To Vista or not to Vista, that is indeed the question

Windows Vista, Microsoft's newest Operating System, is now well over one year old, but the rate at which it is being adopted by people is still nowhere near Microsoft's expectations. I have worked on some Vista based machines, and I must say that as far as performance goes, the average system that someone might buy off of the shelf at one of the Big Box stores is just not up to the task of running it. Windows Vista has some steep hardware requirements as well, and it also has quite a few issues with Driver compatibility. Even though you may currently be using Vista without issues at home, the business world seems to think that Vista is still not a good idea. Did you know that business customers of select computer manufacturers, who purchased Vista Business or Ultimate, have the option of "Downgrading" to Windows XP Professional? It doesn't cost a thing! I am just wondering if there is a real need to move "up" to Vista?

For those of you out there who truly enjoy XP, the deadline for new sales of Windows XP Home Edition has been extended beyond the June 30th deadline. The current deadline covers all other versions of Windows XP (Professional and Media Center Edition). The sales deadline for Windows XP Home was extended because of the fact that any version of Vista will not run on most entry-level PCs. For those of you that are reading this blog that still have XP, I would recommend that you do plenty of research before upgrading to Vista or purchasing a new computer with Vista preinstalled. Personally, I still use Windows XP Professional or MCE on all of my computers, and I for one am not switching to Vista until I am thoroughly convinced that it is either necessary or advantageous for me to do so. I arrived at my decision to remain on XP by testing some of the applications on a decent PC with Vista Ultimate installed. I was less than pleased with the result, therefore, XP remains as my OS of choice.

The bottom line here is, if you are looking into a new computer, do your research before you just go out and buy a PC preloaded with Windows Vista. I think that Vista has potential to be much better, but it seems to be taking its good old time to evolve into a great product. I hope that as time goes on Vista develops into a product that I can use effectively for my day-to-day tasks.

Until next time....