Vista, Through the Eyes of an Ubuntu User

Today, I purchased a copy of Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium edition (whatamouthful…) for school.  It’s now installed, and has been running smoothly for the past several hours.  After using Linux, it feels almost like coming (back) to an alien world. 

In the past, I have used Windows almost exclusively.  Sometime during 2005, I began playing around with Linux, and specifically Ubuntu, and even tested Windows Vista during the customer preview program.  Thus, I am not completely new to Windows Vista, but it does take some getting used to.

One of the things that first struck me was the installation.  Strangely, it was actually more complicated than installing much of Ubuntu.  For one, with the partitioning, I had to read a manual to find out how I needed to partition the system (I found out I did not need to partition anything), and then, there was no warning of when I needed to eject the DVD.  Otherwise the installation went fine.

The next thing that surprised me, was the graphics.  The graphics in Vista are very nice, and look very good.  The dock looks professional, and the transparency is smooth and effecient. The applications look good, and everything is working well.

As far as applications are concerned, all are well built, and while Vista does not come with an Office suite by default, Office 2007 has a nice new interface that takes some getting used to, but is good overall.  Windows Mail is not as fully featured as Evolution mail, but it is more like Mozilla Thunderbird, and based on the old Microsoft Outlook Express.  It also includes features like a separate calendar application, which works similar to Google Calendar.

Overall, I have to say that Vista is not bad at all.  Expensive?  YES.  But the experience is good, and it works well.  It’s not perfect, but then again no system is.  Just for those thinking “Is he really leaving Linux for THAT!?”  Well, no.  Ubuntu is still my personal system choice.  It works, comes with everything I need, and it’s free.  For now I will be using Ubuntu under virtualization, and Vista as the base. 

I’ll probably write more on Vista later as I get more used to it.