Thinking of getting vista

HI


Opinions are likely to be very mixed, some like some do not, similar with many other aspects of computing.

Personally I find it ok, actually dont run XP at all on my 3 home PCs, only use XP in work. After the initial shock of understanding its not XP and does tasks in a different way, some of your older software and the odd driver may not work ( happened going from Win98 to XP ) unless your PC is fairly new and the makers have compatible Vista drivers, so do check that your favorite software is compatible, plus check that hardware drivers exist for your PC, if its a new PC then likelyhood is there are drivers from manufacturers.

Once your past the initial look, menus and options that can seem to be daunting at first you if like me will find it much easier to use than XP ( I know I've used XP since its release so had many years of knowning exactly where menus and options where in XP ) especially the Start menu, in which you now dont have to go through multiple menu branches to get to what application you want, now just start typing the name of the application you want or even a document name and it will show in the start menu.

Security is beefed up, now while it uses "similar" security idea in UAC ( User Account Control ) and UAP ( User Access Protection ) as in Linux Sudo and Unix ACF which stop and alert the user to functions that access the core/root/kernel etc applications, this while can be a hinderance in the beginning with having to click through a UAC/UAP prompt, but after a while and you haev setup your PC as you like many of the menus functions you will goto in say Control Panel you will likely use less.

Another function that Vista brings with UAC is in Internet Explorer 7 and its protected mode, so anything stored in IEs temp folder has no rights to run unless you give it permissions trough a UAC popup, so this helps protect against malware, IE7 in XP does not have this function.

Crash protection and error reporting now actually work, so in many cases where the OS would crash as in say windows explorer your PC may have needed a hard reboot, in Vista it will hang for a few seconds then restart explorer so you can continue, also error reporting does feedback to you on any applications you have that crash, once a trigger point in the amount of crashes suffered from all Windows Vista users on a particular app is reached the bods at Microsoft will investigate and via Proplem Reports and Solutions in Vista highlight a fix as in the below crash I had in Nero 8, reported this error and up pops the solution to get an update, with link to update.




But I could ramble on for ages with whats new and helpful ( also what I dont like ) in Vista..... but I will say one thing I have had the install of Vista on the PC I'm typing this on since November 06 and have not had to re-install it once due to any crashes, had only a few BSODs that were due to incompatible apps but never killed the OS, I find it very sable.


So all I would say is take in whats good and bad with Vista, dont read too much into the nay sayers as many of those gripes were from the beta days and are now pretty much fixed, plus many didnt install Vista on compatible PCs.... but then give it a try foe a while with open eyes and make your own mind up to wether you like it or not.