Ubuntu however. I'm going to treat this as a rant like any other, with largely the same criteria I use for other operating systems.
Since I'm doing this rant using Rig 4, and I'm doing most of the installation at work, I will waive the "must work with no internet" requirement. I have access to wired ethernet with a reasonable download speed. I will discuss a 32-bit upgrade first, then a 64-bit clean install.
I apologize ahead of time for the lack of screenshots during the installation. If you're really curious what the Vista install screens look like I'm sure someone has posted them on the internet at this point.
If there's one thing Microsoft can afford to do when they're charging retail customers $200-300USD a pop, it's make the packaging pretty. The box and DVDs for Vista were quite pleasant and sparkly. The booklet (inside the box behind the discs) was relatively short, basically just outlining some new features in Vista over previous versions and giving basic pointers on upgrades and clean installs. The product key is actually stuck to the back side of the slide-out tray. I didn't catch it at first until I read the little instruction booklet.
- Install 1: 32-bit Upgrade from XP Home Edition
- Playing with 32-bit Vista Post-Upgrade
- And Then the Problems Struck...
- Install 2: 64-bit Clean Install
- Playing with 64-bit Vista Post-Install
- Conclusion
Install 1: 32-bit Upgrade from XP Home Edition
My laptop came with a copy of Windows XP Home Edition installed on it. Since I had both the 32-bit and 64-bit discs, I thought just for the experience I would try upgrading using the 32-bit version first. I made sure my disk was defragmented and disabled ClamWin, my free antivirus software (which is also GPL open-source). I then popped in the DVD.
I was taken to a fullscreen graphical installer and asked if I'd like to download the latest updates before I start. I did. I was then asked for my product key, which I entered. I was informed that if I didn't "activate" my installation within 30 days Vista would stop working. Next I was shown the End-User Licensing Agreement. This is all standard Microsoft faire.
I read through the license and nothing heinous jumped out at me until section 8: "Scope of License." The first paragraph starts with (emphasis mine): "This software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights." To those of you used to installing Linux operating systems, this may come as a bit of a shock, or even an insult. Microsoft lives in a different world than Free and Open Source Software.
Since I was determined to judge Vista on its own merits rather than do a direct comparison to a Linux distribution, I soldiered on. One thing I noticed at the bottom were several sections with version-specific "rights." An extra "right" I recieved with Vista Ultimate was the right to store a copy of the installation media on a network storage device. I assume this is for businesses that like to store disc images on the server for easier retrieval later.
I accepted the license and chose the "Upgrade" option. I was told there were "issues" that didn't necessarily prevent me from upgrading, but that the programs listed might not work properly in Vista. Included were my SCSI/RAID controller (I've never used RAID so I don't care), my copy of Alex Feinman's ISO Power Toy for XP, Windows Messenger 5.1 *snicker*, and my Nvidia display drivers.
I had to laugh that Vista was incompatible with one of Microsoft's own underlying technologies. I never used Windows Messenger so again, I wasn't worried. I hit "Next." I was then told that was all the information they needed, and that installation would continue with periodic restarts. The wording on the message has changed since the beta. It's a little more friendly when it doesn't refer to you specifically.
The upgrade took roughly an hour, during which time the system restarted about eight or nine times. I didn't touch the system at all during the multiple restarts, allowing it to do whatever it thought it needed. Finally I was asked to enable automatic updates (I did), set the time/date, and chose my location (work).
I was then given a slide show while I "waited while Windows checked my computer's performance." I assume this means it was looking to see if I had the beef to use the Aero interface and all the other bells and whistles Vista likes to enable by default. I was then brought to my desktop, with the Windows Welcome Center window open, and taking up most of the screen (since I hadn't installed proper video drivers yet).
Playing with 32-bit Vista Post-Upgrade
I then began the ritual that most Windows users have down to a science: grabbing updates, downloading and installing device drivers, and configuring other random preferences. I had downloaded Dell's Vista drivers for my video card previously, so I installed those. I downloaded and installed the latest version of ClamWin Antivirus. It's worth noting that only once (when I was installing ClamWin) did I encounter the much-lamented User Access Control dialog that asked me if I'd like to "Cancel or Allow."
I then looked around in the Welcome Center. There was an option for "Ultimate Extras," which intrigued me, so I clicked it. The program informed me that I needed to update my version of Windows Update. I clicked OK and waited. And waited. And waited some more. I sat at the "Checking for Updates" screen for quite a while. The only indicators that anything was happening were the pulsing green-to-gray progress bar and my blinking harddrive light.
