I’m Vista… I’m From Microsoft and I’m Here to Help You
The title for this review is taken from that old joke about what are the three greatest lies every told…. one being, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.” Quite frankly, after a week of working with the nuances and demons, along with some of the neat stuff, of Vista, I find myself less apt to recommend this version of Vista (Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (SP1)) than I was even three days ago. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.
By now, Vista is over a year old, and Microsoft has just issued its last Service Pack (SP3) for XP, and support for Windows XP with Service Pack 3, according to Microsoft’s support page, ends 12 months past the 3/30/2008 release date for regular folks like you and me (developers and businesses get 24 months of support).
Of all the Operating Systems (O/S) introduced by Microsoft, Vista has been dissed more than any other, at least to my memory. Vista has really felt a terrible backlash from the business community, namely because it requires at least 1 GB of RAM to run and 15 GB’s of disk space to install (versus 128MB of RAM and 1.5 GB of disk space needed for XP Professional to operate). This coupled with most businesses feeling that Vista doesn’t have enough improvements to warrant an upgrade has even lead to many businesses balking at even buying computers with Vista installed on them. You may remember how Dell had to go back and start re-offering XP on the computers after they fazed it out after Vista has been on the market about six months because of new computer sales dropping because of Vista. Read…
