I decided since my XP box was getting fairly slow and needed a re-install, I would give Vista a go. I figured if it worked ok I’d stick with it provided my apps played nicely with it. Here’s how the story went so far:

I installed Vista Ultimate SP1 (most recent MSDN version) on my Dell P4 3Ghz HT machine with 2GB of ram and a Radeon 9800XT. The installation was pretty smooth although it took a really long time to install. Once it was up and running, I first noticed there were no Windows Updates available which was possibly a good sign. I thought the first thing to do would be to grab a copy of AVG and install it, so I went to the website with IE7. Crash. IE7 closed because of an error - no stack trace / details to look at. So I tried again. And again it crashed on the same webpage - and many others I tried. Since it didn’t crash on Firefox’s website, I decided that was my best option.

Next was Messenger 8.1. I tried using the online installer which downloads the binaries while installing. It simply said the installation was canceled and to retry later. I tried about 5 times before finding a copy of the standalone installer - which installed. But unfortunately Messenger constantly crashes with the following error:

Duplicate Memory Free operation. Get a stack trace and report bug against the calling app (not against OLE Automation). File d:\rtm\com\oleaut32\typelib\oautil.cpp, line 634

It first started doing it right on startup, now it just does it randomly every once in a while. Often enough that it’s making me already want to go back to XP just so the basic apps work. I haven’t even started to install any real apps like Photoshop/Premiere/Games.

So I thought - what if it’s the video drivers? I went straight to ATI’s website and got the most recent Catalyst driver for Vista. Nay, it didn’t help. I also upgraded sound drivers. Nada. I posted on Microsoft’s forums looking for suggestions and immediately got back the following from several people - “head back to XP”. What? Not even Microsoft is wanting to keep me on board with Vista? They even suggested 2GB of ram is not enough to run Vista - ok wait, Vista can’t run stable when doing next to nothing on 2GB of ram? I don’t buy that. Sure, it’s resource hungry, but I’m not even trying to run games yet here, I’m running friggen’ Messenger.

Now, for the positives, I find that it looks nice and the performance is actually pretty good on my machine. I get a 4.3 on the Windows Experience Index. According to Windows documentation, a score between 4-5 can run all Vista functionality such as Aero, gaming, etc. and should run fine with all Vista features. Even the graphics gets a 5.8. Good to hear considering my machine isn’t brand new.

So after all that, my experience hasn’t been positive. I mean, I can’t run the basic things like a web browser and chat client right off the bat - so what hopes do I have for my regular every day applications? I suppose I’ll give it one more day and see if my apps work at all.