February 3, 2007
 at 12:03 am
 in microsoft, software, windows

I had downloaded the BETA of Windows Vista when it became available publicly and used it on both my desktop and laptop through a dual-boot scenario. This really got me used to the new changes in Vista so I feel very comfortable with it.

However, on my laptop, I have Intel’s 945GM onboard graphics card, which in the beta, and serious problems with Vista’s Aero Glass style (transparency, flip 3D, etc). Any of the new graphical things in Vista also were quite sluggish. This is why I originally didn’t plan on buying Vista until I replaced my desktop.

Just last night, I did a bit of research and discovered that Intel released a new driver for their 945 series graphics chipsets which support Vista to the smallest iota, including the Vista premium features (Aero Glass). So today, I took the plunge and purchased Vista Ultimate and upgraded my laptop’s XP MCE 2005 to Vista Ultimate.

In the past, you dared not upgrade a Windows installation if you didn’t want to have to deal with a ton of compatibility issues afterwards. I had reports of how smoothly Vista’s upgrade is compared to previous Windows versions, though when I was using the BETA, I did a clean installation and not an upgrade. I hadn’t experienced it firsthand until earlier today.

I must say with great enthusiasm that Vista’s upgrade procedure was absolutely flawless. Every file, ever folder, every setting, everything was perfectly preserved. My email, my music, my photos, my recently viewed/opened files, my playlists, heck, even my browser’s cache was preserved in the upgrade from IE6 on my XP installation to IE7 on Vista. Not one thing has gone missing. Not one application has given errors. Not one incompatible driver. I am thoroughly impressed with Vista’s upgrade procedure.

I also must point out that significant improvements have been made since the BETA in terms of speed, reliability, aesthetics, and ease of use. Vista is truly almost twice as fast as my XP installation on the same hardware. Vista can actually take advantage of my dual-core processor with 2GB of RAM, unlike XP. File searching is incredible and fast. Application launches are even faster. Boot time was almost cut in half, and I’m not exaggerating.

Vista’s new style is gorgeous. It has wonderful Aesthetics. 3d animations and hardware acceleration features execute with absolutely zero lag. Media Center is vastly improved over MCE 2005, and it runs flawlessly.

Vista is absolutely wonderful. Period. Kudos to Microsoft for getting away from their stereotypical bug-filled, unstable, and unusable operating system. Vista is amazing. I’ll leave it at that.

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