Day Five: Decode London

Today is the last day of the Windows Vista Small Business Challenge and we thought we would take the opportunity to give our general impressions of Vista, and how what we have learnt will genuinely change the way in which we work.

However there is one area of functionality that we stumbled across by chance that we thought was really relevant that is worth mentioning.

As part of the design process we often do 3D renderings of ours product prior to any prototyping to get a feel for how the finished product will look and to identify any potential problems. 3D rendering requires significant processing and memory resources and often takes a considerable time. One improvement in Vista is Directx10 which provides enhanced 3D capabilities and more importantly performance for games or in our case 3D intensive programs.

The other feature is ReadyBoost, which we discovered when we removed and reinserted the supplied SD card. When inserted an “Autoplay” window opens, and option is given to “Speed up my system”.  If this option is selected, ReadyBoost allows Vista users to increase performance by using external memory in the same way as RAM. This means that when we render images, informative is stored in a more accessible way which mean faster processing and quicker results. This feature would be valuable to users who work with large files or multiple programs simultaneously.

So now after a week of using Vista what are our thoughts? With XP there were always areas of usability and look and feel that felt a little dated. However, after this week we can confidently say that from a user perspective Vista is a real improvement. It would be unfair to say the Vista is just a younger and sexier XP, as there are some really great new features that are worthy of mention. So the Decode London Vista top 10 are:

1) Aero interface and improved intuitiveness
2) Backup and Restore Centre- One step file and system backup
3) Windows Meeting Space- We can share and work on files with clients and designers
4) Welcome Centre- all you need to do and setup in one easily accessible place
5) Mobility Centre- all the settings we need to change when we are presenting and out and about.
6) Remote Access- we can work just effectively when away from the office
7) Performance improvements- ReadyBoost and DirectX10
8) New and improved Media Centre- life is not all work!
9) Enhanced search features
10) Enhanced security

Prior to the Small Business Challenge we knew that we need to resolve some fundamental IT issues, however, with economic and time resources being scarce, we hadn’t got around to doing something about it. Over the course of this week and with help from OLT Consulting what we have learnt is that with small incremental changes, like upgrading to Vista, or by using widely available and free tools you can fundamentally change the way in which you operate and return significant benefits for a relatively small investment.