So a couple of days ago I went ahead and updated to a new build of Vista by reinstalling on my other hard drive. I’ve been pretty happy with my Beta 2 install but there have been a few hardware/driver related issues and a couple of odd software issues. And I’ve had one big short coming: The inability to have a decent looking UI for screen recording with CamTasia – running in Aero mode just doesn’t work for this as it is way to resource intensive and slow.

So I’ve been hearing how much better Vista has gotten in recent builds so I bit the bullet and reinstalled. So far I’m impressed. Just about everything about this pre-RC1 build is significantly improved. Performance is considerably better. It’s hard to judge and compare with XP anymore, but the OS is just super responsive for all tasks. The real performance kicker for me was to fire up Visual Studio and start up my West Wind Web Store application (6 projects) in debug mode – in XP and Vista Beta 2 it took about 20-30 seconds for the first start, but with the new build 5 seconds later the app was stopped on a break point. Wow!

Internet Explorer too is much, much faster and after checking a few pages that I had problems with previous I notice that everything that I can dig up here now works as expected. I haven’t spent a lot of time checking capabilities beyond the obvious though, but at least the few pages that weren’t working – complex <div> based layouts and some secure Web sites all seem to work now. Whew.

There’s lots of other things that have been fixed or work better now. In Beta 2 there were odd hangs in Explorer from time to time where opening an Explorer window would be dreadfully slow and that is all history. Even with Aero running, windows pop into place immediately and there’s no ‘search’ delay that’s so common with Explorer on almost all platforms.

Installation too was a delight – it took about half an hour to install Vista from CD in to sitting on the final desktop with my user account! Vista correctly installed all drivers except my fucked up Dell Sigmatel sound card (man do I hate those things), which again is a great improvement from the previous beta.

So one of the reasons I did the upgrade was to get the cleaner ‘standard’ Vista non-Aero look, so I can create a some screen cam demos. The new non-Aero look looks similar to aero but looses the transparency. Going back and forth between the two there’s no earth-shattering difference where you get repulsed as was the case in beta 2 <g>. It’s nice and works well for screen capure cams etc. But even with Aero on things have improved considerably. I use SnagIt a lot for screen captures which took 2-3 seconds to actually come up with the frame selection view – now the capture and selections are instant.

For older applications too a lot of little issues have been resolved. One application – Visual FoxPro’s IDE had a number of weird issues with really slow window drawing and odd behavior with mouse operation ( no scroll wheel for example ) that have been resolved. MDI windows now also look nice due to the non-Aero theme  that is used for them so some of my MDI applications that looked scary in Beta 2 now look nice again. Themed toolbars and headers still look pretty drab, but that’s something we’ll all have to deal with – it looks theme colors are a thing of the past so letting a ‘renderer’ pick colors for you no longer is going to work. We’re going back to picking our own color schemes…

One place I’ve spent a lot of time with Vista is with IIS 7 and the management Console. The IIS 7 Management Console looks much improved. I spend a lot of time in the IIS manager while testing apps and setting up sites and tearing them back down and the IIS team has gotten a lot of things moved around into more logical places. The top level view is much more manageable and it’s now relatively easy to find the things you are interested in without getting overwhelmed by the number of icons. Funny a lot of things I’ve complained about are addressed in this version which is awesome. I especially am glad they fixed the confusing Http Handlers interface making the explicit distinction between Script Maps (like IIS 6 Application Mappings), Handlers and actual Modules (Native or .NET HttpModules). A big heads up for the Management Console in IIS 7!!!

I still have some issues with the IIS 6 Metabase compatibility – it seems looking up Web sites causes ADSI to crash in some cases, but that’s relatively minor… most of my existing install scripts, some of which are pretty complex for installation of application pools, virtuals script maps etc. all seem to work both for my .NET apps and probably the more complex scripts I use for Web Connection (Fox). In fact I was able to run a new install of Web Connection with no problems on IIS 7. IIS 7 administration just rocks – the ability to use localized XML configuration files will make my life so much easier for all of this!!!

Another area of improvement important to me is Virtual PC compatibility. There’s still a warning dialog that pops up on installation, but running VPC on Vista just seems to work. Performance is much improved and some of the video related problems have been resolved as well. Couple that with the new non-Aero view (which VPC forces switching to – it can’t run in Aero) and running VPC just has gotten a lot better.

