At Work in Cape Town

thoughts on Windows Vista from a latecomer

We have two Windows laptops here, both purchased during the XP era (which I suppose isn’t quite over yet). One of them is over 6 years old and will probably need to be replaced this year. I suppose we will buy a laptop loaded with Vista, partly because that’s how they come, and partly because I need experience with it.

I don’t own a Vista computer yet but I have been called on to help someone who bought a Vista-loaded laptop. His problems included (1) he needed to load pre-Vista software to get his job done and the installer wouldn’t run under Vista; (2) Vista comes in 8(!) flavors, the one that came pre-installed was inadequate, and when he used the upgrade DVD that came with his laptop, it wiped out manufacturer-specific files and drivers, and he wanted to get them back; and (3) his printer/scanner wouldn’t work with Vista because again the driver installation was incompatible with the new security model. We managed to get past these problems by access to help files and tips on the internet, together with way too much time spent trying approaches that didn’t work.

So, before buying a Vista laptop, I went out and bought a book on Vista.  Reading it has helped me understand the changes under the hood.  I knew to check for updated Vista-compatible drivers on the websites of my peripheral vendors before taking the plunge (not being an early adopter has saved me a lot of headaches on that issue). I now know better than to accept anything less than Home Premium as a pre-install. And I now know that, in spite of all the marketing hype about Vista’s enhanced security, I will still need to run 3rd-party firewall and antivirus (such as Zonealarm’s free firewall and AVG’s free antivirus) because the security that comes with Vista isn’t adequate without them.

I’ve mentioned to a couple of friends who are Windows XP users who have been tempted to try an Apple Macintosh (or even one of the flavors of linux), this might be a good time. It is almost as great a change in user experience (i.e., having to relearn how to get your work done) moving from XP to Vista as from XP to Mac OSX.