Windows Vista beta 2: A user review

I just got my MSDN subscription mail 3 days ago, & downloaded Windows Vista beta 2, with my legal key there. I m already using office 2007 beta 2, & despite being beta I m in love with it

Today I got a spare HD from a friend, so I installed Vista beta 2 on it, for this I did not go for a dual boot setup, which might cause problems when removing vista, instead I installed vista on the 20 GB HD, while my original 80 GB HD was not connected, so now I have to go the bios in case I need to switch to the other OS, it’s tedious but safe, since I m using it for 3 days only as I have to leave for Delhi
Now, back to the review

Who says Vista takes a lot of time to install, well...at least here, it installed in 45 Minutes flat, from booting from the DVD to the desktop, it took 1 hr, I downloaded the beta WDDM drivers for my FX5900XT graphics card already, but even with the bundled graphics drivers, Aero Glass was enabled by default, which looks really good, but I disabled it, cos I don’t like it. Don’t find it productive

Vista is a big change from XP, from the whole UI, clean Segoe UI font style to natural & shadowed windows, everything is amazing & simple, I haven’t had a lot of time to tweak or check, as I have decided to do it, once I return from Delhi, in the mean time, my friend will dissect vista here for me. Those who have seen animated UI on Linux or Mac, have something to be envy of, Vista does all that & better in a very good way

My system is a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz with Hyperthreading, 1 GB RAM, & Geforce FX 5900XT graphics card with 128 MB RAM, it gets rating of 4 in system properties , by default it took 8 GB installation, which I was able to decrease, by deleting the hibernation file, & reducing the page file to 512 MB instead of default 1.5 GB, since I m not using pro applications, 512 MB page file with 1 GB RAM is enough, however one thing, vista is slow, many things take more than usual time to start, like Windows Photo gallery.

Since the UI is now managed by Desktop Windows Manager (dwm.exe), in case of some problem, it will simply restart without affecting any work here. Alt+tab is slow, about 1 second slow.

By default the Classic Menu is off, but u can enable it, & the bottom preview panel is just crap for me, although it gives useful info, about the file, but who uses it. The start menu sux, please MS, bring back the old Windows XP like menu based start menu

I M able to run some application directly from my windows XP partition, no need to install here, such as Winamp, snag-it etc. DirectX 10 is included with Vista beta 2, but 3D Max doesn’t even start, Photoshop starts fine but without aero, instead it uses aero express. Right now, with Word 2K7, Photoshop, & Snag-it open, my system has 440 MB free memory

Nero 7 doesn’t work, Nero 6.6 does.

Windows Mail is simple, but I prefer outlook 2007 instead.

WMP11 is much like WMP11 XP, just with transparency.

IE 7 is IE 7+, a slightly enhanced version of IE 7 for Windows

Zone Alarm pro, gives a BSOD, & since there is no virus for Vista, yet, I did not install any NAV 2005/KAV 6

Windows Sidebar was taking a lot of RAM, I disabled it, will use it again once I return. However Yahoo widget engine worked

when searching it takes a lot of time, if u haven’t indexed the system. The virtual folder feature is quite good & came handy for me

User Account protection is good, but annoying, I disabled it for good. There is no way, as of now to disable DEP, as there is no boot.ini

Media centre application worked fine, I was able to play content, but not my TV in Media centre

Speaking of my TV, 90% of all the old application work fine in Vista, even when it is Beta 2, & all of my Windows XP SP2 drivers installed fine, even my PCTV Stereo with PCTV Vision application, printer etc, however my Audigy LS didn't worked, so I had to use my onboard audio

I have taken a few screenshots so far here goes


Alt+ tab

My Computer


A conversation in confrence


This is how photoshop looks, the black color is PNG Transparency, which doesn't work





The new save dialog, seems also refined


Word 2007 beta 2 in Windows Vista, with a save dialog

[eagle_y2j]

hmm..................... a real eye candy

[pickster]

I havent tried out Vista yet...
Trying to try it...

a few other things i have found,

1) Internet browsing is faster then Windows XP somehow

2) Firefox works fine, except for some minor UI glitches (curropt skin images)

3) Booting & Shutdown is slow, & when i say slow, I mean slooooow, XP used to boot in 25 seconds, this one boots in 42 seconds, i blame it all to beta nature

4) BSOD is there, sometimes when i shutdown, never except that.