Warts and all

On the downside User security is still giving me fits. I ran for a while with User Account Protection enabled, and they’ve actually made the default even worse by overlaying the desktop with a shadow mask (which is slower), so the desktop low-lights before the UAC dialog pops up. But even running Windows internal applications these dialogs pop up constantly… it’s just not possible to be productive this way. I don’t give a shit how secure my desktop is with these dialogs, if I can’t do what I need to do without them popping up every minute I have to turn that crap off…

So I’m back to turning UAC off and turning off Admin mode protection. But even with all of this off I still could not run some code. I downloaded a BIOS patch from the Dell Web Site, and no matter how I try it Windows will not let me run this EXE. The Exe is an executable zip file (of which I downloaded a couple from Dell and which all ran fine) but this BIOS update utility will not even unzip. I don’t know what’s different or what Windows is sniffing at but that really bites. Even Run As Administrator doesn’t solve this problem.

There’s another security related issue: In Outlook 2007 I cannot click on a link and have it navigate. Outlook prompts with a message that “This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer.” Thanks. It doesn’t bother to tell me WHICH restriction and is it Outlook, or the System? This didn’t happen in Beta 2 of Vista so I’m assuming it’s a Vista issue, but I have no idea where to look for this particular setting.

I’ve also lost my mobile phone sync in the update and I can’t sync to my SmartPhone. Previous in Beta 2 this came down as a Windows Update for Office <shrug>…

I still have some hardware issues with my video card. When I close the lid on the laptop and bring it back up my laptop screen stops working and all of a sudden Vista forces me to run on my external (2nd) monitor only. This is probably a video driver issue with nVidia. nVidia also hasn't been updating their drivers very well, so all the monitor tuning tools are virtual missing which is a bit of a problem because my laptop screen needs a bit of tweaking for color richness. There's also the damn Sigmatel audio card for which I still have to install the XP audio drivers. Vista installs a generic audio driver which lets audio applications work, but alas there's no sound pushed to the hardware. At least in this build the audio driver doesn't die after sleeping or closing the lid. I'm not all that hopeful that Dell will put out Vista drivers for this sound card either. <shrug>

Installation with two drives rules

This install went very smoothly for me primarily because this time I installed onto a new drive with the old drive available for immediate access. I’m using a SATA -> USB interface to hook up my old drive to the new install and with that it’s been a snap to get data copied onto the new install. There’ll be ongoing copying I’m sure, but all the stuff I need on a daily basis was installed quickly. The ability to get those files you forgot is just too nice. I don’t think I’m ever re-installing my OS on the same drive again for this reason.

Overall though I’m very happy with this install. My machine just feels right now – it just runs fast in all aspects and a lot of weird little issues have been resolved.  I’m not too geeky about a new OS – I’m more interested in a stable and snappy environment than specific new features.  My main reason for being here in the first place is IIS 7. But given all that I think after running Vista for 3 months now I think I would find it very hard to go back to XP.

There are some features that are pretty damn nice though. Probably the one I’m using more than anything else is the Program Menu Search capability to find applications to run. Type Services and there's your Service manager. Type IIS there's your IIS Manager. Sql Management and Sql Management studio pops onto the list. This beats the hell out of navigating your programs list. While I use SlickEdit extensively, I don't have every program I have installed configured for it and so the Program Manager Search box complements SlickEdit nicely. I haven’t used the programs list for months. I love this feature and I don’t even have excessive applications installed <s>. Also cool is Media Players taskbar mode which puts the essential controls into a tiny taskbar minimized item. Media Player in general is nice and here too it just ‘feels’ right. There are lots of things in all of Vista’s UI that give you that feeling – it’s subtle, and it’s new. It wasn’t quite there in Beta 2 although you could almost ‘feel it’ <g>…

Funny how things can be judged this way but the subtle things make a difference along with the overall need for smooth and snappy operation. I’m reasonably excited (as excited as I can be about an OS upgrade anyway)…

I’m running a pre-RC1 build (5536) but RC1 should be on the way fairly shortly so if you have been considering taking Vista for a spin this might be good time to try it…