At work, I became the first person to officially get Windows Vista, the new version of Microsoft’s operating system. Our company is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, which gives us a certain number of free licenses for various Microsoft products, so Vista appeared at our company fairly quickly. They installed it for me along with a new computer so that I could see how it performed in practice.
It has been almost a week now, so I can share my impressions. First, I immediately ran into major problems installing two programs I need for work— MS SQL Server Management Tools and FastReport Studio. I spent many hours on them, but somehow managed to overcome the problems. If anyone needs the solutions, write to me. I suspect there will be a great many compatibility problems, since I encountered two of them before I had even started working.
Now for the good part: I like Vista’s interface, especially the search integrated everywhere. Having it in the Start menu almost eliminates the need to install Launchy. And if the super-duper Aero interface is enabled, everything is also very pleasing to the eye. It runs very quickly on a decent computer. The main thing is to have at least 1 GB of RAM and a graphics card with 128 MB (approximately). But to do anything serious, it is better to have more than 1 GB of memory.
That is the most important part. You can read about the rest in reviews if you need it.
They also installed Office 2007 along with Vista. Now that is definitely a hit; I really liked it. The interface has become more convenient, more intuitive, and makes it easier to create attractive designs from presets. But it will take a little time to get used to it.
Windows Vista
2007-02-06