5) Error reporting is good

6) The Documents & settings\username\application data path is changed to users\name\appdata

7) File copy, cut, move, takes a stagring long time, i had to disable onthe fly indaxing to make it fast

depending on the application there are 3 folders, local, localw, & roaming, i copied my photoshop profile, mozilla profile, to local folder, & everything worked

some more shots to follow

The games

Chess Titans



Solitire



I haven't checked more games yet, chess is fun, now gonna try Qukae 4 on it, although i m sure, i will get a BSD. Extremetech has a similar article
more to come as i digg

this is insane, even quake 4 works, although really bad performance though, but that could be because of the beta drivers. I don't know how to run it in Window Mode, cos when i pressed alt+tab Quake 4 crashed

[aryayush]

WOW! Can't wait to lay my hands on this one.

Thanks for the review. Keep 'em comin', mate!
And post more screenshots.

some new screenshots



this was taken while working on the confrence

thanx to chinmay, it seems like that volume graph is a feture of keyboard drivers & not vista, i never installed keyboard drivers in Windows XP, so maybe the new ones are available on vista

here is how the add/remove program looks, more like a folder



Just checked, Adobe reader 7.07 doesn't work on Vista, however Adobe reader 7.08 does works.

None of the adobe apps, (Photoshop, Adobe reader, illustrator) support the Aero glass,

Edit : Quicktime doesn't play videos in Vista yet

I found some cool white color cursors, which are better then the default white theme in Windows Vista. Download

This just in

Searching in Vista sux, it really slow, the only way to search properly is to let Windows Index all your drivers once, it indexes automatically when your computer is idle, without indexing the seraches are even slower then Windows XP SP2

This is the main difference between a DirectX 9 gfx card & using with onboard graphics

Computer with Aero, & my FX 5900XT



Computer with Aero express & Intel extreme graphics 2 (onboard Intel 865GBF)



So, it's just the UI, other then that, there is no change, i don't think using vista without aero is that bad, cos Microsoft has already informed that the current Aero Express skin will be changed, & we might get PNG/TGA based Glass theme, like possible with WindowBlinds 5

last screenshots for today, i m packing up to leave for delhi tomorrow, & also have to return the HD

typical RAM usage



NVIDIA beta Control Panel, only provides features required to run Windows Vista, certainly not enough for games



Vista includes DirectX 10

[gary4gar]

a little offtopic:what it takes to be MSDN subscriber???
the review is awesome

u can sign up for Vista bets testing, & soon u will get a mail, for the invite, which is equivalent to MSDN but u can only get Vista then, since u haven't baught the subscription, which if done, will make u eligible to test many MS beta products

Check for subscription here, however i would say that wait a few days, as Vista beta 2 is about to relese for Public

almost forgot this , Windows Sidebar



Right now it is using 30 MB, way more then Yahoo widgets engine

[rahul_rks]

thanks for such a detailed info along with pics.as for the few problems as you have said ,i think they will be sorted out in the full version.but from the looks and features it looks great.only drawback is i will have to upgrade first.

[Ch@0s]

Your machine is running slow as that 5900XT is very slow when it comes to Pixel Shader 2.0 code. The Aero glass UI uses PS2.0 extensively for all the effects slowing the card down to a crawl. All FX cards have issues processing PS 2.0 code. It runs fine even on an extremely cheap X300 Hypermemory. Also NV LDDM drivers as of now have major bugs that need fixing which is the reason for BSODs.

[kalpik]

Yup.. I tried it too.. It is a monster indeed! Even if i minimise/maximise some windows repeatedly, the CPU fan comes alive with noise

[bharat_r]

One ugly thing is that the menu bar is below the front & back buttons.

FX cards were slow in processing SM 2.0 for games, Vista UI is SM2.0 but not that complex, there is no speed difference in FX 5200, 5900XT, i will soon check with Geforce 6200 & 6600 when i return to lucknow, right now i m in delhi

I used it, & found moderate CPU usage, Vista was quite fast on my computer except when searchindexer.exe was on, so i disabled it the speed was much like XP. The frame rate of stuff on screen is not like that of games, so u cannot compare SM 2.0 speed of games to SM2.0 speed of the OS User interface

even a FX 5200 non ultra with 128 MB RAM has enough horsepower to run Vista UI properly, unless i m missing some info..

when i return, i will check it on other GPUs too

[samrulez]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

FX cards were slow in processing SM 2.0 for games, Vista UI is SM2.0 but not that complex, there is no speed difference in FX 5200, 5900XT, i will soon check with Geforce 6200 & 6600 when i return to lucknow, right now i m in delhi

I used it, & found moderate CPU usage, Vista was quite fast on my computer except when searchindexer.exe was on, so i disabled it the speed was much like XP. The frame rate of stuff on screen is not like that of games, so u cannot compare SM 2.0 speed of games to SM2.0 speed of the OS User interface

even a FX 5200 non ultra with 128 MB RAM has enough horsepower to run Vista UI properly, unless i m missing some info..

when i return, i will check it on other GPUs too

I have a 2800+ with 512 MB ram..I'm not a gamer....should I go for a FX 5200 will it run Aero properly.....will it work 512 MB ram....will it be very very slow..

