// November 27th, 2007 // View Comments // Technology
So I’ve been using Microsoft Windows Vista on and off for about a year now. I’ve had it on my production machine running full time for about the past six months. I was a bit hesitant to run it at first, after reading the bad reviews and all the stories about driver issues. After successfully running it on my Macbook laptop for a few months, I decided to try installing it on my desktop that is about two years old. Knowing full well that an older machine like that might not like having a brand new OS on it. After I figured out all of Vista’s quirky installation preferences, I finally got the thing installed on a machine with multiple hard drives and partitions.
After installation I had no problems finding the drivers that I needed, and didn’t have any major issues with peripherals or devices. What I did find withVista, is that it just plain didn’t run as fast as XP. I tried different combinations of the Aero effect on and off, as well as other visuals turned on an off. Sure, I don’t have dual 6800GTS SLI graphics cards, but I’m just trying to run the OS here, not play Crysis.
What I found to particularly hate about Vista, was file transfers. Simply moving something to the recycle bin, or copy/paste operations have taken a turn for the worse in Vista. Deleting something like a 100k document, now takes 10 seconds in Vista. Why, I have no idea. I do hear that service pack 1 for Vista is a huge improvement on file transfer speeds, but why do I have to wait for this I have no idea.
Now, for things that I do like about Vista. I enjoy hitting the start menu button on my keyboard and instantly typing what I want followed by the enter key. I get exactly what I want, in a much faster way then the Windows XP start menu allowed. I also like how I can single click on the clock, to get a calendar preview of the month. Finally, I enjoy being able to see the characters I type into the network key login screen of Vista. With XP if you had a long WEP key, good luck typing it in twice correctly blind. Vista allows me to view the characters, as well as only forcing me to type it in once. Why must I type it in twice to simply login for XP I have no idea.
Until now you probably think that for the most part I enjoy using Vista, and still use it. That was true till last week when my Vista installation decided to BSOD on me. Not that I’m all that afraid of seeing the familiar BSOD on my Windows installations, it’s just that it gave me the opportunity to switch back to my XP partition to get some work done for the time being. Now, after switching back to XP for a few days, I just don’t see any compelling reason to reinstall Vista. My XP install is a few months old, and is still running much faster then Vista ever did.
What I would like to see is a revamped Start menu in XP SP3, and I’d just say goodbye to Vista forever.
-DPollitt
Just head over to your carriers BIS website:
