Some Thoughts on Vista

Michael Gartenberg | March 16, 2007, 09:46 AM

I agree with my colleague Ian Fogg,

I've been struck by the amount of anti-Vista rhetoric around, which for the most part is at complete odds with my experiences with Vista to date.

Same here. None of the negative stories or reviews match my personal experience, running  the RTM released versions of Vista on a half dozen or so different upgraded computers of various vintage and one new machine with Vista pre-installed. From low end machines to high end, I've had none of the issues that seem to plague other folks. Two things stand out to me.

1. Few reviews I've seen go in depth to discuss many of the new improvements and new features in Vista beyond the basics. Things new to Vista such as IE's protected mode, Volume Shadow Copy, new generations of Media Center and Tablet, Speech Recognition and dictation. Photo Gallery or ReadyBoost. They all add up to a very compelling experience. It's more than just the new UI and better security and stability. Even experienced users are discovering the benefits of some of these features by accident. Microsoft really needs to call out the stuff that's in there so folks can see what it's all about.

2. Vista indeed runs best on modern computers. Biggest issue I have found upgrading about a half dozen PCs is not Vista and performance but driver issues for specific features and accessories. This is really an OEM issue, not a MSFT issue but they will get blamed anyway. Bottom line, Vista does work better with the more PC you throw at it. This is a bit of a change for most folks, as XP had very fixed limits. At a certain point, no matter how much computer you threw at XP, it worked the same. Vista to scales with better hardware. I think that's a good thing personally.

3. Your mileage will vary. Depending on what computer you have, what's on that PC, whether you ran the Vista Upgrade Advisor (and listened to it) will all affect how well your migration goes. Upgrades of any OS on any platform are always tricky and carry some risk. I do know that most folks who go through the upgrade process uneventfully are less likely to write about it than someone who had a painful experience. I can only write about my experiences and those of friends and colleagues who I have helped migrate.