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 - solid OS upgrade with expected (but minor) incompatibility issues I have been a Microsoft user since DOS days. Like most Microsoft customers, I have my love/hate relationship going on with the company and their products. Also like most Microsoft customers, I always reserve some skepticism for any new Microsoft product until the product has fully proven to me of its merits. When big M pushed out its major OS update, I didn't exactly jump on it. Especially with all the negative press, I didn't even plan to upgrade perhaps until the time I upgrade my computer system. With my participation in Vine program, however, I was able to test out the system, and here are my findings/opinions. First of all, Windows Vista is designed for the latest and greatest hardware configuration available. To fully benefit all the modernized UI bells and whistles, you need to set your expectations in a realistic manner: if you have a five-year old graphics card, < 1GB of ram, and sub-P4 CPU, you can still use the OS, but you are better off disabling all the fancy eye candies in order to get acceptable performance. The particular computer which I have installed the Vista on has a dual XEON processor, 2GB of RAM, and a very decent ATI gaming graphics card. So I have the luxury of checking out all the highly-hyped UI eye candies. Let me just say, with sufficient HW, all these UI enhancements do indeed work as designed. While we are on the topic of UI, I must add that the UI, in general, has been overhauled. It is evident that MSFT has hired some professional industrial/graphics designers to work on the UI, a lot of UI inconveniences in Windows XP, which we have more or less taken for granted, are eliminated and improved. The new UI is more intuitive, prettier, and (with sufficient HW muscles) faster. A lot of the negative presses have been targeting the fact that the new OS is not compatible with many older devices and software. Being a software professional myself, I certainly understand the pain in maintaining backward compatibilities. In term of Windows, there have been THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of devices and software accumulated over the years - many of which were not even written in a way that's compliant to Microsoft's 3rd development guidelines. In my opinion, if you want your OS to be fundamentally rearchitectured, you HAVE to sacrifice some backward compatibility. I feel Microsoft has done a decent job in this regard, out of all the software and peripherals that I have, the only thing that no longer worked after the OS upgrade is an extremely old Logitech webcam. I went to the Logitech website, and they do not have XP driver available for this device. My point is, customers need to be realistic about what an OS maker can do to make sure that devices and applications floating out there will work with the new version of an OS. Sometimes, it's simply impossible to maintain backward compatibility. In summary, I was well aware of the HW requirement for the new OS, and I expected certain incompatibilities with the OS upgrade. Even with these previous formed concerns, the new OS has proven to be decent in term of backward-compatibility and improved performance with the recommended HW configurations. So my recommendation is, if you are prepared to face some early-adopter pains and have the solid HW to back it up, then this OS is for you. Otherwise just stay with XP and wait until Vista has been fully adopted. Rating:  - Too cool!I haven't had time to investigate all of Vista's features (and I probably won't, as I'm a layperson, not a computer whiz), but so far, I'm really enjoying this OS. The interface is just beautiful -- I love the "frosted-glass" look of the windows, and even the icons are cool-looking. (For example, folders with pictures look like file folders set on end, with the pictures splayed open inside, almost as if it were a photo album.) The new start menu is also very clean-looking and useful. Another favorite of mine: The way the taskbar shows you a mini screenshot of an application when you mouse over it. The Windows sidebar, which you can fill with "gadgets" of your choice (calendars, to-do lists, etc.) is a neat feature, but one I don't find myself using much. I haven't had the problems that some users have had with Vista. I didn't do a clean install, because I was too lazy to copy over all my data, honestly. So I did an upgrade from XP and have experienced minimal problems. (I did have some issues with my PC rebooting randomly, but I think that was due to a very buggy version of iTunes -- the problem seems to have resolved since the latest iTunes update.) So, bottom line? Vista is gorgeous, and for me it's been pretty much trouble-free. But is it worth upgrading from XP? Honestly, I don't see why. XP was a good OS, and most people seem to be happy with it, so unless you're really dying to see what Vista can do, tech-wise, or you're just obsessed with having a beautiful OS, I'd save the money. Rating:  - Convinced us to go 100% AppleMy husband and I started our business back in 1985, shortly after the first Apple Macintosh came on the scene. Right away people told us the IBM PC Jr. was better. Today I don't know if anyone remembers the PC Jr., but of course we're still using Macs. Every few years we try out a PC, but each time it just ends up sitting in a corner. With this new Windows Vista system, I think we are to that point again. It's not that it was that hard to install, but I'm just tired of bothering with it. There are so many versions of Vista, and no matter which one we try it doesn't