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Microsoft Windows Vista… Is it worth it? Is it as bad as I have heard?

Here’s the deal about the new Windows Vista. It’s all about your personal presences. THAT’S IT… There are a lot of articles on the web telling you things like “10 reasons not to get Vista” and on the other side “Windows Vista: 15 Reasons to Switch”. What this goes to show you is it’s all about your point of view and your expectations going into it. Don’t trust someone else’s opinion about an operating system whether they tell you it sucks or it’s the best thing since Bosom Buddies.

I’ve been using Vista for about 4 months now and I can’t really say I have anything against it. Truthfully 4 months is not nearly enough time to give Vista a fair and complete review since I, like most of us have been XP users for years and that’s what were use to. I will say there were some issue with drivers when I first installed it that made me want to just quit. It took a few days to get my sound card working properly and the rest of the time was just finding where everything was. I got threw it though so no big deal

Let get back to the main questions though. Is it worth it? If Vista came with your new computer or if you’re looking to upgrade that old version of XP you have, well it’s not an easy question to answer. Vista has added some nice new features such as Sidebar, Flip 3D, new Calendar, Photo Gallery, Media Center, and visual improvements with new security “Improvements”. On the other hand it’s not an easy upgrade and it’s not your good old XP layout either. With XP you know where everything is and if you don’t then it’s easy to find. With Vista, Microsoft makes a sharp right turn. Where things use to be are now in another place. What they use to be named they are named differently (My Documents-Documents and Settings etc).

Is it as bad as I have heard? Not in my opinion. Like I said before I did have some driver issues and it took a while to figure out where everything was. Other then that slow start Vista has been surprisingly good for me. I can play all my old games on it and use all my old applications. I do have 1 issue with how my game Crysis is opened but that’s it. This is where I think the big misunderstanding comes into play. Too many people had to many expectations on how they think Vista should be. Instead of telling you about the cool new features and functions, they focus on what they think needs to be on it or what they don’t like about it. This is why you can’t completely trust other people’s perspectives on Vista. If you want to try it, then try it. Just be ready and understand Vista is NOT a Windows XP face lift. It’s completely redesigned and might as well be considered another company’s OS like OS X, Ubuntu, or Redhat. Obviously its still Windows so it’s not completely alien, but you will get what I mean when you try it.

Overall Vista is good, solid and visually very nice. I have no functional problems with it. My finally decision about Vista vs. XP… No matter how nice it looks I just don’t see the need to use it. I still prefer my XP and have no real need to use Vista. I’m going to downgrade back to XP later and wait till another generation of Windows or other operating system appears that makes me jump ship. Until then, im coming home to XP!

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