Vista First Impressions

Here are Luke's Vista first impressions, based on the install process for 64-bit Vista and a couple hours of playing with it yesterday and the day before:

• Vista (in Aero mode) will consume all resources, like the proverbial swarm of locusts. Bring lots of RAM and a good GPU. Hopefully we'll see the belt a bit tighter by the time it leaves beta. Vista IS very pretty, for all the resources it consumes, but then so are the latest version of KDE, and Mac OS x. You can be pretty without consuming devastating levels of resources.
• Vista Beta 2 is HEAVILY Beta. We had bluescreens and crashes when we tried to hook an LCD to the DVI port after installing the OS using a CRT on the VGA Port. The Wireless Network Management on the x64 Edition did not function with my Linksys WMP54G card (which works fine in WinXP x64).
• The changes in Vista may take some getting used to, both for tech support and for users. The oft-referred to "Run" option (found at the bottom of the start menu since Windows 95) has been pointlessly nested several layers deep in the program menu. The clock requires a somewhat ludicrous number of clicks to actually change the time on. The OS prompts you every time an administrator action is required, which is too annoying to be effective. The habit of clicking "Yes" to get it to go away is easy to form, and the program menu folder behavior has changed slightly in the manner in which it expands.
• With regards to the Office beta that was loaded with Vista -- Office 2007 users will also have to get used to the "Ribbon" and the office button, which replaces the traditional style of menus.
  

Here's an updated list of Wisconsin tech blogs (thanks for sending me your link, Jeramey). The top seven are additions to the list I first posted on 01 August 2006. Just found these blogs in the past two days, so I've no clue about the typical content or interests of most of them. Sometime in the next two weeks I plan to contact each blogger to see if they know of any other Wisconsin tech blogs.

http://www.bobtheking.com/
http://www.beginnercode.com/
http://charlesgray.net/blog/
http://www.connectingdots.typepad.com/thewebchef/
http://www.fuzzmartin.com/
http://purpleslog.wordpress.com/
http://www.rohdesign.com/weblog/
http://ever-increasing-entropy.blogspot.com/
http://occamshammer.com/dailygrind/
http://scottfeldstein.net/blog/
http://www.thecodingmonkey.net/
http://rasterweb.net/raster/
http://www.wistech.org/
http://blog.mattmargolis.net/

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