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30 Days with Windows Vista

Comparisons, conjecture, and controversy. Microsoft's new operating system is here, but is it ready for primetime? We spend 30 days with Windows Vista to see if it's worth the leap or if Microsoft should go back to the drawing board.

Hardware & Peripherals

Whakataruna, mercifully, worked out of the box with most of my internal hardware being detected and installed on first boot.

On Pugetina, I ran into an immediate problem. Like when I used it to test Linux, the OS did not automatically detect my onboard Ethernet port. Unlike Linux, the drivers for my Ethernet connection were not on the disc provided by Asus, the manufacturer of the motherboard. I had to use a second computer to download the Vista network drivers from the Asus website and transfer them via my USB flash drive.

This was not the only difficulty we had with hardware.

Digital Video camera: The Canon ZR80 worked fine and popped up an "autoplay" notice when I plugged it in, so if I wanted, I could go immediately to Windows Movie Maker. This is identical to the behavior in XP.

Digital Camera: The Nikon Coolpix camera was also immediately detected and launched an autoplay notice to allow me to download the files to the hard disk. This is also identical to the behavior in XP.

Wacom Tablet: The tablet was detected and could be used immediately.

Scanner: The CanonScan LIDE 3 scanner was detected, but it prompted to install device drivers, and Windows Update was no help. I downloaded the drivers from the Canon website, but couldn't get the drivers to install, even when running as administrator and in XP compatibility mode. This device was unusable in Vista.

External IDE disk: Plugging in the IDE disc gave an auto-detect pop-up, and the drive could be used immediately.

Digital Recorder: Essentially the recorder is nothing more than a USB flash drive - like a digital camera - and I was able to access all my files without issue.

iPod: For some reason the iPod wouldn't detect over my FireWire cable. This is not to say that I couldn't get it to work with iTunes (which at the time was not Vista capable), but that it wouldn't show up at all as an attached hard drive. Strange, and annoying. (In all fairness, Apple has put out a new version of iTunes since we completed the testing, so this may no longer be the case.)

Printer: My HP LaserJet 1020 printer was detected, but there was no driver for it from the HP website or from Windows Update. For the entire 30 day trial I was unable to use the printer. This vexed me.

DVD Burner: Burning a data DVD is as simple as drag-and-drop, but there's a catch. Putting in a blank CD pops up a dialog that asks you for a disc title. There's also a little arrow that says "show formatting options." Vista, by default, writes CDs and DVDs to a "live file" format which only works in Windows Vista and (Microsoft claims) Windows XP - not on Macs, Linux, or Windows 2000 and earlier PCs. There is another option, however, to master as a universal CD/DVD. I couldn’t figure out how to make it the default selection - it must be selected every time. Furthermore, if you just simply drag and drop the files to the DVD, it'll assume you want the "live file" format and start burning immediately. Of course, none of this mattered because neither setting resulted in a data DVD that could be accessed on a Windows XP MCE HTPC or a Windows XP SP2 box.