[drvarunmehta]

Aim to get atleast a Geforce 6 series card and 1 GB RAM.

[Ch@0s]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

FX cards were slow in processing SM 2.0 for games, Vista UI is SM2.0 but not that complex, there is no speed difference in FX 5200, 5900XT, i will soon check with Geforce 6200 & 6600 when i return to lucknow, right now i m in delhi

Some of the shaders are as long as 40 instructions. FX cards will die with any sort of PS2.0 code and thats quite a bit. There is a DX8.1 fallback path but I'm not sure if its being used in the Beta2

I used it, & found moderate CPU usage, Vista was quite fast on my computer except when searchindexer.exe was on, so i disabled it the speed was much like XP. The frame rate of stuff on screen is not like that of games, so u cannot compare SM 2.0 speed of games to SM2.0 speed of the OS User interface

Thats the most ridiculous statement I've ever heard... Shader code is shader code irrespective of what application uses the code. FX cards will be slow whether they are running games or vista or computing FFTs in GPGPU.

even a FX 5200 non ultra with 128 MB RAM has enough horsepower to run Vista UI properly, unless i m missing some info..when i return, i will check it on other GPUs too

They will run but they'll be slow and won't support higher resolutions. Also as I stated, right now NV LDDM drivers are really buggy.

[Vyasram]

how will my system work
amd 939 3000+, 1 gb ram, 6600gt 128 mb, sd i upgrade anything. I wanna run vista at max settings. Also iwanna know whether 3dmax n photoshop will slow down in vista when they are available(because of all the eye candy)
Will gamin performance be better dan xp since it unloads all the unnecessary stuff, or whether the gui will hog everything

U r getting it all wrong, have u ever read the UI guidelines for Windows Vista made by Microsoft, about how the Fonts should be drwan on scree by other softwares, & how WPA works

Vista UI is SM 2.0, but it nothing complex like games, games are far more complex, a simple GLass UI can be made simply with 20 or even less instruction, cos if u say, Vista UI sux in FX cards, then howcome Kororaa Linux, with about same glass like interface works fluidely, after all despite of being OpenGL is passing instructions only

The DirectX 8.1 fallback path is for games, not the UI of vista. Shader code is shader code, but as i said previously, Shader code of Vista UI is not as complex as that of a game, there is no direct comparision

according to Microsoft, U need a GFX card with 128 MB RAM to run upto 1600X1200 resolution, beyond that u need 256 MB card, all the graphics card has to do is the ability to calculate SM 2.0, & since the code isn't as complex as a game, even a FX 5200 will run it as smooth as a 7600GT

however, i would recomend new buyers to go for a Geforce 6 or 7 series gfx card, reason, they are more available & provide more features then FX cards (Purevideo, SM3.0, etc)

[Ch@0s]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

U r getting it all wrong, have u ever read the UI guidelines for Windows Vista made by Microsoft, about how the Fonts should be drwan on scree by other softwares, & how WPA works

I don't need read those user docs cos I have source level access to certain portions of aero .

Vista UI is SM 2.0, but it nothing complex like games, games are far more complex, a simple GLass UI can be made simply with 20 or even less instruction, cos if u say, Vista UI sux in FX cards, then howcome Kororaa Linux, with about same glass like interface works fluidely, after all despite of being OpenGL is passing instructions only

A simple glass UI doesn't require shaders . All it needs is alpha blending support from the hardware which exists from TNT cards. Your whatever linux is probably using that. Mac OS X also uses the same for aqua. Vista uses shaders not just for transparency but for the complete presentation layer. This includes routines for drawing/shading/lighting/blur, glow and other imaging effects. These cost a lot more than just 20 instructions. Your FX card will die even on 20 instructions, let along higher. Also once u start processing the XAML, the shader counts start increasing dramatically.

