Nearly two months after Microsoft launched its latest version of Windows, computer users are still struggling to get their PCs and laptops working properly.
My brother has this on his system. He's a proffesional IT type though and he had the beta running on a virtual PC (whatever that is) for months before the official release so knows his way around it now.
Looks pretty and all from what I've seen, but I asked him and he said there's no benefit to upgrading to it on my system.
I'm a die-hard Linux user. I'm on it for at least 8 hours per day and more often than not 12 or 14.
However, I bought 3 legal copies of Windows Vista for my machines (including 1 new laptop, although I considered getting a Mac laptop I ended up going for a Vista laptop).
The benefits of Vista are actually twofold:
1) A better/enhanced UI (I couldn't live without the instant search on the start menu now). Whether you like the glass interface or not is a matter of personal choice though...
2) Better behind the scenes. More on this in a moment
Microsoft has done a lot behind the scenes to try and improve how the OS works fundamentally, including speeding the boot process and power management and monitoring for problems/stability issues and tracking them against changes made to your system.
So, given that I've spent over 200 notes on this OS and have two very high powered PCs to run it on, why isn't it my first choice? Simple, it's still closed source. I love my Linux - being able to delve in to the source code of any application and script the OS to do anything I want is beyond the prettiness of Vista. And if I want prettiness I can always install Beryl...
I upgraded to this at the weekend. I really like it. Much better than xp in my opinion. Faster & more slick. The gadgets and widgets are a cool utility too.
Also, the voice recognition is a laugh. I was just sitting there shouting commands to my laptop. I managed a post on mansized and I never touched the keyboard once! How cool is that.
I also managed to use a program called TVersity that streamed music and vids from my laptop to my xbox360 which is cool as well.
I'd recommend peeps to upgrade and say 'astala-vista baby' to XP!
I got Vista Business only because it came with a new PC which was the same price as XP Professional so I thought may as well get something newer!
I have mixed feelings about Vista...
Cons
- there are some things that took longer to do (more clicks, etc.)
- the visual effects were simply nothing more than just eye-candy
- issues with some software like Flash 8 (opening a symbol takes ages even on a Intel Dual Core 2, 2Gb RAM kit), DW8.02 (somehow kills the Vista global XML help) - obviously, this is related to software themselves and upcoming patches for many software may resolve major issues - these two issues were fixed manually by third party
Pros
- Vista intilliegently "learns" your computer usage so paricularly memory-hog applications like Photoshop are started up quicker
- Quick boot-up (although you could do some tweaks in XP to do the same)
- easily connects to non-PC services, e.g. no need for third-party utilities like MACLAN to connect to Mac printers
- faster search facility
- a lot more secure
- better usage of start menu
- faster response time
- snip tool is included
- better disk management (PMagic is not compatible!)
- folder contents "preview"
Vista does take some getting used to so if you fancy something new and better (and know what you are doing!), then go for it otherwise wait a few months when better support and patches become more available.
I have XP Professional SP2 on my home computer and more than likely won't exclusively purchase Vista. I will probably get Vista when I eventually purchase a new computer.
I have only been using it a couple of days but it sounds like you have put it through it's paces.
I would say that if you know your way around XP then I think you will get a grip of vista pretty quickly.
@ dillion - do you know if Firefox works with Vista? I read somewhere that it will not set the default browser. I can't find any info on Firefox website.
