3 October 2006 in Microsoft, Windows | Comments enabled

I’ve been playing with Vista for more than a year and finally upgraded to RC1 and am trying to use it as my full desktop replacement now (James is loving it so I thought I should make a real go at it too). So far these are my thoughts:

• The overall user experience is better which is great considering I’m still finding my way around it
• It picked up all the hardware in my machine and installed all the drivers. This is better than what XP or 2003 does for me which misses some things.
• Seem stable, I haven’t had a single crash yet and the number of reboots required is noticeably lower when first setting up the machine.
• Performance monitoring is greatly improved – I’m a sucker for stats
• IIS 7 is cool
• I keep finding neat little things all over the place, I love playing with new stuff

I could go on for quite a while and perhaps I will post again with anything cool I find – I’ve been avoiding this on earlier builds with the risk of features being dropped.

The only problem I have had so far is frustrating and keeps me going back to Windows 2003, I use an nVidia 6800 and my TV is only detected as being able to display at 30Hz interlaced mode (it can support 1024×768 @ 75Hz) so video looks awful. I can’t seem to find a work around yet which is annoying- I’ve even upgraded the graphics drivers only to find they offer almost no value at all (thanks nVidia ). If anyone else has this issue I’d be forever greatful – Google hasn’t been helpful so far either. However I don’t believe this is a Vista issue but more that nVidia need to get their act together.

All up though, I’m impressed with the quality of RC1 and would recomended it to anyone :)

 - JD