景色文章名列前茅50 景色錄影景色軟景色幫助

窗口景色年在回顧

11月17日^th 2007will標記一年，因為我使用Microsoftâ€ ™s最新的客戶桌面操作系統的â€ 「窗口景色。景色是重大發行為我，我將承認，有爆沸，并且更大量仍然有證明。但結論為我是清楚的; 窗口景色是與它的前輩和市場選擇比較，提供頭等用戶經驗的重大發行。年€在回顧被認為看一看在的ActiveWinâ ™s怎樣操作系統為我執行了從它的首演，我希望您將讀它並且分享您的反饋。

窗口景色整年體驗了摔打許多分析員期望的強的收養，它估計90百萬名用戶升級了到新的發行通過新的個人計算機購買，并且零售升級執照。如此itâ€ ™s明顯窗口這發行為微軟是健康的，并且繼續很好做以以後的節日。眾多的站點橫跨網也鼓起了以熱心者迎合新的操作系統和它各種各樣的特點的數以萬計。

我使用x86，并且x64景色平臺，一個設備驅動程序繼續從去的100%拿著我64位。 BVRP â 「在得到€您的正常運轉在景色x64的移動電話工具， itâ ™s的設備驅動程序請€運作是â€ ˜one yearâ€ ™進展! 關於兼容性景色有一個概略的開始無疑義，設備驅動程序是可利用的，但多數困擾了以穩定問題，這個問題也被應用於一些軟件應用。但我可以誠實地說問題幾乎被解決了和幫助提供更好的經驗為我和其他用戶。一部分的這優秀在景色歸因於被改進的窗口更新服務。微軟去和以遠使用戶通過穿他們有最新的軟件和堅硬司機通過服務。

新的問題報告，并且解答組分也是連續地給微軟被構造的反饋關於問題您的系統也許遇到連續窗口景色的一個巨大特點。它一個巨大方式真正地診斷和發現解答對共同的問題用戶可能有例如軟件兼容性和設備驅動程序問題。

接口

因為用戶與在景色，互動€它的沒有秘密，窗口Vistaâ ™s航空題材是主要凹道為窗口，€ itâ ™s的新和現有的用戶用戶經驗的重要部分我們。 AERO is just visually appealing, cool and really adds a professional quality and dimension to the PC. Some say AERO is a resource hog, its confusing, distracting, but I â€œmustâ€ disagree. AERO Glass really is beautiful and productive by really putting emphasis on an applications window main content, persons who say its distracting have never used Vista, AERO is also about bringing aesthetics to a vitally important part of the computer. Itâ€™s distracting at first yes because you are left wondering if this is Windows, you immediately admire the quality and focus on the changes brought to the desktop. I am running AERO Glass on an nVidia Geforce FX 5200 128 MBs of RAM AGP card and I get all the effects without any drawbacks in performance, so persons talking about AERO being a cheap thrill really need to sit down and take a serious look at the OS and actually use it before coming to a conclusion. Microsoft did a great job here.

In my Windows XP Professional x64 Edition year in review I proclaimed that Vista x64 would be the transition to 64-bit ubiquity, but I must be honest that it has not been entirely so. I previously noted compatibility problems with my cellular phone. The industry is still not behind the platform it seems, but there has been definitely a lot of progress. In comparison to Windows 2000, Vista x64 is probably one of the smoothest Windows migrations I have ever had. This is a testament to detail and effort Microsoft has put into making the experience as identical in everyway to its 32-bit counter part. Itâ€™s up to the industry to provide the other half of the bargain and some have definitely done so, nVidia and AMD ATI for example have regularly released updated device drivers for their graphics cards which have improved the stability and performance on Vista systems.

Users have not been bombarded with issues such as RAID/SATA issues which were very pronounced for the XP x64 release. Please note, I am not saying the issue does not exist, but it is not as rampant, numerous devices have worked for users since day one and a plethora of software programs have supported Vista since day one, these include Graphics Cards, AIO Printers, Scanners, Wireless and USB Devices. Microsoft has estimated that over 2 million devices are now supported for Windows Vista and the list continues to grow. New avenues have opened up for Windows customers such as the Windows Market Place where users can find over 90,000 products that are designed for the platform.

