Windows Vista In 2008

Based on what I have been seeing, I think Vista is never going to be as “popular” from the user perspective as XP was. And understand I am not talking about sales numbers. A healthy dose of Vista upgrade coupons and being pre-installed takes care of this. No, I think how people actually feel about Vista vs XP speaks for itself.

Despite Vista providing better security, a new niche has been growing – people are willing to pay through the nose to have their systems tweaked with XP again. A lot of this has to do with the fact that Microsoft put entirely too much importance on the “appearance” of their desktop. While there are some behind the scenes improvements made, on the surface Vista is just slow as mud, even on the fastest systems.

And while I do run Vista myself, I am doing so only for work and software reviews. Seriously, coming off of XP or Ubuntu only to use Vista has just not really been my cup of tea. I am sure it has its strong points, but to be honest, I have yet to see any real advantage for myself personally.

And even with Vista having been met with lack luster enthusiasm, thank goodness we have a multi-national monopoly to ensure that the operating system is being used plenty. Because if you had a choice off the shelf, same compatibility and users understanding what the real differences are with XP and Vista are, there would be entirely less Vista adoption based on what I have been seeing. Even here in town, there are PC repair shops advertising how they are willing to save their customers with a fresh install of something besides Vista. For Microsoft, that must really make their development team feel pretty foolish. But hey, great sales are great sales, right? Here’s to lessons learned with Windows 7!