Review: Top Five Improvements To The Windows Vista RC1 OS

On Sept. 1, Microsoft began rolling out Vista Release Candidate 1 (RC1), raising hopes that all of the major issues have been resolved in the months since the beta 2 version. And it appears those hopes have been largely fulfilled.

RC1 brings measurable improvements to Vista and should help assuage some key concerns about the operating system, such as compatibility, performance and readiness for Microsoft's planned ship date of January 2007. RC1 also brings a stable version of Vista so that system builders and integrators can learn the ins and outs of the platform before gold code hits manufacturing.

Microsoft typically has put out a release candidate before shipping the gold code of a product, an indication that the feature set and user interface are pretty much complete.

Test Center engineers took a hard look at Vista RC1 and saw some major improvements that bode well for solution providers. That said, RC1 is far from final code, and some issues still must be resolved before Microsoft can release the final Vista product, which will probably lead to an RC2. Those issues include upgrade compatibility from Windows XP and final code updates for Internet Explorer, along with other applications.

For now, here's a look at the top five improvements that RC1 brings since the beta releases of Vista:

1. INSTALLATION
With the Vista beta, installation was a long, arduous process. In some cases, it took more than two hours to install and configure the OS. Installation also often failed on some notebooks and some desktop PCs.

RC1 addresses those problems with an improved installation process—it reduced the installation time to less than an hour on the same equipment. In addition, several systems that previously refused to accept the Vista betas readily worked with RC1. Installers now can boot directly from the DVD without having to worry about unexpected prompts and misidentified hardware.

Installation problems have been resolved to the extent that system builders should have no qualms about testing Vista on their various hardware platforms and ramping up for the operating system's scheduled availability early next year.

2. DRIVER SUPPORT
The Vista beta lacked the hardware support needed by the mainstream to utilize PCs to the fullest. In fact, the lack of drivers was a major stumbling block in terms of testing the platform. The Test Center also found that many installation problems were directly related to the lack of compatible drivers.