Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Windows Vista? No thank you, I'll take Windows XP

Well it appears that Chris Pirillo might have opened a real war of words over his rights to tell the blogospheare how he feels about Vista and I must say I am following in his footsteps on the belief it is more like a beta release then the actual working program. Sure I understand there will always be bugs and patches, this goes without saying on any operating system, just as there will always be security updates. But come on Microsoft, why would you release something (other then the fact that you were under extreme pressure to get it out the door), that has true maintenance, security or other functioning software, other than your own 'windows defender'? I am referring to the fact that Symantec software such as partition magic and pcanywhere for example, as well as numerous incompatibilities with printers/scanners. I hate to say this is another windows x64 (even though I am using Windows Vista Premium 32), whereas no manufacturer really stepped up and provided working drivers. The 64bit Windows XP has been out for years now and where did it go?

Unfortunately my new laptop came with this Vista O/S, otherwise I too would have held off in going for Vista since I had the beta DVD given to me at last years Gnomedex. I had been dabbling with it on a computer I built for that purpose.. as a consultant it is important to stay surfing the leading edge of the trade so that you can truly understand how to fix an error when one arises. It seems to me I am spending more time doing the simple things like just getting connected to a wifi connection then testing out the actual O/S. Maybe I might not be whining as much as Chris seemed to be, but from the sounds of his troubles, he has every right to 'vent'.

For my own clients who are now starting to ask me pretty much on a daily basis whether or not they should be looking to upgrade, I am obviously telling them to stay as far away from it as possible. But this may be a difficult thing to do when it comes to purchasing a new laptop since they are all starting to ship with some sort of Vista O/S installed and unless I start purchasing 'bare-bones' laptops and completing the build myself whereas I can then control what O/S goes in to it (believe me I am very close to doing this now), it seems that my only course of action is to continue to read the blogs and tech reports on what problems I can be expected to see at some point, most likely sooner than later... or maybe I should do as Scot did?