Vista Week: Day 2

While I wasn't too thrilled by the install process involved with Vista, the install process isn't nearly as important as the actual experience of using the operating system. At this point, we've already installed all the necessary drivers for normal usage scenarios. Additionally, for Day 2, I am using a different setup than Day 1's install. Keep in mind that Day 1's install dealt with a custom built machine, because today will deal with an OEM installed Windows Vista Business Edition (32-bit) on a Sony Vaio laptop with the following specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz processor
4GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM
250 GB hard drive (Partition available for Vista is only 50 GB)
Intel PRO 1000 ethernet & Intel 4965AGN & Ubiquiti 300mw ABG SRC
Integrated Intel Graphics mobile GM965 & NVidia 8400M

The reason I list three network cards for my laptop will be made clear in a day or two, but just for clarification, the last two are wireless cards. Additionally, this laptop has two graphics cards, one for use in "stamina" mode to save battery usage, and one for "speed" mode which utilizes the NVidia card for gaming performance (or other graphics intensive tasks). This mode is changed by a switch on the laptop itself.

Starting off Day 2, I notice that Vista's overall feel has of course changed some in comparison to XP. Of course, much of the utilities used in XP have either been removed or relocated. This effectively invalidates much of what we have memorized of our running operating system's layout. However, much of what needs to be done can still be accomplished with relative ease.

My first issue was the complete lack of a default telnet client in Vista. I was experiencing switch issues, and felt it necessary to examine the switch through telnet, but found that not only was the telnet command missing, but HyperTerminal was also absent. The reason for HyperTerminal no longer being present is that Microsoft no longer possessed the permissions or license rights to distribute what was essentially an outside product with Windows. It was a bit surprising to find out that HyperTerminal wasn't a Microsoft software (It's actually owned by Hilgraeve). A telnet client can be installed through Windows Components, but I decided to go a different route.

I installed PuTTY, an open source implementation of Telnet and SSH for Windows platforms. PuTTY has the additional benefit of giving a GUI for those of you who aren't CLI oriented, and provides quite a few more features than HyperTerminal. For example, if you have an ssh server elsewhere, you can use PuTTY to "tunnel" these ports so that you not only encrypt their traffic over ssh, but you also create a type of VPN connection. I won't go into detail over what this implies, but I will later in a separate article. Getting PuTTY to log into the switch was easy, and I managed to accomplish what I intended to. PuTTY can be used for console connections, as well. Setting up a USB to Serial connection with PuTTY is easy; use device manager to figure out which COM port your USB to serial device is creating for you, and specify it as the port in PuTTY's serial connection page.

My next task was one related to PuTTY in that I needed to use a type of SSH connection to transfer files. SCP, or Secure Copy Protocol, allows the transfer of files over a secure connection using SSHv2. To accomplish this, I used WinSCP, a GUI FTP/SFTP/SCP client for Windows. Along with providing more features than I'll ever probably use, it gives a "Midnight Commander" type interface, akin to placing two Windows Explorer windows next to each other. On the left is your localhost's filesystems, and on the right is the remote system's filesystems. Files can be drag and dropped from either side, and every transfer is encrypted. This is ideal for copying sensitive files from your home, or just as a last result method for a system that has seemingly no way to dump files onto (but has ssh access enabled).

Since this is a work laptop, I'm not testing any gaming performance (Not yet, anyway). Despite running in the "stamina" mode, everything remains pretty responsive. There are a few momentary hangups during moments when Vista brings up a User Account Control prompt, but this is expected behavior for any system running Vista. Many users who have used Vista have decided to disable UAC. However, this is a potentially risky and dangerous decision to make out of simple annoyance.

Why? Because one of Vista's interesting new features that you almost never hear about is the use of integrity levels (IL) for file system access. While the details of such a feature are rather complex to be discussed in the context of this blog entry, the security these IL's provide is paramount to securing a Vista machine on the internet. IL's can come into play in such circumstances when using Internet Explorer 7. If for some reason a website or script attempts to do something harmful to a user's system, IE7 will be running under a virtualized environment, termed "Protected Mode", that'll prevent a great deal of modifications to user account settings. I may be annoyed by UAC, but I will not turn it off, given the additional security features it provides. Without UAC, this virtualized environment for IE7 (and pretty much the entire system) is disabled.

In short, I do not recommend disabling UAC, for any circumstance. The minor inconvenience of a few extra clicks is a small price to pay for a more secure operating system. Some of us lack patience though, and if you absolutely feel the need to disable UAC, you may do so. Just realize you'll be leaving a gaping hole in your operating system.

Other than UAC's messages, I find general usage of Vista to be very comparable to XP. I don't find myself using the glossy ALT+TAB Window switching abilities of Aero that often. The ability to preview a window by mousing over it in the taskbar is a nice touch, and far more useful than the "file-behind-a-file" look of ALT+TAB. In reality, Aero is more of what I would like to call a "game layer" on top of an OS. It is not by any means necessary to leave it on, but you can obviously disable some Aero features without disabling it entirely. Some have complained about Vista's new use of the Programs menu, requiring a click to delve into a deeper structure. In my opinion, this feature was an overdue default. I can't begin to count how many times I would attempt to move into one program's folder in XP and end up launching the wrong program. However, if you don't like this style of browsing installed programs, Windows Classic theme is still available to you.

Overall rating:

Functionality of Desktop - 8/10; What can I say? It feels like XP with subtle differences. The desktop works as it should. Points marked off for making UAC annoying.
Available utilities - 7/10; I'm a little torn on this one. On the one hand, not including telnet or hyperterm was a little ridiculous, especially on a Business edition operating system. On the other, it does seem like a decision by Microsoft to at least try to cut some bloat off the OS. Maybe Windows Vista Administrator Edition is the next version due to hit the shelf?
Security related improvements - 9/10; UAC is annoying, yes. But it's also a huge step in securing the largest and most widely used (and exploited) operating system on the market. I have to admit that Microsoft is making a conscious effort to improve upon their product's security.
User Interface Improvements - 8/10; Things are slick looking. Some definite user interface improvements here, things that can no doubt improve productivity. Aero is a little process intensive, but as I said, it can be tailored down to suit your needs.
Performance on given platform - 6.5/10; Given that I have only allowed Vista 50 GB, Vista takes up a large amount of disk space. I mentioned in a previous post that it would be a great feature to give people the ability to decide on what would be installed on a system before the install process to cut back on install time and bloat, but considering that this is an OEM machine, such a choice isn't entirely possible. Resource usage has been upped considerably with Vista. But one must take into account the additional security added into Vista, plus the requirement of making it as backward compatible as possible to support legacy apps. Not only that, but factor in that the average user probably leaves a load of processes running (I'm guilty.) while moving on to do other work. It's called Multi-tasking, and we should all know that such abilities put a strain on resources. I make the argument, however, that Vista could make more effective use of resources than it does at present.

Coming soon, Day 3! I know, I know, I'm a little behind as some of you have told me, but it's great to know that you guys are keeping up with the blog. Leave comments!