Vista On My Acer TravelMate 3012
I’ve had Vista Ultimate on my Acer TravelMate 3012 laptop for about a week now. The experience is OK, but I’m not wowed.
I’m not really getting any benefits from Vista :-
- I had to turn off User Account Control (UAC) as it was just too annoying.
- My built in Logitech OrbiCam works intermittently (I have to disable it then re-enable it via the Device Manager).
- My HD Audio is no longer working (no audio at all from the laptop)
- I had to turn off the new Start Menu and go back to the old one (just couldn’t get on with it)
- The new Aero UI is neat and fancy – but a tangible benefit ? not really.
- Windows Sidebar, handy, but I had it with Google Desktop Search a year ago and from other apps before then.
- Visual Studio 2005 has a number of known issues when running on Vista.
- I can’t run Powershell on Vista (other than Vista RC1)
In general the system feels slower than WinXP, even though I have a Windows Experience Index of 3.0.
Having to wait for FileSave dialogs seems to be common to many apps now. I regularly get black screens for a few seconds while a window closes.
As a power user it worries me greatly that I not 100% sure where files are in the hierarchy – there is a lot of diverting / soft linking of directories going on and files seem to be ending up in places they just shouldn’t be (even although it work correctly)
On the Up Side, I am loving the Snipping Tool – I think comes from the Tablet PC tools section of Vista Ultimate, but it really is great.
I used to use Cropper from Brian Scott, but the Snipping Tool is streets ahead. It allows me to take a snip of the whole screen, of just a window, of a (mouse or stylus) selected rectangular area or of a freeform selected area. As soon as I have the snip I can do some basic editing – just the job for graying out / overwriting of usernames / passwords etc.
All in all, I don’t see any real benefit over WinXP. I think the benefits of a move to Vista will be a tough message for Microsoft to get across.
Even though I don’t feel as productive with Vista (in comparison to XP) I’m going to stick with it and see how things are when I have been completely immersed for a few weeks and am used to it – watch this space for a further update…