What's Wrong With Windows Vista
January 16, 2007
So, Microsoft's official release of Windows Vista is just a few short days away. I've been testing the RTM version for software compatibility (you know, being a Windows Developer and all that) and have ran into a number of things that are just plain utterly annoying with Windows Vista. Yes, it is pretty. Yes, Windows Explorer works wonderfully and allows you to customize its default sidebar (easily). Yes, the font rendering is on-par with or better than OSX (finally). But...
Microsoft has been touting Vista as a gaming powerhouse and I really don't know why.
- Game performance will sharply decline upon installation of Vista. It is a huge resource hog, much like any MS operating system. If 1Gb satiated your games in XP, then you're going to need 2Gb in Vista. Vista will easily eat up well over 512Mb of your RAM with all of its junk - even after you've turned off the non-essential items (Windows Defender anyone?).
- CPU usage increases dramatically and task switching will become a pain.
- Can we talk about how many /fewer/ games you'll be able to install? While I complained about XP's 1Gb footprint, Vista is an amazing improvement in space gobbling. A fresh installation will weigh in at over SEVEN GIGABYTES. Most of that appears to be .NET assemblies.
- User Access Controls anyone? It's not directly relevant to gaming's interests, but it is one of the most annoying aspects of Vista. When these little dialogs come popping up, your machine hicccups and the display abruptly darkens to highlight this "Would you like to continue?" which is promptly followed by a "Hey, you said you'd like to continue just now - but would you like to continue?" message. Brilliant. Double confirmation will really make me pay attention. Especially when the littlest actions pick these guys up - like running the performance monitor or running WinRar.
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2 Comments
| Tagged: Rants, Vista
david 2007/01/18
but DX10 is gonna be make it all worth it.
Jordan T. Cox 2007/01/18
You know, for all two games in your library that will support it. :) Actually, it'll be interesting to see how many games actually use it - since they will be locking out all the XP users. I believe that Doom3 was one of the only games to lock out users of previous MS O/Ss (which of course was cracked before it was released).