Vista Vexes

by Jan Fagerholm

September 2007

It’s been eight months since Vista was released, and Microsoft is hard at work on Vista SP1. Formally, the first version release is known as build 6000.34293. The present beta version of Vista SP1 is currently known as 6001.16633, and is an “upgrade” type of Service Pack, rather than integrated into an installable version of Vista. This information may be only of interest to techie-types, but it is marking an approaching hallmark.

I generally recommend that my clients not upgrade Microsoft operating systems until SP1 appears for any version of Windows. This is partly to ensure stability in the OS, as well as giving software and hardware vendors a chance to debug and improve their drivers. Scuttlebutt from Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN) says that SP1 will be released in September, as a stand-alone upgrade package, as well as integrated into retail versions of Vista available subsequently. If you are considering a new computer at this time, go ahead and take that Vista option, even though SP1 isn’t quite here yet. If you wind up with the current version of Vista (build 6000), SP1 will shortly be available through Windows or Microsoft Update.

If you are considering upgrading your present Windows XP to Vista, you need to think a little harder. If you are reading this, you are probably in the do-it-yourself crowd. Starting with the hardware requirements, forget what it says on the box; you want to start with a 2 Ghz CPU and 1 GB of RAM, and 1.5 GB RAM is better. If you do any graphics or video work, start with 2 GB. (Most motherboards support 4 GB of memory these days.) If you use Adobe CS2 or CS3 for a living, you already know how much memory your motherboard supports and have populated it to the max. The same goes for Adobe Premier or Pinnacle Systems Studio 10 or 11. If you decide to try any of these on 1 GB of RAM and upgrade later, you are in for more than just some frustration; switching between running applications runs up against Windows' notoriously bad memory management and crashes on a depressingly regular basis. The only answer to this is to install more memory.

This points to a couple of considerations if you are leaning toward Vista:

1. If you are considering the do-it-yourself path and performing an upgrade of your existing XP installation, you have to include hardware upgrades as part of the package, otherwise you are going to be very disappointed with Vista.

If your machine is more than two years old, you will need to upgrade the RAM at a minimum, and your graphics card if it has less than 128 MB of video memory and you fancy the new Aero theme. I tend to spec machines toward longevity, so I’m saying 2 GHZ CPUs, 2 GB RAM, 256 MB video memory, and the fastest (not the biggest) hard drive your wallet can stand. SATA drives with 300 Mbps rates are available, but make sure your motherboard supports the new higher rates if you expect to really get that speed. Do yourself a real Vista favor and get two smaller hard drives and set them up as a RAID 0 array. It’s the single largest performance upgrade you can do for Vista.

In sum, if your machine is more than two years old, you are probably shopping for a new motherboard, new CPU, more RAM, new video card, and faster hard drive if you don’t want to be disappointed with Vista. It’s the usual Microsoft “Catch 22” that requires a $1000 hardware upgrade to use their $200 software upgrade. You decide.

2. If you are shopping for a new computer and you want Vista preinstalled, forget the loss-leaders in the ads. Most vendors offer your choice of either Windows XP or Vista, but with Vista you really need more than the base-price computer.

There are several points you must keep in mind for Vista. Everybody offers 512 MB of RAM standard, but this is way too low for Vista. Keep in mind a 2 Ghz CPU and 2 GB RAM; otherwise you are going to hate this machine in short order.

Laptops are particularly challenging, as many of them accept a maximum of 1 GB RAM, and if you are considering a laptop as a desktop replacement, be sure the machine will accept more than 1 GB RAM. Many laptops use a scheme where the video processor (GPU) has no video RAM of its own, but uses part of regular RAM for its memory. This architecture saves money, but is a lot slower than dedicated video RAM, and you will be very unhappy with Vista’s performance on this platform. Laptops with dedicated video memory are harder to find (read: more expensive) but you really want this with Vista. Consider 128 MB video memory minimum. Laptop hard drives are always slower than desktop hard drives, so this is a performance penalty you are going to have to accept if you are leaning toward a laptop as a desktop replacement. You decide.

Vista is, at last, becoming a reasonable operating system. When SP1 gets here, I think it will be a reasonable (if bloated) alternative to XP. The caveat is that you can’t expect that buying the $200+ upgrade disk is the end. It’s just the beginning.