The DirectX 8.1 fallback path is for games, not the UI of vista. Shader code is shader code, but as i said previously, Shader code of Vista UI is not as complex as that of a game, there is no direct comparision

LOL tell me why cant u compare both directly... both are 3D apps, both access hardware in the same manner. Both execute the same instruction set . All the effects don't need floating point precision... The ordinary blending effects can be done using DX 8.1 as well. Infact a lot more can be done and all you need to specify is the target to be PS1.4 instead of PS2.0 in ur shader compiler .

according to Microsoft, U need a GFX card with 128 MB RAM to run upto 1600X1200 resolution, beyond that u need 256 MB card, all the graphics card has to do is the ability to calculate SM 2.0, & since the code isn't as complex as a game, even a FX 5200 will run it as smooth as a 7600GT

however, i would recomend new buyers to go for a Geforce 6 or 7 series gfx card, reason, they are more available & provide more features then FX cards (Purevideo, SM3.0, etc)

All I'll say is try running the aero UI with all effects enabled at 1600x1200 and watch it crawl ..

ok, i will do that once i return, i got access to a Radeon 9600 Pro too, will try on it

so, there are 3 cards 9600 Pro, Geforce 6200 nU & Geforce 6600GT, & my FX card on which i can try Vista aero UI all with 128 MB Card, lets see how vista UI runs on it. & i have done shader programming, quite frankly 20 instruction are enough for the UI, how can u say that it needs more then that, it's just 2d textures parallel to the screen, drawn in the GPU memory

Vista UI is not a 3D App, cos according to MS, a 3d App in vista cannot run in a "window mode", thats why, when u start a game, or the Medie centre in Vista the DWM closes, cos in full screen mode it's all 3d which doesn't require the compositing of the Vista UI

Vista UI is drawn by graphics card, but it's till 2D, not 3d, nothing like a game

although none of the monitor can go for 1600X1200, to which i have access

& how do u have source code level access to MS, R U an MS employee? show us some proof

in the mean time, why don't u try it, cos since u have access, u must be having a copy of vista, u got any UI benchmark we can use?

[Kannan]

Hey GX great preview yaar.

I think we have to wait another 1 year for the PCs & Laptops to ship with Vista as default.

I am eagery waiting for Vista CPP.

[Ch@0s]

Originally Posted by gxsaurav

ok, i will do that once i return, i got access to a Radeon 9600 Pro too, will try on it

so, there are 3 cards 9600 Pro, Geforce 6200 nU & Geforce 6600GT, & my FX card on which i can try Vista aero UI all with 128 MB Card, lets see how vista UI runs on it. & i have done shader programming, quite frankly 20 instruction are enough for the UI, how can u say that it needs more then that, it's just 2d textures parallel to the screen, drawn in the GPU memory

LOL... all the UI elements are 3D objects . If they aren't the effect at the bottom of the screen here is not possible. Every window is zbuffered 3D object which is texture mapped on the fly to make it look the way it is.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist...s/default.mspx

There is no way you can do glow and blurring together with a few alpha blends in less than 20 instructions. It'll be atleast 10 lines of HLSL code which means quite a few instructions.

Vista UI is not a 3D App, cos according to MS, a 3d App in vista cannot run in a "window mode", thats why, when u start a game, or the Medie centre in Vista the DWM closes, cos in full screen mode it's all 3d which doesn't require the compositing of the Vista UI

Vista UI is drawn by graphics card, but it's till 2D, not 3d, nothing like a game

although none of the monitor can go for 1600X1200, to which i have access

LOL all 3D apps in windows still work with the compositing engine enabled. Try any dx9 sdk demo or the rhdribl demo which runs in a window if you don't believe me.

& how do u have source code level access to MS, R U an MS employee? show us some proof

in the mean time, why don't u try it, cos since u have access, u must be having a copy of vista, u got any UI benchmark we can use?

It doesn't matter who I am... and about the latter... well I'll check out.

if u go back in the past, u will find that MS said, they cannpot support OpenGL 2.0 in vista in it's native form, they said, the code will be translated in DirectX compatible code, which will result in opengl 1.4 like working. this poses a problem as many games & workstation apps work in openGL mode

then MS clerified that games need not worry, as they run in Full screen mode, at which DWM closes, when i played quake 4 on vista, DWM.exe closed down, & when i quit quake 4 it restarted. games do not run in window mode, those which do, are not working at full potential.

the directX 9 SDK demos are supposed to run in window mode, they are shader heavy, but not system heavy, they are simply example of the code

the UI elements of Vista are calculated in 3d, they are made in zbuffer, but they cannot be compared to using same functionality as games, even MacOS X UI runs with the gfx card but it cannot be compared to a game, it's nothing like a game, the window's are drawn as textures parallel to the monitor screen, in zbuffer, but the textures & code etc is very simple compared to a game

& why it doesn't matter who u r, cos u said u have system level access to aero. I don't know a lot about Vista DWM, but u do, plz celrify all here

take a look at this blog

http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2...18/578637.aspx

it clearly demonstartes how easy it is to code for the glass window, the WPA API out there makes it very easy for developers to write code for glass, it's nothing as compared to the complex SM 2.0 of games

besides this is not a SM2.0 thread, insted it's a Vista user review thread

[vignesh]

I don`t think Vista will be a hit...