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Me, Myself and Vista

Every now and then, one has to use something different. Why? Not necessarily because it’s a change for the better, but simply because it’s a change. Instead of trying another linux distribution (I’m more than happy with Arch Linux, thank you), I’ll be giving Vista another shot. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to compare the two with eachother and spit out an opinion. Probably a slightly biased opinion, but an opinion nonetheless. I’ll make an effort to be more or less objective.

I remember from my earlier usage of Vista that I’m better off with a clean install on my Sony Vaio SZ6. Laptop manufacturers like Sony simply put too much bloat on their pre-installed Vista installations. I really don’t need all this trial software: office, antivirus software, … It’s all there slowing down the performance and it’s even harder to remove. The installation itself went very well. Barely any user input is required to complete the installation. The only thing I noticed is that I couldn’t find a hard disk partinioner. Odd, but not that much of a big deal either.

While the installation of Vista itself was a breeze (credit where credit’s due), installing the Sony drivers was far from easy. Sony uses a lot of custom drivers for their laptops which can be downloaded from their site. First you have to figure out in what order they have to be installed in order to make everything work like it’s supposed to (Sony neglects to mention that). When you finally figured it out, you can start searching for the devices they belong too. Then I ask myself why people complain about a linux installation. Granted, when Vista is already configured by the manufacturer it’s not much of a hassle, but doing it yourself requires much more knowledge than the average user has.

Next is the update process. Is it just me or does downloading and installing all the updates take forever? Note the retorical aspect of this question. Maybe I’m spoiled because of the fast linux mirrors, but there’s no excuse for the time it takes on Vista. Then you have the renowned restarting of the updates, famous only in the realm of Microsoft. I’m already over the fact that I have to restart, but certainly not over the fact that it takes forever to complete the installation of the updates.

The first day I was using Vista again, I wasn’t happy at all. It felt very slow and there was this enormous unknown disk activity. I later found out it was just indexing my files, looking for updates, defragmenting my disk (why is that even necessary right after a clean install?), … but I really don’t like things happening without me knowing of it. Luckily the slowness and disk activity went away shortly thereafter. It’s almost as if Vista heavily relies on caching to achieve some speed. Not that I mind though, that’s what system resources are for.

Vista has some good qualities as well though. The User Acces Control for instance is a major step ahead. Ironically, that’s what regular Vista users complain most about. The Microsoft developers might have to reprioritize their UAC focus (why would I need admin privileges to drag, drop and delete items in my very own start menu?) but all in all UAC really is a good thing.

Something linux lacks and Vista doesn’t, is the support of every manufacter on this globe. You never have to wonder if this will work, because it will (well, maybe not on vista 64 bit :p). There’s also no lack of good software. It’s not always free as in beer or speech, but it’s certainly good. Microsoft Office for example really outperforms Openoffice or any other office suit on linux.

In the end, Vista doesn’t make me go away from Arch Linux but I’ll still use it once in a while because it’s not that bad after all.