I just installed Windows Vista on my machine at home so that I could learn about some of the new technologies that Microsoft is introducing (WinFX is of primary interest to me). I was concerned that my PC (which I put together about 2 years ago now) would be showing its age by this point and be a tad pokey with regards to the flashy new UI and features present in Vista.
After installing it (and on an old backup IDE hard drive no less) I was pleased to see that it ran pretty well. I haven't installed Photoshop (or any games) on it yet, but I did install Office 2007 and that seemed fine as well.
One interesting thing I noticed is that Microsoft has included a Performance Information tool with Vista. This is a useful way for a user (who may not be a techie) to find out where his/her system may be lacking and in need of an upgrade. Curious to see how my computer was rated, I checked it. Here is the evaluation I received:
The base score is the lowest value of all the sub-scores.
If you are curious as to what these numbers mean (I was), here are Microsoft's definitions:
Here are general descriptions of the kind of experience you can expect from a computer that receives the following base scores:
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A computer with a base score of 1 or 2 usually has sufficient performance to do most general computing tasks, such as run office productivity applications and search the Internet. However, a computer with this base score is generally not powerful enough to run Windows Aero, or the advanced multimedia experiences that are available with Windows Vista.
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A computer with a base score of 3 is able to run Windows Aero and many new features of Windows Vista at a basic level. Some of the new Windows Vista advanced features might not have all of their functionality available. For example, a machine with a base score of 3 can display the Windows Vista theme at a resolution of 1280 × 1024, but might struggle to run the theme on multiple monitors. Or, it can play digital TV content but might struggle to play High Definition Television (HDTV) content.
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A computer with a base score of 4 or 5 is able to run all new features of Windows Vista with full functionality, and it is able to support high-end, graphics-intensive experiences, such as multiplayer and 3‑D gaming and recording and playback of HDTV content. Computers with a base score of 5 were the highest performing computers available when Windows Vista was released.
I was pretty pleased with that my last upgrade is still holding up well even after 2 years.
My experiences with the new Aero user interface have been pretty positive. While I'm not sure that it adds much in the way of intuitiveness or power, it certainly looks pretty. Dare I say it, Microsoft obviously took some visual cues from the Aqua interface on the Macintosh.
Microsoft has also improved its interfaces around setting up networking, security and even email to make it easy on non-geek computer users. Kudos on that one. I was thrilled to see that setting up my email account was as simple as typing in my email address, username and password. Vista figured out where my pop server was and connected to it without me even having to get involved!
My experience hasn't been completely without frustrations or bugs, but so far its not bad since the OS has just been released. I will be dual-booting with Windows XP on my home box for a while, but if my initial experience is any indication, I will probably switch over to a Vista-only system in the near future.