On Windows Vista (Final Build)

A few weeks ago, Microsoft had a low-key ceremony announcing the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007 to their business customers. It was all pretty unceremonious because the official release of Vista to the general public still isn’t for a few more months. It was important to me, though, because it meant that companies subscribing to Microsoft site licenses would be getting final Vista and Office 2007 media.

Last Friday we finally got the go-ahead to download the media at work, and I spent the entire weekend testing the final build of Vista Enterprise. Having tested both Vista RC1 and RC2 these past few months, I pretty much knew what to expect. Still, even with those diminished expectations, I was shocked to see Vista completely install in only 15 minutes. After sitting through ~40 minute XP installations on a regular basis this was pretty refreshing, and hopefully a sign of things to come.

After logging in for the first time Vista appeared to be pretty similar to RC2. Overall things look a bit more polished, and the system on the whole feels rock solid. The 3D Aero interface worked automagically with the built-in driver for my Radeon X800, but my networking driver (for my onboard NIC) and sound driver (Creative Soundblaster X-Fi) were both dead in the water. Networking is always the most crucial driver because without it you really can’t proceed to do much. I hopped back onto my XP partition and grabbed the ethernet driver, then rebooted back into Vista and installed it.

The driver looked to be written for Win2k only (it’s a 3 year old Abit IS-7 mobo), but it had worked fine for XP and proceeded to install without a hitch on Vista. That’s the greatest part of Vista I think–the backwards compatibility is a lifesaver. I grabbed the beta Creative drivers for my X-Fi, but they’ve ended up being the weakest link in my current Vista installation. It pretty much always sends my comp to blue-screen if I try to enter the “Audio Console” application while playing any sort of audio. Creative isn’t always known for the best drivers, but they’re never this bad. This driver is something they’re probably feverishly working on as you read this, so I’ll cut them a bit of slack.

Overall, I’m confident enough in this build of Vista to move towards it as my primary OS. Now all I need is for Windowblinds to get on Vista, and I will be a happy geek.