Chris Wiegman

Archive for June, 2008

Since its release early last year Vista has been the target of techies everywhere. Whether I’m on a forum devoted to IT or CNET news, or even an aviation forum someone out there who claims to be a tech is always quick to point out how bad Vista is and how they won’t be using it on their own computer. Excuses range from speed, to compatibility to just simply not wanting to pay into Microsoft’s coffers.

This attitude a full year and a service pack later continues to baffle me. The most amazing part of it is that it often comes from individuals who have not installed on a machine themselves. They’re relying on outdated reviews and word of mouth to sum up issues they haven’t experienced firsthand. For example, I had a gentleman on the campus here at the University who told me how bad Vista was and how it was just too slow on his computer (a rather new Dell he bought last summer). When I asked how much slower it actually ran compared to XP he simply told me he wasn’t sure as he hadn’t tried it, but on the internet he had been reading when VISTA came out how much slower it would be.

Second, not only does the lack of firsthand experience amaze me, but also the lack of memory of what happened when XP came out amazes me as well. Way back when XP was released it was a major resource hog compared to the Windows 98 and ME that was running on the bulk of home computers. In addition, it was the first home operating system Microsoft released based on the NT kernel rather than the old DOS kernel that 95/98/ME had been based on. I remember first hand a few games I had at the time that I never could get to work right on XP as they had been designed for DOS. In addition, I wound up not using XP on at least one computer as I never could get good drivers for an older scanner and other equipment. At the time this was a rather common problem resulting in a lot of gripes and complaints just as Vista has. The difference however, is that while those complaints were warranted with the upgrade to XP, more often than not after a year in service Vista has worked through almost all of those issues.

On the corporate side, the upgrade from XP to Vista is a little different story. Whereas the upgrade to XP was rather simple providing some new and useful functions to a corporate user, the Vista upgrade just simply doesn’t offer the same benefits. Vista goes a step further in the merging of home and office operating systems and consequently offers the corporate user a slew of features that just simply aren’t necessary at work. From media center to the infamous User Account Control (UAC) the new functionality simply isn’t worth the cost. As for compatibility issues, yes they are there, but in my own firsthand experience, they are no worse than the issues present every time an operating system is upgraded. It is the lack of necessary features that is the real downfall of Vista in most corporate environments, not compatibility or speed problems.

Now for the real question: is Vista really any worse than XP? The simple answer is no. If Vista does the job you need it to do and doesn’t cause you any unnecessary trouble, than it is a perfectly suitable OS. Is it really that much slower than XP? From my experience I’ve found computers that have been upgraded to Vista from XP suffer no perceivable speed degradation. Of course if all you’re doing is browsing the web and working with text than how much difference can the OS really make? Characters are still going to appear on the screen as fast as you can type them and it is your internet service provider that will limit any internet work you do.

XP was a good OS, but Vista is just as good and I’ll continue to use it myself and roll it out to the 100 or so users I support at the office.