Finally I was presented with 106 updates (64 important, 42 optional) and 4 "Extras." I let it keep all the pre-checked recommended updates and manually chose a few optional ones. I checked all 4 "Extras," which included a Hold Em Poker Game, Windows "DreamScene", Windows Sound Schemes, and BitLocker, which if I remember correctly is a disk encryption program.
I chose "Install" and laughed when Vista User Access Control asked me if I really wanted to allow Windows Update to continue. I think I'll let this one go, just this one time, Vista. It's OK. While that was going on I installed audio drivers from Dell's website. I don't know whether this was simply because the system was taxed by downloading updates or something peculiar to Vista, but the "Setup is updating your audio hardware configuration" dialog screen stayed up an awfully long time. After about two minutes, the progress bar zoomed by and the drivers were installed.
My 106 updates downloaded and installed. The entire search/select/download/install process for updates took the better part of an hour and a half. When the whole process was done, I was told that one update needed me to reboot before I could install it. I rebooted, and my screen looked much nicer thanks to Dell's Nvidia drivers.
I looked around to see if there were any obviously new things in Vista other than the spiffed-up GUI. Naturally I went straight for the games. Mahjongg Titans and Inkball are new entries. I was sad to see Pinball disappear, but I immediately felt better when I started playing Mahjongg. Hi, my name is Maurice and I'm a Mahjongg whore. I ran the few games I had installed in XP, and they worked fine. Of course, they were PopCap games and both were relatively new, so I didn't expect any trouble.
My built-in Intel wireless worked just fine, and Windows Update even found a newer driver for it. Windows Media Player handled anything I could throw at it without incident.
And Then the Problems Struck...
I picked the "Vista Ultimate Extras" screen again and it told me that apparently the 106 updates weren't enough. There was one more I needed. I said "Install" and it downloaded. What happened next was a unique experience, and not in a good way. The update gave me an error. Never once in all my years of using Microsoft's internal update utility have I ever received an error when installing Microsoft's officially-blessed updates. This was new to me.
I re-ran the update check. This time it came up with 4 updates and 3 extras. I said to install them all. It sat on "0KB/0% complete" for several minutes while my harddrive light blinked furiously. Obviously something was going on, but Windows Update didn't deign me worthy to know about it.
I took this time to evaluate what kind of system resources were in use. With only Windows Update and ClamWin running, I was using about 850MB of RAM. To compare, my work machine uses about that much when it's running Norton Antivirus, Microsoft Outlook, Notepad, LogMeIn, Gmail Notifier, and Altiris Client Service.
In other words, half my RAM is being consumed at any given time, mostly by Vista itself. Task Manager tells me that only about 75MB are being used by actual programs (explorer.exe is the highest with 31MB), so that tells me the other 750ish megabytes of RAM are being used by the 50 services that are being run in the background.
::UPDATE:: Some post-mortem research has shed some light on my RAM confusion. Apparently Vista has adopted a more UNIX-like approach to RAM than XP did. The basic idea is that memory is kept in cache until needed, potentially speeding up the process of allocating more RAM when a program launches. My actual physical memory in use was likely significantly lower, but since I've already returned the OS for a refund, I can't give you exact numbers.
Back to the updates. They were done, and predictably one of them still failed. This time I clicked the "get help" link next to the error code and it brought up a help screen, which told me I needed to stop the Windows Update service, dig around and delete a Windows Update temporary file, then restart the service and re-check for updates.
Apparently part of the "Vista Experience™" is doing Microsoft's own bug fixing for them. If this is a known bug, could the Windows Update utility not be made aware of it so it could, you know, delete its OWN files? We're in 2008. I've been told we can do that sort of thing.
I followed their directions to the letter. I very quickly became annoyed when UAC kept asking me for permission to open various control panels. My annoyance was compounded by the fact that I'm having to essentially fix a known bug manually. When I was done, I restarted the update service and checked for updates. It told me to reboot first. I did.
I noticed that every time I rebooted or shut down, the screen would show "Windows Vista Ultimate" on the bottom with a multicolored blue and green background. It's as though Microsoft wanted to remind me which version I'd purchased. You know, in case I forgot. For a regular retail customer, I don't think that will be much of an issue. I don't know about you, but I don't exactly spend three digits on software every day.
This time Windows Update gave me the "angry red X screen" because it thought I'd never checked for updates before. This is probably because I was just told to delete my update record and cache to fix that last problem. Funny how that works.
Once again I received error number 80070002. I clicked help again and this time chose the KnowledgeBase Article. I was asked to dig deep into Vista's internals to perform some sorcery involving strange incantations such as "ren SoftwareDistribution SDTemp." I'm not sure about this, but I'm fairly confident the song that brings about the end of the world is written in Vista script.
