In the last post in the Windows Vista In-Depth series, I’m going to take a look at how stable Windows Vista Beta 2 is (remembering of course its Beta status) and look at how compatible it is with hardware and older Windows software.

Hardware

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the amount of hardware Windows Vista could automatically detect. What I did have to find drivers for manually was my sound card (Realtek AC’97), my monitor (CTX VL950) and my printer (Lexmark Z45).

The sound card drivers were easily fixed by installing the same drivers I used for XP, off my motherboard’s CD. These installed without problem and after a restart, I had sound. So, from this, it seems most drivers that work with XP, also work with Vista.

However, the next problem was my monitor. I’ve got a CRT monitor, so driving it at 60Hz makes it ridiculously flickery. Usually, I’d just download the monitor drivers for Windows XP from the CTX website. These unfortuantely, failed to install in Vista. Having said that, I did find a workaround for the refresh rate issue.

Finally, to my printer. Normally XP doesn’t have drivers for this as well, so I proceeded to install the drivers for XP. Unfortunately, Vista failed to install them properly and I couldn’t really work out what it was doing. I tried again, again and again but still, it just told me it couldn’t. Shame. No printing, then.

Software

The amount of software for Windows is truly staggering. And naturally, being one of Windows’ unique selling points (remember the Windows ads - “with a world of software and devices that run on Windows…”). I’ve tried a few software packages and games on Vista, and here’s what I think.

Most software that I’ve tried works with Vista. For example, when installing the iTunes + QuickTime bundle from Apple, the experience is just the same as XP.

Other software, however, doesn’t like installing so much. I tried some games and game demos. Most of them ran with a little persuasion, but a few failed saying that they couldn’t find DirectX 9 files. Windows Vista (with Aero) uses DirectX 10, and there have been many changes in the DirectX architecture for Vista. This means that when games look for the DirectX 9 dll files, they can’t find them, and so they think you don’t have DirectX installed and prompt you to install it. Of course, installing it fails because it detects you have a newer version… I’m sure they’ll fix something eventually.

Flash Player 8 for Mozilla/Firefox, for example, tries to install, but it silently fails. But the really cool thing is that Windows detects that the install has failed and offers to run it again ‘with recommended settings’. This basically means it puts it in compatibility mode (we’ve seen this from XP) for Windows XP SP2.

I like the fact that this happens so transparently, but I’m not sure whether Windows just guesses what settings to use, or whether it only works for applications where Microsoft have specifically worked out how to fix it.

Which brings me to the next point. There’s a new Control Panel applet in Vista called Solutions to Problems. It’s going to be a real lifesaver when Vista comes out. Basically, the idea is that when Microsoft (or anyone else) fix a compatibility problem for a piece of software in Vista, the patch/fix is distributed through Solutions to Problems.

So if Application X is broken in Vista, and the creators of Application X work out how to make it work on Vista, they submit the patch to Microsoft. Anyone having problems with Application X will check the Solutions to Problems page, download and install the patch automatically and suddenly everything will work.

Well, that’s the theory. I think it’s a good idea, but how useful it will be in practice we will only know once Vista gets released and apps start breaking.

Stability

For a beta operating system, Vista Beta 2 is surprisingly stable. Yes, things crash, particularly Windows Explorer, but Explorer crashes in XP as well.

Occasionally I experienced some graphical problems, but this is more likely to be the fault of the NVIDIA Vista drivers than Vista’s fault itself.

Other than that I’ve only had a few crashes, so points to Microsoft for actually making Beta 2 fairly stable.

Conclusion

There are some issues still with Vista at the moment, there’s no doubting that. It’s not like we’re strangers to compatibility problems, every new release of Windows breaks things that used to work. Only time will tell how much Vista will break and how easy it will be to fix.

Digg this

If you liked this story, subscribe to our feed here. See other stories on Vista here.