Windows Vista RC1 (build 5564)

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Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 46 reviews Back to product review
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6 out of 6 people found this review helpful

3.5 stars

"Far better than Beta 2..."

by JWilliams06 on September 3, 2006

Pros: Much needed update graphically; great search capability; revamped Photo Library Program...

Cons: More system intensive, need a fairly new computer to run, not near as good of an update as XP was...
Summary: While it took me a while to download RC1; I must say that it is far better than Beta 2 which I downloaded earlier in the summer from Microsoft's Customer Feedback Program.

I've been running Vista on a year old Dell Inspiron 600M with the following specs:
1.5Ghz Pentium M
768MB RAM
40GB HDD
32MB ATi Radeon Mobility Video

While it does use it's fair share of memory, roughly 320-400 of my 768 MBs; while running Internet Explorer 7, AIM, and Media Player.... it does seem to respond better than it's previous incarnation (Beta2).

Like always, you're going to need at least around 1GB of RAM to run this OS smoothly, but even with my amount it seems to run decently.

Finally, Windows has their own "spotlight" feature with the built-in, much improved search capabilities. Unfortunately, my computer can't run the Aero interface so I can't report on that, even so -- I can say without a doubt the nicely updated GUI colors of Vista basic isn't that bad at all -- quite appealing; much better than XP's standard colors.

Overall, it's better than what we've seen in the past; and even so you might not really need it; because everything you can do in Vista you can do in XP with a few extra programs here and there. And you need a fairly up-to-date PC to run.

Oh, Vista Ultimate is completely overpriced at $400.00; Microsoft has got to be kidding me. Good attempt from Microsoft, but it makes you wonder that this is all they've achieved after five years of development; I feel a little underwhelmed.

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Windows Vista RC1 (build 5564)

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