Brian's Brain

This is one of those posts where I already know, even before I begin writing, that I'm going to need to don asbestos underwear as soon as it goes live on the EDN website...;-)

Two weeks ago, I told you that I'd just ordered the successor to my venerable but long-in-the-tooth Dell Inspiron 700m. A big part of the motivation was performance-driven; the Dell XPS M1330 contains a several-generation newer (Dothan->Yonah->Merom) CPU with dual-core capability, albeit one in my particular case that doesn't run at a per-core clock speed increment to its Dothan predecessor. The Intel GPU core in the XPS M1330's core logic chipset is similarly feature-advanced compared to its Inspiron 700m precursor, both in its graphics and video processing capabilities. And system performance boosts also result from the generational PATA->SATA HDD and DDR->DDR2 DRAM evolutions.

The other primary motivation for the platform upgrade, which I realize now I didn't explicitly document in my earlier coverage, was that it'd give me an opportunity to do a proper evaluation of Microsoft's Windows Vista. The particular system I bought, in fact, came with the high-end, full-featured Vista Ultimate pre-activated. For those of you who don't already realize it, all Vista-equipped systems come with the latent potential of running Ultimate (or any lesser variant in the respective Home and Business vectors, which converge at Ultimate, for that matter)...they just require purchase-and-entry of an appropriate activation code in order to 'turn on' the requisite incremental capabilities.

The system finally showed up at my doorstep last Friday, after a long and convoluted journey caused by a Dell shipping screw-up. Granted, I haven't spent a ton of time with it yet, but I have to confess that I really like what I see. Some key qualifiers before proceeding:

• I'm a senior technical editor with an engineering degree and more than 20 years of engineering-plus-technology analysis experience, so as I regularly remind you all, I'm naturally going to dodge-and-solve problems (without even realizing I'm doing so at the time, in many cases) that'd bedevil most average folks
• I ordered a system with Windows Vista pre-installed; I didn't attempt to upgrade an existing Windows XP-based PC to Vista. I also made sure that the system I ordered came from the factory with 2 GBytes of system memory...and in fact, I plan to bump up the memory budget to 4 GBytes in the near future, and
• I haven't yet attempted to install many peripheral (printer, scanner, digital camera, etc) drivers. From the diversity of Windows Vista coverage I've monitored in the year-plus since the O/S release, a dearth of third-party driver support (which, arguably, isn't Microsoft's fault...just as poor third-party support for OS X isn't Apple's responsibility unless the company has done something egregious that makes developing support unnecessarily difficult) seems to be the biggest issue that reviewers have grappled with.

With that all said, I don't understand the vitriol that many folks are heaping on Windows Vista, except that perhaps it's just the latest example of the seeming always-trendy Microsoft-bashing phenomenon. Windows Vista runs smoothly and reliably on my hardware, which is mainstream at best (and is arguably trending towards trailing-edge at this point). Network file exchanges with Windows XP clients and my NASs were initially sub-par performance-wise, but this widely documented issue got neatly fixed by the SP1 update (admittedly, had SP1 not been available when I did this review, my opinion of Windows Vista wouldn't have been nearly as positive). The Aero 'eye candy' is attractive. The O/S is a substantial leap beyond XP from a bundled-app standpoint (built-in DVD burning...finally!). And to date I've installed a number of additional programs with nary a hitch.

Yeah, the User Activation Control nags are annoying, but given Windows XP's sub-par security track record, I can see why Microsoft went overboard 'out of the box' this go-around (and anyway, I disabled them in short order). And the built-in Media Center Edition capability is great; I've already paired the system with my two Xbox 360s (and subsequently been told by the included analysis utility that my network performance may not be sufficient for high-def video streaming...time to upgrade to an 802.11n router, I guess, since I'm assuming the HomePlug AV links aren't the culprits), and I'm looking forward to mating my just-installed antenna to a USB-based TV tuner so that I can record-and-watch some ATSC content.

So I honestly don't get what all the bashing is about. And (how timely) in light of that fact, I find Microsoft's recent 'Mojave Experiment' quite interesting and, frankly, clever. The company recently demo'd Windows Vista to a bunch of Windows (XP and pre-XP), Mac OS X and Linux users, without telling them that they were being shown Windows Vista. Instead, they were told that they were getting a preview of a new Microsoft O/S called 'Mojave'. Check out the results:

• Of the 140 respondents polled, on a scale of 1:10 (10 highest), the average pre-rating of Vista was 4.4. After the demo it rated an average of 8.5. Many respondents would have voted higher but wanted more time to play with it.

I have a dear friend who's a passionate Apple fanboy. He trumpets to me as loudly as possible every bit of good news about Apple, along with each Microsoft stumble. Conversely, Apple setbacks (and Microsoft triumphs) predictably get 'spun' by him in a pro-Cupertino direction. I find his Apple bias amusing and charming, but in this job I can't emulate it. If I did, my hard-earned credibility would go right out the window (as others' already has).

Until the XPS M1330 showed up last Friday, I had as many Macs as PCs regularly running under my roof. There are many things that I admire about both Apple and Microsoft, and I've shared them with you in past online and print writeups. Both companies also drive me batty sometimes, and I've not hesitated to pass those opinions along, either. This, however, isn't one of those latter times. So far, I'm quite impressed with Windows Vista. I'd welcome your feedback on whether or not you agree with me, and why. And I'd also welcome any suggestions Windows Vista veterans might be willing to provide on how to further improve my experiences with Microsoft's latest O/S.

The asbestos underwear's donned. Flame (or affirm) on, folks!