A Positive Vista Article. Gasp.
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Over the past year and five months, I have seen virtually every kind of negative review possible for Windows Vista. I’ve heard it compared to Windows ME, BOB, and other failed projects. As the pundits continue to refer to Vista as an obvious disaster, I take a look at my laptop and wonder what all the fuss is about.
The day vista was released into the public, I went to my local Fry’s and picked up a brand new HP Pavilion dv6000z. I picked the laptop with AMD processors, integrated video, and overall minimum requirements. It came with Windows Vista Premium. I immediately started using some seriously intensive programs such as Second Life, Half Life 2, and the Adobe Suite. I discovered quickly that RAM wasn’t going to cut it at 1gb so I upped it to 2.
I’ve spent a year now on this laptop running Vista through test after test, trial after trial. I’ve recently started live streaming from it hoping that would wake up some of these hidden “problems” that I keep hearing about review after review. I haven’t found these outrageous issues. Infact, my Samson C01u condenser USB microphone only works on Vista, and not on XP. Webcams I’ve tested plug in and self-install just fine on Vista, not on XP.
I’ve tried hooking up old printers, and found that they install easier on Vista than XP every time. Networking took some figuring out, which I’ll grant was a headache at first. Getting Vista to shake hands and play nice with XP took a little getting used to.
Of the hundreds and thousands of problems pundits continue to throw at consumers concerning the horrors of this operating system, I have stumbled across one or two. This is why my advice to anyone concerning Vista has been and will continue to be to upgrade if you’re getting a new PC. Old PCs may have a thousand issues, however the ones I’m coming across with Vista pre-installed for the most part seem to function just fine. Yes, Vista takes more system resources. That is a sad thing, though something I’d expect from any Microsoft release.
I’m only writing this because I can’t switch to a mac….
-Matt of The Daily PWN
2 Comments
the oracle
April 5th, 2008
at 9:41pm
As happy as I am for you, with your positive experience, I wonder why you did not mention the interface, which is why I hate it so.
I also wonder why you don’t acknowledge that with a laptop, you are basically restricting the number of problems you’ll have to external connections - that is, it is easy for Apple OS X to be very solid, as it has only to deal with Apple hardware, and once the problems with this very limited number of pieces is taken care of, one only must worry about component failure. So it is with Vista - the most successful stories you hear are with Vista on laptops, not desktop machines, where video cards, and their drivers, can be exceedingly troublesome.
I only know it took little more than the reinforcement of my opinion of Vista by Alex St. John, the man who led the development of Direct X at Microsoft, to remove any desire to remove my copy of Vista from its packaging. (Mr. St. John’s exact words were “Vista blows”.)
Matt Ryan
April 6th, 2008
at 8:45am
Oracle, these are great points you’re bringing up. I didn’t bring up the interface since, frankly, I don’t hate nor love it. I’m impartial on the interface. When I initially started writing this, it wasn’t meant to be an expert opinion on all the aspects of Vista, only one person’s wonder what all the fuss is about.
I’ve heard all the negatives about the OS over and over again, and my personal experience hasn’t been a complete nightmare, despite what so many pundits make out to be a given fact about Vista.
You make a very valid point about Vista running better on notebooks than desktops for the sake of having less hardware to manage. I can tell you that in my home office I’m running 7 desktops currently and this laptop. Of all of them the laptop is the one I’m trusting things like mail and audio/video to. It isn’t because of Vista, but because of the reasons you gave, notebooks tend to be more reliable when it comes to consistently behaving with new software.
I can tell you the USB attached devices I use, of which there are quite a lot, connect and install themselves easier on Vista than they have on XP. I use XP for my gaming, writing, and production machines. Would I risk Vista on those machines, no. These machines were made with XP in mind, and include custom configurations since I bought them piece by piece. Vista would likely destroy that experience, as I’m sure my SLI video isn’t currently working well with Vista.
Let me also point out, yet again, that I’m only writing this because I don’t have a mac…. I worked for Apple and believe so strongly in their product that I’ve recommended Mac first, Windows second to everyone that I have that discussion with. OSX is far superior, in many ways, unless you’re a gamer.