All right, despite the inherent unpopularity of saying this, someone has to: everywhere I turn on the ‘Net, it seems there’s some Apple/Linux fanboy bashing Vista. I know the cool thing to do these days is to hate MS and love Apple and/or Linux, but come on: it seems more like a case of being socially acceptable (hating MS) than Vista actually being that bad.
Before I get into this, two disclaimers: 1. I am not an MS Fanboy by any means…I use their products, yes: Windows XP, Windows Vista, an XBOX 360, and a Windows Mobile Phone. I generally like their stuff…it has served me well over the years; 2. I love Linux and open source software in general. I have an Ubuntu box and a ClarkConnect (CentOS-based firewall) box. I don’t use Apple stuff much, but I am aware they make some very nice products…and I’m not shy about admitting they often create hipper, cooler products than MS. And yes, FireFox is better than IE.
Anyway, I have been using Vista Ultimate x64 for four+ months now, and I can sincerely report I haven’t had any issues with it. Honestly. Hasn’t BSOD’d, hasn’t crashed, hasn’t erased my hard drive and sent all my sensitive data to Redmond. I have used all of the following applications with no issues:
- Raxco PerfectDisk 8
- AVG Free 7.5
- MS Office 2003 and 2007
- Picasa2, Google Earth
- Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver, InDesign
- MS Visual Studio 2005
- QuarkXPress 7
- FireFox & Thunderbird
- The GIMP
- WinMerge
- CleanMyPC Registry Cleaner
- uTorrent
- iTunes
- TurboTax ‘07
- Daemon Tools
- WinRar
- Goldwave
- e-Sword (Bible software)
- …and many others.
Of course the ‘Net is rife with forums about how Vista won’t run Netscape Navigator 4.04 or 7th Guest or something absurd like that, but come on people! Let’s get with the times (these are the same people who are mad they can’t watch reruns of Full House).
And, let’s not forget about my games that have run without a hitch:
- Oblivion
- FEAR
- HL2, Garry’s Mod
- Geometry Wars
- Worms World Party
- Crysis
- UT3, UT2k4, UT2k3, original UT
- Deus Ex and Deus Ex: IW
- …and many others
So as you can see, I have had zero application issues thus far, with one exception: FireFox was crashing, but it turned out to be an AVG 8.0 plugin causing that. I disabled the plugin and all was well (hardly Vista’s fault).
But what about driver issues? No problems here, and I honestly expected a few issues using the x64 version of Vista. But after installing Vista, every single device on my computer was recognized and the appropriate drivers were installed (I have pretty modern hardware, though).
But what about slow performance? Well, my Vista box is running pretty nice hardware (Core 2 Duo Q6600, 4GB Ram, 8800 GTX, Sata II, SB X-Fi, etc.), so it’s hard to say. I have used XP x64 on this same box, and honestly, Vista feels faster. I can’t quantify this for you…just a feeling I get using both OS’s. I have also used Vista on my older P4 system, and it didn’t seem slow to me. I haven’t run Vista on really old hardware though. On a P3 and/or low memory box, I imagine XP would be faster.
Oh, and speaking of memory, people complain about Vista’s RAM requirements, but honestly, I put 4GB of nice Corsair XMS memory in my gaming box for less than $200. Cheaper RAM is even less…you can get 2GB these days for $40 online. So who really cares if Vista runs smoothest with 1GB or more? I wouldn’t recommend using it with 512, but I’ve used Ubuntu on a 512MB box, and that was a little pokey too.
But Vista doesn’t have any useful or new features! I don’t agree. The new Network & Sharing Center is slick, and the ability to generate a map of my network is cool (if not a little gimmicky). Wireless works well. The new Media Center UI is very well-designed, and seems light years ahead of anything Apple or open source. The search seems to work as well as Apple’s Spotlight, although I admit it’s not super-intuitive to configure it to index additional locations.
The overall UI seems to be nearly as pleasing as Mac OS. SuperFetch does its job well, and ReadyBoost can speed up older systems. Yes, User Account Control is irritating. I disabled it; not a real biggie. Previous Versions is nice, although it has been done before. IPv6 support will be useful soon. The ability to adjust the volume for individual apps is handy. DX10 may be a little overhyped at this point, but I think it has potential down the road.
And one other thing. The new fonts they put in Vista are very pretty—at least equal to MacOS, and a night and day difference from Ubuntu (which has ugly fonts, imho).
So to sum this up, is there a real and compelling reason to get Vista if you have XP and are happy with it? Maybe not. But then again, is each new version of Ubuntu or Mac OS absolutely critical? No. The bottom line is, Vista has new features, seems rock-solid stable, does everything I need it to do, and doesn’t suck as bad as people say. Is it perfect? Hardly. But I don’t hate it. Nay…dare I say…I like it?
Tags: windows, Windows Vista
Recent Comments