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Loading ...Vista, a shock to the system?
combatus
Well it’s taken me over a year but I’ve finally made the move from XP to Vista on my main rig. If I hadn’t had the opportunity to use the new OS on other systems I doubt whether I would have made the change yet but the other day I hit the point where the advantages suddenly outweighed the disadvantages and took the plunge with Vista Home Premium 32bit (no not 64bit, one step at a time!) Do I like it? Yes I do. It’s not a massive leap from XP but it looks much nicer and I can still get things the way I like them.
I’ve set the OS up on a few systems and run through the installation of updates and drivers numerous times, but actually using it full time isn’t something I’ve been prepared to do. After all, XP just works. No issues with sound cards, no slow file transfers and performance in general, and something everyone is used to. Some particular niggles simply prevented me from making the move - for example, Vista not working with Frontpage (if you input a hyperlink, the program would crash). But these have all been resolved although I’ll doubtless find new ones!
Aside from the recent updates impoving the situation for the OS like GPU drivers and of course SP1, there is one overiding fact that anyone still with XP should consider and is the main reason why I bit the bullet. Vista is the future. However much you or I like the seasoned XP, it’s simplicity(?), it’s speed, its stability, it is now irrelevant. Support will cease for it in June of this year and you’ll no longer be able to buy it retail. DX10 looks like it won’t be morphed into an XP friendly version so for future games Vista will be a necessity if you want the full eye candy.
And the eye candy will come. No we haven’t seen the full capability of DX10 yet, not by a long shot. It’s so different to everything that’s gone before it that it will take time for developers to adhere and get used to it’s features. Performance will also improve. DX9 has always been faster but this is rapidly becoming old news as driver updates close the gap each month sometimes by significant margins.
In this light, it’s the dawn of a new age of PC gaming. DX10 has huge potential and a really good summary can be heard from Futuremark’s site manager in relation to the new DX10 3D Benchmark, 3DMark Vantage.
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/30291.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/30933.html
While Vista may still have it’s share of niggles, a vast majority of these can be overcome and the sleek look and feel as well as the new features of the OS more than make up for this. In short it’s now easy to move from XP to Vista with little or no hassle for the average user. 32Bit versions especially, although 64bit versions still have compatibility issues in certain scenarios so if you use your PC for all manner of things from browsing, editing and gaming then it might be best to stick with a 32Bit version for now.
In the coming months many new games and benchmarks will be taking advantage of DX10 and the OS in general will improve too. I even know a few businesses who are already migrating to Vista so while XP will run everything fine for the forseeable future and will doubtless prove quicker and more compatible for a while yet, if only to keep up with technology, moving to Vista is the right thing to do. As I have learnt, you can’t “know” an OS until you use it day in day out on your own machine. Having a play on the odd system with Vista installed doesn’t really do anything for your understanding and when you come to use it full time, it will be just as big a shock to the system (pun not intended…) as if you’d never set eyes on it. And with the recent price crash, OEM Vista Premium can be had for less than £60 which is less than that 4GB of RAM you’ve been eyeing up.