Windows Vista

Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed. Although we only looked at the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Enterprise, we do not expect the 64-bit edition to be faster (at least not with 32-bit applications). Overall, applications performed as expected, or executed slightly slower than under Windows XP. The synthetic benchmarks such as Everest, PCMark05 or Sandra 2007 show that differences are non-existent on a component level. We also found some programs that refused to work, and others that seem to cause problems at first but eventually ran properly. In any case, we recommend watching for Vista-related software upgrades from your software vendors. There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance. Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications. Both ATI and Nvidia will offer OpenGL support in upcoming driver releases, but it remains to be seen if and how other graphics vendors or Microsoft may offer it. We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue. There is good news as well: we did not find evidence that Windows Vista's new and fancy AeroGlass interface consumes more energy than Windows XP's 2D desktop. Although our measurements indicate a 1 W increase in power draw at the plug, this is too little of a difference to draw any conclusions. Obviously, the requirements for displaying all elements in 3D, rotating and moving them aren't enough to heat up graphics processors. This might also be a result of Windows Vista's more advanced implementation of ACPI 2.0 (and parts of 3.0), which allows the control of power of system components separately. Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space? If you really need your PC to finish huge encoding, transcoding or rendering workloads within a defined time frame, yes, it is. Don't do it; stay with XP. But as long as you don't need to finish workloads in record time, we believe it makes sense to consider these three bullet points: * Vista runs considerably more services and thus has to spend somewhat more resources on itself. Indexing, connectivity and usability don't come for free. * There is a lot of CPU performance available today! We've got really fast dual core processors, and even faster quad cores will hit the market by the middle of the year. Even though you will lose application performance by upgrading to Vista, today's hardware is much faster than yesterday's, and tomorrow's processors will clearly leap even further ahead. * No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor. Although application performance has had this drawback, the new Windows Vista performance features SuperFetch and ReadyDrive help to make Vista feel faster and smoother than Windows XP.

I have tried it too, i tried one of the release candidates and i quite like the look and feel of it. Of course the direct X 10 that comes with it is also a very large bonus because it means that i will be able to see games better. The things that i dont quite like about it is the fact that it takes up a lot of memory in the RAM and leaves less around for the running of apps and stuff. There are also a few occasional driver problems with some malfunctions here and there. The display looks nice and the animations are fluid, but its just a little too aestetically focused for me. I'd rather have a bit better swecurity and a little less on the visual aspects. I wouyldnt pay for an upograde or a full version just yet but i think in a year from now or maybe 6 months, it will be better because the major issues would have been cleared up or will be almost cleared up and the security is more likely to be tighetr than it is now .

vista is very cool.

Vista is a total ripoff of Mac OS X! All those nice features you found in Vista, existed in OS X 10 for some time now. Indeed Vista has better security than Windows XP, but the rest is just eye candy, that costs you lots of resources! Vista is NOT recommended for power-users or gamers, but if you're just an Office user or need it for the internet, it's good enough. P.S.: try the free Linux Ubuntu with the XGL interface,you will get much better results!

Woow WIndows Vista.. what a hot subject i can say. I have talked a lot in my area with many of my friends and all of them had only positive thoughts about it. I can say that i was blow off by this new windows system. Some things certainly lack to it but this new look which Microsoft has incorporated in it certainly do the money you would give for it. I have waited this new system for 2 weeks and here i am using it. It was pretty hard for me to buy it because in my area it can't be found. So i had to ask a friend from another part of my country to order me. I am so happy using it and all i have are only words of gratitdue. I post here a short description about VISTA. Windows Vista contains hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface (GUI) and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems. Vista also aims to increase the level of communication between machines on a home network using peer-to-peer technology, making it easier to share files and digital media between computers and devices. For developers, Vista includes version 3.0 of the .NET Framework out of the box. The .Net Framework makes it significantly easier for developers to write high-quality applications than with the traditional Windows API.