According to reports, Microsoft is set to release Vista to manufacturing (RTM) at some point tomorrow morning. While this won’t place the new OS on store shelves any sooner, MSDN subscribers (like myself) will be able to download and install it immediately. I’m excited about the impending release, but I’m still not terribly driven to start using Vista instead of XP on my primary machine.

• If rudimentary tasks seem slower, I’m uninstalling Windows Vista and halting all future upgrade recommendations. I’ll be throwing plenty of hardware at this new version of Windows, so “feeling” assesments should be relatively accurate.
• If my day-to-day software doesn’t want to play nicely, I’ll look for alternatives first. I’ve been pretty critical with later versions of Microsoft Outlook, but I’m hoping that Outlook 2007 will be far less annoying than 2003 and/or 2002. Still, Outlook 2000 works well enough on Windows Vista.
• If I keep getting kicked into “compatibility mode,” I’ll flip back to XP without blinking. That’s when your entire screen flashes and the user interface falls backwards due to a single errant process or application. Microsoft handled this in an extremely sloppy manner, and my tolerance for inconsistent UI is already at a breaking point with Vista.

It all boils down to what I do 99% of the time. I simply don’t see Vista as that much of an improvement over XP (even with its bevy of updates in tow). Maybe I’ll change my mind after a week of using Vista full time?

Tags: windows vista, vista, vista software, windows, microsoft, microsoft windows