After few years of work Microsoft released the new operating system Windows Vista. The purpose of this article is to answer these questions: “Is it worth installing this new OS? What advantages it can give? And what are the minimal hardware requirements?”
Everyone knows that every next version of Windows requires more and more powerful hardware, and Vista is not an exception. We won’t be able to discuss all advantages and disadvantages of Windows Vista, but let’s take a look at the most important ones.
Windows Vista Versions
Microsoft Windows Vista will be delivered in five versions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. They all have a lot of common functions and features. They were divided in purpose for specific groups of users. And they all have a set of additional functions.
There is another version of Windows Vista – Starter. But it will be distributed only along with computers as a demonstration; it can not be bought separately. This version has limited functionality. The strictest limitations are: no ability of upgrade to higher versions and no ability to run more than three applications. But at the same time all applications are compatible with this version and work with no problems.
The most common for the family of Windows Vista OS is Home Basic version. It has all standard features for comfortable and secure work on PC. All the applications and services that everyone have got used to in the previous version of Windows remain in Windows Vista OS. The improvements took place in the applications’ level of access division depending on their purposes, which improved the security of the system. Parental control was also improved. The algorithms of files search were also improved by the developers. So if your computer is mostly used for work in the internet and with text documents, Home Basic version will be the best choice. All these features are also present in all other versions of Windows Vista, and Home Basic version includes only necessary features for home user.
Home Premium version of Windows Vista OS has additional multimedia features. Searching and viewing of photo, video and TV programs are controlled by the system via the Windows Media Center menu. And it also has the new 3D windows interface called Aero, it has semi-transparent windows and it became very well known even before Windows Vista was released.
Two next versions Business and Enterprise Windows Vista have additional features for business clients. They support scanners and faxes and file system encoding. It is also possible to use one security policy on several computers.
And the last version Windows Vista Ultimate has all features included - for home users and for business clients also.
Windows Vista System Requirements
Many users are worried because of the upgrade necessity in order to install the new Windows Vista OS. Naturally, most of the users will have to make this upgrade, the new features will require new hardware. But is the situation that bad for “old” computes? It is possible that the computer you currently have will be able to work under Windows Vista. Lets find out.
The official minimal requirements are the following::
1) processor 1 GHz;
2) RAM 1 GGB;
3) Video 128 MB;
4) Hard Drive 40 Gb, free space 15Gb;
5) DirectX9 or higher.
At first sight the requirements are not very high. Except for RAM 1Gb. Many computers now have such characteristics. But will such computer be able to handle the work of resource-intensive applications such as antivirus, Photoshop, games etc?
Windows Vista OS will operate on the PC with 800 ÌHz processor and 512 MB RAM. But to have the full experience of the OS features and to avoid problems while working you should install it on the computer with little higher characteristics than minimally required.
Windows Vista interface
The first thing that attracts attention on the Windows Vista desktop is the Start button. It no longer has the Start label, there is only Windows logo left. The button is designed to be a little wider then the whole taskbar. The systematization of the menu items is also a little different. This is made in purpose of making the work on PC easier. Especially for inexperienced users. One gets used to these changes very soon.
The next thing that improves the experience is the Sidebar. It initially has calendar, processor usage level, calculator etc on it. These elements can be selected by user.
Another pleasant improvement is the size of desktop icons. From now on their sizes will not be changed according to the screen resolution. User will be able to pick the desired size. Smaller copies of documents are used for icons, e.g. first page of the text document.
Explorer was redesigned too. To preview file’s properties or contents it is no longer necessary to call its properties. In the bottom of the screen there is a panel with preview and file information.
The dialog windows menu became clearer, because each item has a description now.
New interface Windows Aero in Vista OS looks striking. But its beauty has a side effect. Aero interface uses quite enough system resources, because it is an application working with 3D graphics. The main features of this interface are: semi-transparent windows and the ability of switching between them in a 3D view (Win + Tab combination). Another useful feature is the preview of the minimized windows in the taskbar.
By the way, Windows Aero can only be activated in the licensed versions (another step to protect OS from pirates). A video adapter with hardware support of DirectX 9L and WDDM technology (Windows Display Driver Model) will be required.
Another feature, which will surprise many of the new users – the speed of search on the computer. Search can be started from two places.
The first way is to enter the search text in the search field of the Start menu. The second way is to search in the appropriate field which is present in every window (top right part). And if we’d tell you that the speed of searching is fast we’d tell nothing, because the result output is performed right while the search phrase is entered, just on fly.
Performance under Windows Vista
It is necessary to mention here that Microsoft itself acknowledged this problem and they released their own solution. In Windows Vista there is its own system of the hardware performance estimation WinSPR (Windows System Performance Rating). The following parameters play role in the mark: performance of processor, video adapter, RAM, hard drive. It is important that the mark is not an average value, but the lowest of the mentioned ones. For each PC configuration Windows Vista according to the productivity mark makes a decision, in which mode to run.
The performance will depend on the system characteristics of your computer. And though Windows Vista requires much more resources for its work, that the previous Windows ÎS, the experience is significantly improved.
The most important improvement is the division of tasks by priority to exclude various bugs and overloads while playing video, audio or while working with graphical applications. I.å. users’ applications will be able to use more resources than system services. For example, antivirus work or formatting a part of logical space will not effect video playback.
It is possible to connect more RAM. Home Basic and Home Premium versions can work with 8 and 16 Gb respectively. In other versions – Enterprise, Business, Ultimate – it is possible to connect up to 128 Gb. But these volumes of RAM are supported only by 64-bit versions of Vista. In Windows Vista 32-bit maximum RAM is 4Gb, it is less, but quite enough.
There are two direct solutions of the RAM lack problem under Vista.
The first one is to upgrade RAM
The second one is to use Windows ReadyBoost. This technology enables RAM enlarging by connecting a USB flash memory. In this way Vista can operate on PCs with 512 RAM or even less with USB flash dongle connected. And USB flash memory can be partially occupied. I.å. USB-dongle can be also used in the original purpose – data storage. This technology is attractive because it gives the ability to improve the system productivity.
Various settings also play their part in the work of computer. You can simply disable Aero interface and the system performance will immediately improve. By the way, if someone is concerned about the effect of the Aero interface on games performance, you can stop worrying. When any resource-intensive application is loaded Windows automatically switches Aero interface off. That is why Windows Aero doesn’t effect system requirements. It can be switched off and replaced by the classic windows menu.
In Windows Vista there are important improvements in aspects of diagnostics and troubleshooting. All this has only one purpose – system performance improvement. I.å. diagnostics process can be not only manual, on the question-answer level, now system automatically tries to fix the problem when it occurs.
The necessity of rebooting the system also became a new feature in Windows Vista. To improve the performance the system reboot is used in very rare cases. Often not all components of the system are rebooted, but only a small part of them. That is why Windows Vista has its Restart Manager, its purpose is the control of services reboot. For example, if a failure in the system occurs because of some application’s malfunction, then only the application components are reloaded and the related services if necessary. In the same way the number of reboots during the installation/removal of programs was decreased.
SuperFetch technology is implemented in order to decrease the time needed to start applications in Vista. It loads the most often used programs into the RAM.
Many users will be excited about the quick search of files and other information on the computer.
It is just a small part of all that can be told about the new operating system. You can read about other , in the second part of the OS Vista review.