For me personally though, Vista is truly a personalized experience, I have discovered that I am doing more with my computer than I ever did before. During the BETAâ€™s I acquired a Digital Camera and started taking lots of photos, Vista helped me out of the box to really enjoy this leisure task, managing, sorting, editing and viewing photos/videos is such a great time on the computer. Vistaâ€™s Photo Gallery has really changed the way I interact with my images, the built in tagging capabilities, the direct integration with applications such as Windows DVD Maker, Windows Movie Maker are allowing me to go beyond just using my computer as a tool and more as an opportunity to create memories I want to enjoy and share. It sounds clichÃ© and more like a commercial and many would come to the argument that I could have done this on a Mac years ago. But I didnâ€™t have to do a major reinvestment in hardware and software/migration. It only took an upgrade from Windows XP to really start doing amazing things with my computer.

Vistaâ€™s built in search is such a critical part of the Windows Experience, its everywhere in the system and makes the triviality of accessing your files such a second nature thing to do. Users have talked about the new Explorer shell and some problems that I have found frustrating myself. The issue of customized Explorer shells not remembering their settings when applied regardless of the numerous methods and workarounds suggested. The new Command Bar is also an area I wish more focus was invested in terms of retaining some of the control users had in XP. Simply, it cannot be customized to add your own buttons such as Cut, Copy and Paste to speed up common task when working in folders. Still, its all good, features that I do find myself really mesmerized by include the Bread Crumb menus that let me easily back track and take quick short cuts through the folder hierarchy with great ease.

A lot users still fail to really see the benefits from a productivity point of view and receive Windows Vista with a mind set that is not necessarily open to change and more focused on stark differences between XP that lets face it are stark differences in how the user is in more control of what they can do with Windows Vista.

Performance

There have been small issues around performance Microsoft has plugged since its release, during the summer, the Company released performance updates and most recently updated them to improve the reliability and stability in areas such as Copy and Paste which many persons including myself noted as being horribly slow especially when copying large files. Persons still say Vistaâ€™s performance in general could be better, but I assume there are some illusions to this and there are some factors to be accounted for. My brother purchased a laptop notebook from Dell Inc. in June of 2006 with Windows XP Home hoping he would have a smooth upgrade to Windows Vista when it hit the market. The notebook was designated Windows Vista Capable, it came with an Intel Core Duo 1.6 GHz processor, 512 MBs of system memory. In February of this year, he upgraded to Vista Business but was immediately burnt by the slow performance he got from the system, upgrading was slow, using the OS was slow. Microsoft has long informed us that Vista works best with 1 GB of RAM. So, a lot of consumers have been misled I personally believe by the OEMs system specs and the Vista Ready logos. Its not entirely Microsoftâ€™s fault here, since Microsoft canâ€™t dictate what OEMs put in their machines and ship to customers. My brother upgraded his memory from 512 to a total of 1.2 GBs and the difference in performance was like night and day.

The matter of what is best in terms of system specs for Vista especially when it comes to RAM is still falling on deaf ears. My Sister-in-law purchased a Dell 1501 notebook with Vista Basic in March which I was surprised to know came with 512 MBs of RAM and a 2.0 GHz AMD Sempron processor. I am not surprised by the processor since it is of course a budget notebook. But why is Dell still pushing systems out the door with 512 MBs of RAM? Itâ€™s like Dell doesnâ€™t even run some test on these systems to see how they perform before putting them in the hands of consumers. This past summer a friend purchased a Gateway ML3109 notebook which also came with 512 MBs of RAM and Vista Home Basic.

OEMs donâ€™t realize the perception this creates for them and the OS, the brand is affected and consumers come to a conclusion the OS is not ready, itâ€™s buggy and slow. I am running Vista Ultimate 32-bit on a Dell 8300 Dimension, 3.2 GHz P4, I purchased in March of 2004, and the machine has been updated since the betas with 2 GBs of RAM. Vista performs exceptionally well on it, it shows when a system is configured the right way how the experience can be a positive one for the end user. The same applies to my brother who is running Vista with 1.2 GBs of RAM and clearly satisfied with the OS for being what most would say is an early adopter.

Security

I canâ€™t really come to a conclusion on Security in Windows Vista yet, but itâ€™s been good, so far. The top name brand Security vendors have updated their popular Antivirus utilities with full support for both Vista x86 and x64 which is really good in my opinion. Microsoft themselves have also pushed out their Antivirus solution Windows Live OneCare, but I have avoided it based on some lack lustre reasons. I am using Symantec Norton Corporate Edition 10.2 on my desktop and Computer Associates for Vista x64.

