Vista check: An OS tool confirms startup pains

As with using any new computer operating system, pioneering Microsoft's new Vista OS is an activity with high potential for failures, troubleshooting, and cussing. And unlike any other OS before it, Vista comes with a tool that allows you to monitor how well (or how poorly) Vista is working on your computer.

We've been running the tool, known as Vista Reliability Monitor, on a new desktop since the beginning of February. It uses a scale from 1 (worst) to 10 (best). According to Microsoft, the Monitor's score considers how well the system has handled time changes and software uninstalls. It also scores a full range of failures, including those by applications that stopped working and/or were terminated; the hard-disk or memory; and Vista itself.

The score for our PC, shown in the screen shot (click for a larger view) above, is currently 3.07 and has gone lower than that--as low as a dismal 1.29. The low score reflects the unfortunate reality of new operating systems, as well as the (admirably) tough way the Monitor scores Vista performance.

New OSs never work with every peripheral and piece of software right off the bat. Some components do make the transition from old OS to new seamlessly; we had no trouble with our PC's printer and external USB hard drive, for example. But many more don't work or play well with the new system, at least at first. If you load applications that aren't yet compatible with Vista, the Monitor takes note and responds by lowering the index score. Trying stubbornly to reload those applications just to be certain they don't work further degrades the score. The same applies to trying out supposed updates to the application that also don't work and using (obviously unsuccessfully) hardware that doesn't yet have working Vista drivers.

Utilities like disk defraggers, antivirus software, and firewalls are especially notorious for failure to work with new OSs. With Vista, Microsoft has built the utilities you'll likely need, except for antivirus, into the new OS, but in versions that are less full featured than the third-party versions, and you may want to pay to upgrade the Vista versions (which generally aren't available yet).

Consumers of a new OS, then, are to some degree trapped in a corporate technology tussle. Microsoft may say it's up to the third-party hardware and software makers to have all their applications, drivers and firmware updated for the new OS. The third parties may counter by saying the new OS should be able to run all the existing software and hardware with no updates necessary.

What does our test (and the above reality) mean if you're poised to go Vista? They add to the good reasons not to rush into using the new OS. If past OSs are a guide, the landscape will change for the better. More drivers and application fixes will invariably arrive through Vista's first year, culminating in the first service pack, probably in the second half of 2007. By then, the hardware and software manufacturers should have most if not all of their products Vista-compatible.

Already have Vista, or can't wait to buy a new PC until the bugs are worked out? You may then want to use Monitor to confirm (or challenge) your feeling that all is going well, or badly. I'll cover how to use the tool in another blog entry soon.

-- Richard Fisco, Senior Project Leader

—Paul Eng