I could find no "Automatic Updates" service to disable, but I figured maybe they really mean "Windows Update" service. I disabled that and ran their command. Unfortunately, ren does not like me. I got Access Denied, followed by "Stimpy!! You EEEDIOT!" Ok, not really that second part. Had I recieved that error I might have felt a little less furious. I took this opportunity to start my clean 64-bit wipe.
Adding up all the time it took me from start to finish Vista Ultimate was about a 3 hour install. Keep in mind that this was just the upgrade. Do NOT plan on upgrading to Vista unless you have some significant time on your hands. Just to be fair, I don't believe the Windows Update error I encountered would have prevented me from using the OS, it was simply annoying. More so due to the fact that the official Microsoft fix didn't work for me.
Install 2: 64-bit Clean Install
I rebooted with the 64-bit disc in the drive and set about running a clean install. I picked the partition I wanted and prayed it was the correct one because unlike XP, Vista's partition chooser doesn't show what kind of formatting the parition in question has. Usually I'm able to determine which partition is Windows by virtue of it being the only NTFS.
The install went off just as before with no real indication of anything different for 64-bit. It could be my imagination, but the clean install seemed to finish significantly faster than the upgrade. I was asked to create a user account, "checked for performance", and brought to a desktop.
I noticed that this time Vista auto-detected my sound card. This was evident by the annoying welcome sound when I logged in. I'm a bit confused as to why 64-bit Vista magically had sound drivers for my device when 32-bit Vista did not.
The first thing I ran, of course, was Windows Update. It chugged and chugged until I realized I hadn't configured my LAN settings to use my static IP. Finding that should have been as simple as right-clicking on the little network icon in the task bar. It wasn't.
I tried "Connect to a Network." That brought up a wizard with 3 options: Wireless, DSL with login, and Dial-up. I find it asinine that one of the most popular networking options in the world, regular old LAN with ethernet, was not an option on the list. Instead, I had to dig into *deep breath* Control Panel, then Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Center, then choose "Manage network connections", then right click on LAN and do my configuring. Intuitive it was not.
Windows Update gave me 69 updates, plus 41 optional and the same 4 "extras" I'd seen before. This time I passed on the Hold Em game. I'm not much of a poker fan. Included in the updates were drivers for my Nvidia video and Intel wireless cards, which was a good thing. I don't believe Dell supports Vista 64-bit on my laptop.
By the time I got all that downloaded and installed my work day was over and it was time to go home. I knew that going home would bring up its own list of challenges, the first being wireless access to my router. At first I was completely unable to connect, then after configuring it I was told I was connected "with limited access."
I ended up having to connect to another open wireless network, disconnect, and reconnect to my network. Then, somewhow, it worked. I decided to download drivers for my Syaptics touchpad so I could use the scroll areas on the bottom and right side. I downloaded them from Synaptics, installed them, and rebooted. Nothing.
Playing with 64-bit Vista Post-Install
While browsing the games menu, I noticed a sidebar that said "Performance Information and Tools." It told me it wanted to re-evaluate my machine due to some new hardware (proper Nvidia drivers). I ran it. Suddenly the task bar went transparent and all my windows faded in and out. I assume this is the "Aero Glass" interface I've heard about.
The performance test tells me that my laptop rates a 3.4 on a scale of 5.9 (why not 6?). According to the help documentation that's not bad.
I did some research on DreamScene, one of the Ultimate Extras. It's a way to make a movie your desktop background. I'm not really sure what the purpose of that is, other than to use up even more system resources. I checked, and with the demo movie running as my background I was using 1.1GB of RAM, leaving less than a gigabyte for actual applications.
While I'm on the subject of resources, I happened to notice that with just the basic set of applications Vista took up 33GB on my harddrive. Compare that to 32-bit XP (3GB) and 64-bit Ubuntu (3GB), and you can see the disparity. Surely Mahjongg Titans doesn't take up *that* much space.
Conclusion
Needless to say, I won't be keeping Vista Ultimate on my laptop. All the fancy glitz takes a huge memory footprint, and I know from my experiences with 64-bit Linux (and Compiz Fusion) that these sorts of things don't necessarily have to.
The "Ultimate Extras" were useless to me. Performance was reasonable as long as I wasn't actually running any serious software, but I shudder to think what would happen if I loaded a decently large 3D game. Network configuration was much more difficult than I expected. There was no appreciable difference between Vista 32-bit and 64-bit, other than that 64-bit bit drivers were more difficult to obtain.
I gave it a shot, but Vista Ultimate simply did not impress. If "the most complete version of Windows" can't cut it, I think I can definitely say that Vista is not for me. I for one plan on sticking with XP for my gaming fixes as long as it still works, and use Linux for everything else.