Windows Defender and Firewall have been improved, and Vista is certainly far more security conscious than XP. Users who don’t like the “are you sure?” style prompts of XP will be driven positively mad by UAC (user account control), which asks for confirmation of almost any potentially hazardous action, be that running an exe, loading the control panel or even deleting certain files and running programs for the first time. It can fortunately be disabled in the Control Panel (we challenge you to find this within 30 mins without googling it), but then an equally annoying nag screen constantly pops up from the Security Centre saying the system is at risk. This can also be disabled, but it also disables potentially useful notifications about antivirus software not being up to date or problems with automatic updates. We’re all for better security, but don’t want to be treated like children. Vista has gone much too far towards catering for novices I’m afraid.
Networking
We found the new networking center in Vista thoroughly confusing, and in no way simpler or easier to use than the SP2 XP networking section. A new protocol will need to be installed on your XP and 2000 machines in order for your existing workgroups to be seen by Vista – a fact not well documented in the OS, and the cause for a couple of hair pulling hours of frustration where Vista would not see my work notebook for this very reason. Whilst networking Vista to other Vista machines was fast and easy, there’s still far too much hand-holding for novice users and not enough ‘adult’ network options available without digging deep into the Control Panel, confirming each step with UAC a million times along the way of course. Transferring files over Vista has an odd effect on the progress bar, which if anything seems even more disjointed and unhelpful than the ones in Windows 98. It displays for example “calculating remaining time” for about 10 seconds, and then rather than progressing in a smooth and normal manner, the progress bar jumps about spasmodically until the dialogue suddently confirms the file transfer is complete. This lack of presentational polish is just an embarrassment in our opinion.
Hardware Requirements
Although the recommended hardware specifications of Vista are readily available, in order to make the OS feel as fast and lag-free as XP, we recommend you use a dual core processor, at least 2GB of memory, a fast SATA hard drive with as much cache as possible and a 256MB video card. If running two large screens (say dual 20 or 24” LCDs) with full Aero effects, a 512MB card will be necessary for 100% smooth flipping and moving of windows. This, we are sure you will agree, is a pretty steep hardware requirement list, but we feel it is necessary unless you want your new OS to run slower than your existing XP installation.
