Just Got Windows Vista -- LiveWire Tech Forums

So my developer edition of Vista came today. I have now uninstalled XP, and I've got Beta 2 (Build 5308) running. First impressions are all I can give at this stage, because I've only had it running for half an hour!
On first glance...everything seems a lot cleaner than XP - the interface is very professionally done, and the graphic designers have done a great job here. Finally, the text is using anti-aliasing without something you need to download from Microsoft. But all of this has paid its price...the high amount of graphics means that my (rather old) computer sometimes has troubles loading up menus. For example, it takes a couple of seconds for the highlight colour to appear when you are scrolling over a menu. But it's not really too much to handle. Windows Explorer has adopted a new look as well, as has the start button. Many others have stated that Vista borrows Mac OS X interface in some areas...although this is sometimes true (folder icons), I don't think it's anything worth worrying hugely about. Of course, design is a personal preference, but I actually prefer the OS X interface to Vista, although the gap has been closed hugely since XP.

The start menu has had a revamp in terms of functionality. When you click "All Programs" there is no popup sidebar that appears, it's all in a scrolling textarea. This is much better imo since it maximizes the screen "room".

The start menu:

My major gripe about Vista is that it is a heck of a lot slower than XP. It takes about 10 seconds to load up Control Panel, which is asking a bit too much for a simple interface program. Some programs stop responding when you load them up, especially if they are big (such as Photoshop). However, this is only the beta version, so I'd imagine Microsoft will cater for the low performance computers as much as the high ones. (the one I'm running is P4 2.4Ghz, 512MB Ram)

The control panel:

All my programs work pretty much, except ActiveSync, which has an update anyway. So no compatability issues here.

This is all I have to say thus far. Needless to say that I haven't explored all of Vista's features, by far as yet. I'll post back when I've had more time on it. Half an hour is all I've had so far! There are still some irritating bugs that...irritate me, some of which are carried through from XP.

PS. Sorry if this has already been posted!

(Edited by llamafarmer at 10:37 am on April 8, 2006)

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