Ok, now that I have good drivers for my Q1 and a couple of weeks under my belt, I’m going to try a short series titled Vista on a UMPC – The Good, the Bad and the Utilities. Today it’s The Good.
- I won’t go back to XP. The experience on a UMPC is that much better for me. It’s snappier, prettier and cleaner all the way around. I’m now scheming for how to get more copies for the other PC’s in my life.
- Most of the incompatibility nightmares you hear about are one off problems. I’ve have very few problems with software. Stuff that wouldn’t work or needed workarounds was well documented by the vendors or the Google. The few things that truly don’t work have alternatives. Do a little research and you’ll be fine.
- Pen Flicks (pen gestures that do stuff) are transforming the way I use the tablet. I’ve remapped a few to my tastes. Up and right is copy (up into the ether), while down and right is paste. I have yet to accidently hit the delete gesture.
- The snipping tool is dramatically faster.
- The learning curve from XP to Vista isn’t nearly as bad as from 3.1 to W95. I only felt like a noob for a day or two.
- Handwriting recognition is better all the way around. Better recognition, better input boxes, better web support. It’s not perfect. I can’t read my own handwriting somedays. I don’t hold the PC to a higher standard than I hold myself.
- Navigating the menu structure is clearer for me. I miss the up one level control but other than that I like the breadcrumb navigation.
- Stuff works. I can’t emphasize this enough. I have a number of USB hard drives. Occasionally, XP would simply refuse to see the drive. Sometimes ever again, even though it worked in other machines. No issues with Vista so far. Same thing with networking support. Menus don’t hang. I use to see weird menu delays in XP that I don’t see in Vista.
- The ability to change the size of icons with a slider has been fabulous for touch. Even if your finger is too big for the slider, tapping the control cycles through the major sizes.
In short, I like it a lot. The extra gig that’s coming should help too. I suspect people’s experience with Vista depends a lot on their expectations. I wasn’t expecting much because I know I have an underpowered machine. I knew drivers were iffy and I done a lot of homework. I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
I do have to be careful though. When I tell people that the Q1 is running Vista just fine I often have to pick them up off the floor.
Caveats: I have a year old Celeron Q1 with a gig of ram. My XP install was at the end of its life and due for a rebuild when I did a fresh install of Vista Biz. I’m using the Q1P drivers but I’ve confirmed that they are the same as the Q1 drivers. I’m using the beta HID drivers for the touchscreen. Superfetch is off and I’m not using ReadyBoost with any regularity. UAC sleeps with the fishes.
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