The controversial UAC is still â€˜annoyingâ€™ and I am not going to nice it up. Its necessary, but I wish it could be less needy in certain areas or a feature added to the UAC dialog to remember for certain locations of the system I access. I donâ€™t want to sacrifice the integrity of the feature itself, but UAC is just a bit too much, its like this nagging little @#$! I just hate it sometimes <sigh>. So I hope Microsoft focuses on some intelligent way of making UAC understands what can infiltrate the system from what cannot â€“ just be more user aware. Applications still remain another area where UAC is still a big of problem; I have seen only a few applications that have escaped the wrath of the UAC dialog â€“ Microsoft Office is one of them, the worst application is Appleâ€™s iTunes. Itâ€™s still early and I am sure developers are still adjusting to the new Least User Privilege architecture in the OS.

Backup in Vista is awesome, the Complete PC Backup type feature in particular is something I had to turn to from third party vendors in prior versions of Windows. I personally believe Microsoft should have made the feature available to all SKUs, since I believe everybodyâ€™s data is important no matter the platform they are using. What I like about Complete PC Backup in Vista is how simple and straightforward it is, just attach an external drive and Iâ€™m good to go. Some persons have reported errors with the feature itself such as (0x800000587) type errors when backing up or restoring the system. I personally have not experienced this, and I have not read any proper resolutions for the problem itself. I do know you can receive such an error on laptops if itâ€™s not plugged into its AC adapter.

Compatibility

A lot of applications were not working right for Vista back in January, some of my daily apps like Office 2007, Encarta 2007 worked out of the box, other critical applications like Corel Draw X3, Photoshop CS3, new versions QuickBooks 2007 and Peach Tree Accounting 2008 and Ahead Nero 8 were upgraded to work with Vista so I am very satisfied so far and have not experienced a strong case of compatibility issues although this resulted in either purchasing new versions of certain apps such as QuickBooks and Peach Tree or waiting on necessary patches to enable compatibility. A lot of application compatibility issues again go back to the new changes in the user privileges in the OS, prior to Vista applications were designed to run with full Administrator rights, but because Vista made changes to the user account settings most applications do not readily operate properly since they do not get to access the system in an open way as they did in XP and 2000. Itâ€™s a tricky situation for many users and the reality is many applications will either have to be updated, run in Compatibility or installed on a supported OS in Virtual PC 2007.

The Ultimate Cost

I mentioned some of the rich multimedia capabilities in Vista such as Photo Gallery which was recently upgraded to Windows Live Photo Gallery featuring strong integration with Microsoftâ€™s Windows Live platform. This clearly proves that Microsoft is not standing still with Vista and is continually focusing on adding value through integration and new experiences allowing users to enjoy and share their memories in new ways. In November of 2006 Microsoft announced Windows Ultimate Extras, an exclusive set of services designed exclusively for Vista Ultimate customers. So far the initiative has been lack lustre, but I do appreciate some of cool features like Windows Dreamscene which brings your wallpapers life. A few other features have been added to the service such as the support for all World Wide Language Interfaces, Bitlocker Drive Preparation Tool and the Hold â€˜Em poker game. But itâ€™s most obvious there could be more, since the incentive the Ultimate SKU was continued value beyond the box. I do hope there is more in store, but so far I am a little disappointed and would have like to see a clear understanding of what Ultimate Extras are all about and what it means for me in the long term.

Going Forward

I canâ€™t cover everything because it would never be finished; I hope to do a future follow up in the near future. Looking into Vistaâ€™s future one can only say it will only get better. Microsoft is currently working on the first Service Pack for the OS which is expected sometime in early 2008. I wonâ€™t say it has been all great since day one, but Vista found its footing from early on and the industry started to invest early on in the platforms unique features, I will honestly say that Vista will be a year of building on the momentum and more users will get to experience the OS on machines I believe are more Vista prepared. Vista offers a cohesive experience users will greatly appreciate from multimedia/consumer oriented task to focus on an engaging productive experience for businesses whether itâ€™s seamlessly connecting to wireless networks, managing files, collaboration, searching and really doing more with your PC. I say if you have been on the fence about upgrading to Vista, there is just no more need to wait.

Resources:

ActiveWin.com: Windows Vista

ActiveWin.com: Windows Vista 32 & 64 Bit Review

Windows Vista Team Blog

Windows Vista Experience Blog

Kristan Kenney: Confessions of a Windows Enthusiast

NeoSmart Technologies

Windows Vista Communities

Previously:

ActiveWin.com: Windows XP Professional x64 Edition: Year in Review