Vista issues overblown

With the Apple advertising campaign and pundits who don't know what they are talking about,  misconceptions about Vista proliferates, however with over 100 million copies sold to date the proof is with the majority of the users, not the minority naysayers. Yes, there are issues with Vista that have to do with hardware and software compatibility, but that happens with every major release. I have been running for over a year now, at the beginning I had issues with drivers and applications that were not designed or compiled with Vista (the same was true with XP), however the bottom line; the core OS is stable. In my opinion Vista is much superior to XP. When asked this is what I tell people:

1. Do not upgrade to Vista on your current hardware, when you are ready to upgrade, buy a new system with Vista pre-installed. If you buy from a reputable PC vendors, all of the drivers will have been certified to run with Vista.
2. You will need to upgrade your applications to versions that run on Vista. By now the vast majority of applications have a version that has been tested on Vista. If you need to run an application that has not been tested on Vista, you should be prepared to deal with issues. However this is not always the case, since Vista does its best to resolve backward compatibility issues. I know Vista gets slammed for this but it has more to do with how well the application was designed and coded then with the operating system.
3. If you are still skittish; wait for Service Pack 1 which should be in the next couple of weeks, although this won't obviate points 1 and 2.
4. Be prepared to deal with annoying administrative questions on whether an application should be installed or run. This method of security verification to access administrative rights is basically the same one Apple has implemented. Don't complain it is for your own good.

The bottom line is that Vista works very well, is a better user experience than XP and you should not be afraid to upgrade to it. The recommendations I listed above were basically the same ones I gave when XP came out. On the corporate front this is a major upgrade and they should take their time testing in their environment. They may have to update existing custom applications which also take time. The fact that corporations have not moved to Vista quickly is reasonable, it takes a lot work to test and validate. I still find companies running Windows 2000 and XP will be around a long time (support is good for another 10 years). Over the next year I think you will see the corporate pace of adoption accelerate. Vista has too many good features to be ignored, not the least the security model.

Comments

[Brandon]

Wow, you like Vista, I like Vista...we might be the only two people on the internets that do.