Vista Upgrade: The Not-So-Rosy Picture
Things aren't looking so hot for Vista's right-around-the corner release. There are a slew of reports from PC World and other IDG companies that make me wonder if Vista's rough edges are going to keep lots of people from upgrading. (I have to do it and I'll give you my impressions soon.)
Let's start with a PC World Labs report. After testing the soon to be released Vista, they said it's clear that if you want to use all of its features, you're going to have to have a truckload of power. At a minimum, 1GB of RAM and a fast dual-core processor. The story's long and makes you (me, anyway) wonder if Vista's worth the move. Read Lab Tests: Vista's Fast If You Have the Hardware.
There's other not-so-good Vista news. Notebooks users are going to see some of Vista's features gobbling up more battery power than they expected. Details at Vista Could Sap Notebook PC Battery Life.
On the can't-we-just-work-together front: Security vendors -- McAfee and Symantec, for instance -- are unhappy with Microsoft. They're claiming Microsoft's making it difficult for them to gain access to the part of Vista they need in order to provide. The hottest issue, among other things, is host-based intrusion detection. I love it when these behemoths duke it out. Provided, of course, they work things out before everyone upgrades. The entire story is a click away: Microsoft Releases APIs for Vista Security Features.
Not surprisingly, our IDG news folks are saying large companies are reluctant to upgrade for the reasons I've mentioned above, and also because of application incompatibilities, the risk of drivers not being available for hardware, and Microsoft's reluctance to issue patches for Vista. You're dying to know more, I know, so dig into No Rush to Adopt Vista.
If you're planning on playing content that's protected by digital rights management (DRM) on a high end audio device, such as Sony/Philips Digital Interface (S/PDIF), you may be out of luck. Chris Mellor, of IDG's Techworld, reports that Vista will disable equipment that doesn't have any content protection features. Read Vista Crippled By Content Protection for details.
On the hacking side of things, Engadget's reporting that that there's a way to "freeze the 30-day countdown timer within the operating system in order to prevent it from ever leaving the fully functional evaluation mode." I'm sure the Microsofties are on the case.
Are any of these stories going to make you move to Linux or (perish the thought) a Mac?
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Apple here I come...
Hi Steve,
I went through this decision last month, and finally decided to stay with a fresh copy of XP Pro SP2 and non-Micro$oft office suite precisely because of the compatibility issue and the system requirements. My new PC has a 3.2 dual core and 2 GB of RAM for image editing, and I don't need to give that power away to M$'s newest miscarriage of technology. On the other hand, I have several favorite programs that just won't run on Mac or Linux, as much as I'd like to give Redmond the friendly finger altogether.
Support for Pro will continue for five more years. By then, hopefully, we'll have more choices. In the meantime, with many of XP's worst faults corrected, continued patch support, and Internet Exploder disabled, I can live with what I've got.
Regards,
Bill Webb
Hi Steve,
Ah yes, I remember the great days of the PIBMUG. In the meantime, I have the same feelings as Bill Webb. My PC has an Athlon64 and 1.5 GB of RAM, and I, too, don't want to hand any of my computing power to Microsoft for items that won't help me work better. I don't like them telling me what I can and cannot run on my machine. So I too will stick with XP Pro SP2. I run Office 2003, and see no need to upgrade there, either. I use FireFox to get on the Web, AVG antivirus keeps me clean, and iHateSpam and CounterSpy help keep the bad guys out. In addition, I run Shavlik NetCheck Protect which helps with upgrades and patches and still keeps MS's hands out of my machine. I'll run XP until MS quits supporting it, and then go over to a user-friendly version of Linux.
Best,
Paul Dexler
lol, I just upgraded to XP a few months ago! I finally got sick of Win98 croaking and having to be rebooted 2 or 3 times a week. Now I have XP and it's MUCH better. I can't remember the last time I've had it freeze. otoh, Microsoft sends an update 2 or 3 times a week and they reboot my system when they do. So I _think_ things have improved
- Ed ipchus
I dual boot XP pro and Vista RC1 and there is very little difference the the speeds between the two OS's. The first two posters with >1GB of RAM have nothing to worry about, Vista will run fine and (almost) as fast as XP. It is only if you have less then 1GB of RAM that you will encounter noticeable speed drop.
I have been running Vista in all it's incarnations since the first public release. the current 5744 build is only OK. As I send this comment on the Vista booted drive my poor PC is using 516 megs of ram out of 1 gig. It is an incredable memory hog. Doing the same functions on XP Pro uses 149 megs. Turning off glass on Vista drops it to 210. Unless you have a PC that is over built for XP you will be unhappy with Vista. I plan on building a new PC late in 07 when the new video cards that support DX10 have been reasonableised (insane prices reduced) and the quad core chip sets are released. Vista is not for average home PC people running emachines, it simply will not work. I am glad I tried it before I bought it. As usual kiss all your printers keyboards scanners goodbye, like you did when you "upgraded" to 98. Hold off on Vista till you get a new 850 watt, 4gig memory, quad core 1 gig ram video card, SATA2 hard drives and a fan the size of a window unit.
Unbelievable what people's misconceptions are regarding Vista. About the only thing right in this article is the fact that 1 GB of RAM is a good idea. I am currently running Vista Ultimate on a $398 Walmart Compaq Laptop. With a Sempron 3400+ and ATI integrated graphics, it runs everything Vista throws at it, including full Aero glass. In addition, as to the memory usage, while some of Vista's processes do require more memory, the memory management in Vista is vastly superior to previous versions of Windows. For those people who are happy that their XP is using so little memory, I feel sorry for their misconceptions - the more RAM actively being used - instead of being paged to the hard drive, the faster your computer will run - I am happy to see Vista actually using my RAM, instead of paging it out to the much slower hard drive. I have Vista Ultimate and Home premium running on 3 computers that cost less than $500, and while not uber gaming machines, they run all of Vista's features!
Okay, this is probably a stupid question, but as savvy as I am, I'm also technologically challenged. How does one roll back their browser from IE7 to IE6? I installed 7 and really hate it. The biggest complaint I have is that it hijacks hyperlinks in my emails and opens them in IE7 instead of Firefox. This happens even after I've made sure that both IE7 and Firefox say that Firefox is the default browser. Any solutions to either?
Thanks!!