First up. Microsoft Vista. To get it or not get it? There has been a real defiance by the Windows community over this, outright refusing to purchase new PCs with Vista installed, forcing PC manufacturers to continue to sell and promote Windows XP. And as a matter of fact the yare outselling Vista PCs right now by a wide margin. Why is that?
Opinions due vary, however I believe Operating Systems just aren’t as unreliable as they used to be. For example, Win 3.1 crashed and froze up daily, needed frequent reboots and just simply had it’s share of problems. Enter Windows 95. A great new O.S. (operating system) that promised a more stable environment and better support for your hardware. The public ate it up. Granted it wasn’t all it was supposed to be, that came later, as Windows 98. But as good as it was, it still relied too heavily on the old DOS operation system. Gamers (and techs, like me working on gamers systems) had a field day. So enters Windows XP, built on the Windows 2000 (NT) kernel, opposed to DOS. XP offered excellent stability, good backups, great video support for gamers and excellent support for all kinds of hardware. Not to mention true plug & play with USB devices. XP worked for everyone, with the exception of security holes, that allowed virus programmers access into the OS. This was no different then past Windows versions, just more apparent due to the popularity of broadband internet access - making it easier for viruses to be download to your system, quickly. Then enters Vista.
First, was the confusion factor of so many versions. Four in total. Home Basic, Home Premium, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate. If you were buying a new PC, then it probably either came with Home Basic or Premium. If you wanted to upgrade your current PC, then you had decisions to make, based on what you used your PC for. Which brings me to Vista’s problem #2. Price. $100 for basic, $150 for Premium, $200 for Business and $260 for Ultimate. $260 for an Operating System? Sure it had many features, but as OS’s have progressed over the years, we, as users have come to expect this. Stability has improved, but proportionately not as much as in previous versions of Windows. And then there’s the “Aero” graphics. Basically, Aero allows all the fancy Window effects like, transparency, wiggle windows when moving, fancy minimizing and maximizing windows and more. The problem is that it takes so much computer power to run Aero smoothly, most people will be disappointed with the performance. A decent CPU is not only required, but so’s lots of memory (1Gig min, with a preference of 2Gig) also. And what’s wrong with the idea that you need almost as much memory as Vista is fully capable of addressing to run it at it’s best performance level, topping off at a whopping 4GB. (even though Vista can only actually address 3GB at a time, with a max of 4GB) And a decent video card is also preferred, ok, maybe a step up from a “decent” video card would be a good idea. All this is assuming that the “Aero” interface is enabled, with comes with all versions except the Basic version. Basic runs on the $399 PCs you see in the newspaper, but not that well.
As you can tell, I’m not too excited about Windows Vista, Though I’m not alone. AS I pointed out at the beginning of the article, so far, new PCs with XP pre-installed are outselling new Vista based PCs on a daily basis. Because of this, Microsoft has been forced to support XP longer than it had planned. As of late, XP will be supported until 2014, and be available for direct purchase until June 2009. (and could be longer) Microsoft has already stated that they will extend XP Home Basic for low-end PCs/Laptops. So I guess I have another year to try to like Vista a little better. Which by then, hopefully the average PC will be able to run it efficiently, so at least the hardware requirements hurdle will be overcome.
So in conclusion, I’d have to say that, if you plan on buying a decent PC in the near future, $1200 and up, then go for Vista. Just be sure to get the Premium or Ultimate version. In my opinion Vista Basic is not worth the time of day. If you plan on buying a lower end PC, say below $1000, then stick with XP. You’ll be much happier with a much snappier system, well supported for another 3-6 years. If you want to upgrade your current system to get the the new OS, I’d say save your pennies for a new PC, otherwise you will most certainly have a slower computer. You will need to buy more memory, and you will need a new video card. Not one for $39 either.
