My impressions of Vista on X41 and Toshiba Portege (tablet)

[asiafish]

I've been playing with Windows Vista on and off for about 3 months now, and am currently running RC2 on my Toshiba Portege M400 and had previously used Beta 2, RC1 and RC2 on the THinkPad X41 that I recently sold. Here are my impressions of Vista compared to XP and how it worked on the two machines.

ThinkPad X41
First off, the X41, despite satisfying Microsoft's hardware requirements for Aero Glass, was not able to use the new UI due to a lack of a suitable driver for the Intel GMA900 graphics chipset. Due to the very large number of recent and current computers equipped with the GMA900, I'd be very surprised if a glass-capable GMA900 driver did not appear by the time of the retail release of Vista in January. Other than glass, which I rather like, everything else in Vista worked fine on the X41, if a bit slowly.

Booting was a bit faster with RC2 than WIndows XP, and contrary to many on the forum with T-series machines running Vista, I noticed no reduction of battery life on my X41. Perhaps not having all of those fancy graphics helped out. I noticed no loss of speed compared to XP in any application except for Internet Explorer, but in fairness, that was before the final version of IE7 hit and I never tried the beta version on XP.

I did run into another video issue not related to glass, and that was the inability to control my dual monitor setup the way I like it. At my desk I used a 19" Samsung LCD connected to an ultrabase as the primary monitor and the X41's 12" as a secondary monitor. This was very difficult to get working in XP (the Intel Driver kept losing my settings) and not even an option in Vista, though again its likely related to the lack of a full-featured GPU driver.

Other than the video issues (I ended up just using the Samsung without the built-in) I was pleased with the X41's performance with Vista. My X41 had a full 1.5GB of RAM, so I'm sure that helped a lot, but overall I found it more stable and faster than XP. The only thing that sent me back to XP on the X41 was the lack (at the time) of compatible versions of Nero and a few other applications I depend on. Now that my full application suite is working, I use Vista full-time on my Portege, which brings me to.....

Toshiba Portege M400
Not even considering the glass UI, Vista is a HUGE improvement over XP on a tablet PC, even one like the X41 tablet that isn't yet fully supported. The reason is the tablet functionality of the OS itself, which is vastly improved over XP Tablet Edition 2005. There are minor improvements that surprising make a big difference, like a dot cursor when using a pen instead of a mouse, to big enhancements like handwriting recognition that is both much more accurate and that learns YOUR writing. Even though some of my Portege's features aren't yet implemented in Vista (hard drive shock protection, most of the buttons, etc), the improvements to the tablet functions alone have made Vista my exclusive OS and will get me to spend the cash on release day.

As in the X41, there is no performance hit running the latest build of VIsta so long as I turn off glass. Glass is very graphically demanding, and while the Intel GMA950 GPU is up to it, it does sometimes stop and think in the form of less-than-smooth graphics rendering. This is still beta software (that I'm using) so I'll reserve final judgement, but even now its good enough.

Battery life suffers a bit with glass enabled, though I've yet to do serious testing. In balanced battery settings, I typically get about 3.5 hours in XP, and Vista indicates that I'll get the same, though I haven't taken it lower than 50% yet (its accurate to that point).

Video is much improved over the X41. My dual monitor setep was recognized instantly, and doesn't care if I connect the external monitor through VGA or DVI. In fact, I can dispense with the internal display and connect two external monitors (one to DVI and one to VGA). Using the Portege's 12" monitor as a second display, Vista and its GMA950 driver is even smart enough to switch settings when I dock and undock the computer without rebooting.

Conclusion
Were I using a non-tablet PC, I'd see no real reason to rush to Vista. The eye-candy is nice and there are a few really cool features, but overall its still Microsoft Windows. On a tablet pc, however, this is a quantum leap forward, like Windows 2000 was to NT4 or XP from 98.

[RMD]

Were I using a non-tablet PC, I'd see no real reason to rush to Vista. The eye-candy is nice and there are a few really cool features, but overall its still Microsoft Windows.

I think there are many reasons to move to Vista, almost regardless of your current setup.

Certainly the security improvements alone are worth the upgrade.