Windows Vista Released

Vista will be released to the public on January 30, 2007 and everybody is wondering whether or not to upgrade.

Sure, it has a slick new interface and some additional security features such as Windows Defender Anti-Spyware (which Microsoft purchased from Giant Company Software, Inc in 2004), upgraded Outlook Express known as Windows Mail and built in Least Privilege User Account (LUA), now known in Vista as User Account Protection (UAP) but is it truly worthwhile to upgrade?

I'll get right to the point... Don't beat yourself up over the decision to upgrade or not to upgrade. Wait until you purchase your next computer and get it with Vista pre-installed or until Microsoft decides to drop support of Windows XP. At the very minimum, I would wait until Microsoft releases the first Service Pack for Vista. This has pretty much been my policy for all new MS operating systems and has served me very well. You can always install (or should install) antispyware on your XP machine, and XP already has built in LUA. All you have to do is not logon as an administrator unless you are installing software ... or temporarily make your account an administrator until your are done installing software. XP Pro has a cool utility called Runas which makes this even easier. This little trick, though a pain at times, will save you a ton of grief when you stumble on a malicious website or open the next "I Love You" virus.

I don't think I'm alone in my assessment about Vista.

If you decide to become an early adopter, be prepared for headaches when you find that not all your devices or applications work. However, a little known trick may allow you to get those pesky XP apps working on your vista box. All you need to do is right click the installer executable, select properties and select the compatability tab and the select the Compatability mode for Windows XP Service Pack 2. I have found this works about 90% of the time for software and driver installations.

Ok, if you are still reading this, you are probably determined to upgrade your XP box. If so, first check out Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor which is a small piece of software that you can run on your system to determine which version of Vista is best for you.

A word about hardware performance...

I installed Vista Enterprise on my 1.7Ghz HP Laptop with 1GB of RAM despite all the warnings about beefy hardware requirements. It turns out that Vista has a feature which assesses your hardware peformance, known as the Windows Performance Rating. When I ran the Windows Performance Rating from the Vista control panel after installing on my laptop, I received a score of 1 out of 5. This is pretty bad and would normally lead me to believe the machine is not capable of handling Vista. On the contrary, my experience with Vista is that it has performed admirably well despite my poor hardware. So don't let your hardware rating fool you into believing you cannot run Vista. I believe the low score my laptop received was due to the basic onboard video card but I think most laptop users would be in the same boat. The single performance problem I have noticed, which is exceedingly frustrating at times, is that every time I click the Start Menu, there is a noticeable delay before the menu appears. That is my only real complaint with Vista, other than the fact I cannot use all the cool 3D windows that "would have been" installed if my system had rated higher on the Performance Rating scale. That is, if I only had a sweet new graphics card.

Anyway, I work with computers on a daily basis and it did take some time for me to learn the new interface. All the familiar control panel items are is still there but access to them is often different or must be done through a wizard. However, I must say that once I got used to the new interface, I rather enjoy it. In fact, it looks like a Mac!

If you are still hell bent on upgrading, some final words of advice, never upgrade an Operating System if you can afford the full version. Always, always install a fresh installation of the full version if possible. You will save yourself a ton of headaches down the road.

Finally, if you are installing Vista yourself, you may as well by the OEM version for "system Builders" it is available for anyone to buy, it just doesn't include all the fancy packaging but is almost half the price. Here is a link for your convenience...