Hardware used: Asus A7n8X-E Deluxe motherboard AMD 2800+ (Running at 1.6 Ghz) 1 gig of ddr 400 SDRAM (2 x 256) NEC CD & DVD Burner Integrated Audio and Networking Radeon 9500 256 MB graphics card One 17 inch flatscreen LCD monitor Impressions: The Installation Installing Windows Vista was a lot more difficult than should have been. Not in fault do to the software, but to their "download manager", which stated that you could stop a download and continue it. I did that twice, and I tried installing Windows Vista and received an 80070241 error which meant the download was unsuccessful or there is missing data. It wouldn't be such a big complaint by me, but there are many people complaining about it. So Microsoft couldn't produce a good download of Windows Vista. After getting everything correctly sorted out, and installing the raid drivers for my HD, it was relatively easy. Just pick the drive where you want it to install and then off it goes for roughly 40 minutes, not requiring any input from you until the installation is completed and you have booted into Windows Vista OS. Minor complaint is that the installation was finishing up, when I checked the computer, but received no feedback, and thought my computer had freezed up and restarted and the installation rolled back to Windows XP. When in fact it was just installing more stuff, but did not give me feedback from keyboard or mouse, kinda annoying to have to reinstall it all over again. Most hardware was detected. Internet correctly worked where'as with XP I had to install drivers. Sound did not work, and didn't work without drivers in XP either, but would have expected drivers for a respected company such as Asus would be present, but the drivers were downloaded from Windows Update which was good. Speaking of Windows Update, I liked it. Relatively simple to use and everything is pretty much automated not requiring much input. A big problem is that my NEC DVD drive did not have drivers installed for it and is currently not being recognized by Windows Vista, which is strange because it was just plug & play on Windows XP, dont' understand why this is. Installation Score : 4 out of 5 Main issue is with downloading, and sometimes not getting feedback when your system is paused for several minutes with no response to anything. Speed & Reliability The simple explination for speed is.... Do not download Windows Vista Beta 2 expecting for it to be anywhere near as fast as Windows XP in it's current state. It is very slow and bogged down with many processes. I didn't realize how serious websites were being when they said Windows Vista will require advanced hardware to even get decent performance from Windows Vista. I'm guessing 2 gigs of memory, at least 2.5 ghz processor, and a recent & decent graphics card will be essential to maximizing performance with Windows Vista. Reliability although has been amazingly good. Not a single crash, where'as just before I installed Vista, my Windows XP OS was crashing when running heavy processor dependent applications (Photoshop, Games, Music Production Software). This is something new. I have been running Windows Vista for close to 5 hours straight now and no problems thus far. Applications designed for XP are hit & miss. It either works, or it doesn't. I have only tried Laser on Windows Vista and it has worked (in a demo environment), but would not trust Windows Vista Beta 2 for a live trading environment. Speed & Reliability Score: 2 out of 5 Speed is downright horrid even on a decent system and requirements are very high and will require a decent investment in newer technology to run Windows Vista out of the box. Reliability has been more stable than I thought, but only 1 day of testing has been done. Functionality Functionality of the OS is average. The applications included with the system run slow, but they do function. What seems to be the best features coming from Windows Vista is tighter security out of the box and applications being linked together better. The Start menu is better in ways, but worse in others that are hard to explain. It will depend on personal preference. I have used Linux in the past and can get used to it. But some long time Windows users might not like how the start menu and explorer are laid out. Several new features that I like. Alt-Tab brings up a nice looking switch function with small pictures of what you are switching to. Windows Key - Tab presents a sort-of isometric/3D view of the different windows available which is definately impressive, but doubtful many people will use it over the Alt-Tab functionality. Windows Media Player 11 was functioning way too slowly, and shifting time and viewing videos was slow. I didn't find it much of an improvement. The new MS Office is okay. I didn't care for the interface, but it is MS Office and everyone will be using it soon. Sidebar is an interesting application, but it is ripped from the Linux & Mac community which has had similar applications for a long time before, but nice to see windows "borrowing" good features for a change, but it slows down the OS by using them. Internet loses connection once in awhile though for random reasons, but connects back instantly. Functionality Score: 3 out of 5 Functionality was okay. Nothing special. Some new features, mainly Security is great, but everything else is just eye-candy. It's ironic how Windows Vista seems to be ripping things from the Linux community, such as Sidebar. Screenshots http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/3908/desktopxn4.png http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7152/desktop2vd5.png Overall Overall, Windows Vista Beta 2 gets a 2 out of 5 from me. There is potential in everything presented here, but it's also potential to be overly expensive and require massive upgrades from many people who wish to use it. Microsoft has had several years to work on Windows Vista, but I am not impressed at all and it really does feel like a Windows XP and a half or something. Good for Trading right now? Definately NOT. =============================== Will be going back to Windows XP with a clean installation once I get back to live trading, want to test Sterling Trader Pro and other trading applications on Windows Vista first and explore anything else I feel worth exploring. Hopefully someone enjoys the review or at least doesn't explain how much I suck by writing it. Although I am normally biased towards Linux, I remained objective as I could when writing this review, and only mentioned Linux once during the review Good Stuff
I think I posted this in the wrong forum actually. If a mod could move this to the Trading Software forum, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. EDIT: Feel free to ask questions about Windows Vista so far, I'm going to leave Vista installed until I have to switch back to XP and will answer any questions if anyone has any, or at least try to.
Nice review. Did you download Windows Vista for free? If so, could you provide the link to that download? Also, could you install Maya on Vista and let me know if it runs properly. I do a lot of 3D CAD work myself and would like to see how stable Vista is with this. Thanks
Lol... we all know we could hack our way into that lab! Microsoft always leaks crap. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx Signup's are officially closed, but I signed up about a month ago while the customer preview program was still open and luckily I still had the e-mail with the key, and I was going to be pissed if I didn't have that key I tell ya. The key is good for up to 10 users at a time. The download is still available. Part of me wants to just allow people to PM me and I'll give them the key, without anyone knowing, but that isn't exactly legal from Microsoft. Plus I'm sure if I give the key to one person expecting only one other user will be using it, pretty soon there will be a hundred people trying it. So I will wait for that until I know I won't be messing with the beta. Once I am done testing Windows Vista, if someone really wants to give it a try that really could benefit, then maybe we can talk because I will be sticking with XP to trade live. But just have to wait. Like I said, if anyone has any questions about it, I'll try out stuff if I am able to. I created a website listing most prop firms, I guess I can play with Vista for others that want me to, or any screenshots you want or something. Metatrader 4 does appear to be running fine, and again Laser was running fine as well, both demo though.
There is a free download from MS's website... finished the download at work yesterday and will be evaluating the junk shortly...
Sorry, didn't see your post at first. Am installing Maya as we speak, will let you know the outcome. EDIT: Windows Vista Beta 2 is good until June or July 2007, by then (hopefully) Windows Vista Final will be released, and the Beta will be shut down. They might release a Windows Vista Beta 3 though.
Here is some of that 3D eye-candy Microsoft was talking about. The Windows Key - Tab combo brings this up.
What kind of video card memory is Microsoft recommending for Vista? Looks like most people will have to upgrade to at least 128 MB of video memory if they want to run Vista properly.