seem to be much of an improvement over XP. It hogs up tons of memory, requires lots of software upgrading and no matter what we do we always seem to be missing a driver. And everything, frankly, pales to the Mac world (just my opinion here, I'm not trying to convert anybody), at least in all the fields we use a computer for (writing, photography, publishing, bookkeeping, database management, video, music and our daughter's school work). Maybe it's just that we are so used to a Mac, but every time we decide to try a PC as a side computer, we just get confused, get frustrated and give up. With a business to run and a daughter headed to high school, we just don't have the time anymore. If you're happy with the PC world and starting from scratch with a brand-new machine, Vista probably offers a lot. But not for me. Rating: - I'm Sorry, Microsoft, That My Computer SucksMy computer meets the minimum requirements for Vista, but not the "recommended" requirements. So I guess it's no surprise that I hated Vista, since the "minimum requirements" appear to be there to sell more units, regardless of the truth. DO NOT buy Vista if your computer doesn't meet their "recommended" level of technology. It just won't be worth it. After a few hours playing with this slow, glitchy resource hog, I restored my XP backup. Maybe when I buy a new, top-of-the-line computer, I'll try Vista again. Rating: - Not Quite Ready YetMicrosoft Windows and I have had a long and sometimes sordid history; I have used Windows in one version or another since Window 3.1 and 3.11 "For Workgroups." This was at the time when a TCP/IP stack didn't come bundled in Windows so if you wanted to talk on the Internet, you had to buy a third-party application from Trumpet or Chameleon. Yes, I am dating myself, but it's to bring up a point: Windows has evolved from a barely interesting, barely functional OS back then to now, a full-blown and certainly very interesting OS. Yes, you can say anything you want about Windows but "interesting," in all its various connotations, will always be applicable. For the last few years, I have used Windows XP with little to no problems so when the opportunity to upgrade to the latest edition, Windows Vista, I was a little hesitant. The choice was made for me when I discovered that my new PC was going to run Windows Vista Ultimate--the die was cast. The installation of Vista itself was simple and clear. I didn't need to read any manuals or browse online documentation, I simply followed the on-screen prompts, registered and voila, a fully functional box. All within about an hour. First impressions weren't bad, unlike what you would expect after watching those Apple commercials. The OS worked pretty much like Windows XP out of the box. I could find the same programs and applications as easily as and sometimes even more easily than with XP. The real difference? UAC or User Account Control which is a security feature that attempts to protect the user from themselves by requiring a confirmation that a command attempting to be run is allowed to run. Apparently, the basic, kernel-level and security operations for Vista have been vastly changed from Windows XP. Where, in XP, applications by default run in the security context of the logged-on user, most likely with administrative privileges, Vista has changed that: programs are curtailed so that even if the user has administrative privileges, there are still some things that the OS will not allow without explicit permissions. Hence the UAC prompt at which Apple likes to poke fun. I don't mind this feature, but I can see how it is able to really interfere with a "normal" user's everyday work. Luckily, there's a way for those so bothered to change the behavior: a Google search will reveal all. There have also been complaints about the lack of drivers for peripherals and such. I am happy to report that in all the time I have been using Vista Ultimate, there has never been a peripheral (a camera, a printer, etc.) that hasn't worked out of the box. So far, this is all good news, but there is bad: several times the driver for the Intel network card caused a blue screen of death (BSOD) which is something I never expected to see in a Microsoft Operating System again. After running a kernel debugger on the memory dump, I was able to find that it was the NIC driver, a process that most casual users may not have been able to carry out. I really wish Microsoft would take the time to create more sensible error messages that do not require the services of a computer guru or an exhaustive search on Google to find. Another problem occurred with Firefox which kept crashing hard every few minutes. I still haven't found the problem with that and so the search continues. The famed graphics capabilities were cute, but too memory consuming. I quickly did away with all of those "upgraded" features. I have yet to test out some of the other features of Vista including Bitlocker; I just don't see the need for it at this time but perhaps in the future as I become more comfortable using Vista. I also haven't performed extensive testing with some of my games such as Flight Simulator and I'm hoping I have the same experience running those as I have had with the others; that is, a smooth one. In all, I don't know if Vista is that much of an improvement over XP in terms of practical functionality. If it comes with a new PC, I doubt one would have much of a choice. I note that Vista Service Pack 1 has just been released. I guess that's a good thing, but were I to have had a choice when to upgrade XP to Vista, I'd wait until SP2.
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