The Wait for Vista is Over and There’s No Need to Wait to Deploy

Michael Gartenberg | November 30, 2006, 08:46 AM

Well, the big day is here and Microsoft is in NY full force with the launch of Vista, Office and Exchange for business. It’s a pretty low key launch (the big consumer bash will come January 30th) but an important milestone. I spent some time last night looking at the research I wrote when Windows 95 launched (I wanted to re-post some of it here, but it’s copyrighted by my former employer) and some of the stuff was pretty amusing.
One question I keep getting asked is, do folks need to wait for a Vista update before migrating? In the past, I would have said, yep, wait for service pack 1 or the like but I don’t think that’s warranted this time around. I’ve been using every version of this OS, from early Longhorn builds all the way to RTM and so far, it’s been secure, rock solid and works well once you get used to the new UI. I can list the pros and cons (and in fact, I have) but at the end of the day, this thing works and I’ll call it the best version of Windows ever released. The real caveat is availability of drivers for current machines (and of course some driver updates won’t be generally available until the consumer launch) and application compatibility (nothing new there, that’s par for the course for every OS change). If your machine can handle Vista, in terms of horsepower and compatibility, there’s absolutely no reason to wait for an update of any kind. Watch for some new and very interesting machines to be announced supporting cool Vista features.
One little Vista tip. It’s Windows Key+TAB that activates the new and rather cool Flip3D task manager.