Well initial impressions of Vista and more specifically Vista MCE.
I like it. It feels modern, futuristic, whatever but I'm glad the interface has finnaly gone 3D. Aero Glass is cool and works well on my 6600 (HTPC) and 7800GT (Gamming box) systems.
Speed isn't too bad, seems to go to the hard drive a lot but I've just installed it on some old 15G and 30G hdds I had laying around so that could be part of the issue there. Both systems *only* have 1Gig of ram and they say Vista likes to see 2Gigs. But overall its running pretty well, esp on my *lesser* box which is a P4 3ghz.
Vista MCE. All I can say is WOW. The downside is there really isn't anything revolutionary from the previous MCE 2005 version. What is so great is the polishing they've done to everything that was in MCE 2005. The navigation is better and the music library is TO DIE FOR. I'm debating if beta testing this guy full time on my HTPC is worth it for that alone. I donno if anyone has used MCE 2005 much for music or read about the changes in Vista MCE but for me they are the coolest thing ever. MCE 2005 ruined CD's for me because of how easy it was to listen to whatever I wanted and in whatever order (on the fly playlists) but Vista MCE has taken that to a new level. The presentation has changed by adding a couple additional ways to browse by date and album artist making browsing your music exciting every time and even easier to find what you want. All the existing ways are still there too including by artist, album and genre but everything scrolls side to side now instead of up and down which is really great for widescreen HDTVs. And its even more pretty then MCE 2005.
Vista MCE now includes a MPEG2 decoder so you don't need to buy one separately. That said I've been using the Nvidia one on my MCE 2005 system because it works with my 6600 to give me all the postprocessing features of PUREVIDEO so I'll have to see what the quality differences are between the systems for TV and Movies.
The system does seem pretty stable overall but I was able to get the MCE interface to lockup but after patiently waiting on the OS I was able to end task it and restart. Oh well they got 6+ months to continue to tweak.
