Iphone

Whether from greed, lust, gluttony, envy or pride, you know you want the new Windows operating system in the worst way.

Knowing your slothful ways and fearing your wrath (there, I think I've gotten all seven deadly sins out of the way), I installed Windows Vista Business on a brand new Dell computer to see how it works. (I believe my response was primarily due to these virtues: kindness and charity.)

Like I said, I'm here as your surrogate sufferer.

To be fair to Microsoft and to you, I tested Vista for an entire month in real-world conditions (my office) and tried very hard to make it work (look, more virtues: patience and diligence.)

I can't say being a so-called "early adopter" was easy or painless. I can say it was enlightening.

Here is the diary of an early-adopter/martyr.

Virtues of a good operating system are reliability, performance, security, usability, low hardware requirements and compatibility.

I give Microsoft reasonably high marks - at least for the first four.

I found the Vista business edition I tested to be extremely stable for a new release. We probably should expect reliability from an operating system now in its 20th year, although early versions of Windows forever labeled it as unreliable.

I honestly can say I experienced only one lockup during my one-month test and one minor annoyance: a periodically disappearing DVD drive.

Performance was good, too. I found Vista would boot and perform noticeably faster on everyday tasks than its predecessor Windows XP Professional running on the same hardware, especially when multitasking on the 2.4-gigahertz Intel core duo processor Dell Optiplex 745 with 2 gigabytes of system memory.

Security has been a knock on Windows XP. Vista sports a total security makeover from Internet Explorer 7.0's fraud protections to the built-in Windows defender anti-spyware program.

Time will tell how effective these security enhancements really are, but I like Microsoft's holistic approach. For example, the new user-account control allows regular users to change common settings (such as time or installing updates) without giving them full administrative rights. The limited-user account was so restrictive in XP that many corporate information technology departments routinely made everybody an administrator to cut down on user requests.

I also like the look and feel of Vista. This is a tough assignment for engineers. Users resist change. But any marketing executive will tell you new software has to look different or people won't buy it. Vista not only looks sleek, it has slick new desktop tools. I love the Windows search tool. It's incredibly fast, simple and powerful.

Hardware requirements are definitely a concern for anyone looking to upgrade to Vista. They are so high that unless you bought a Vista-compatible machine in the past few months, I wouldn't upgrade.

For Vista Business, Microsoft recommends 1 gigabyte of system memory, a 1-ghz processor, a 40-gig drive and 128 megabytes of video that supports Directx 9 graphics. I doubled all the requirements on my test machine, a practice I recommend for all potential Vista viewers.

So far, my Vista experience looks good.

Wait. Evaluating my last operating system virtue - compatibility - was a deal killer. Virtually none of my everyday tools worked with Vista, whether software (remote access, antivirus, accounting, or virtual private network) or hardware (scanner, multifunction printer, PDA, or Web cam). Since none of my stuff was old (Quickbooks 2006 and a 3-month-old Xerox scanner, for example), I was surprised Vista didn't like them.

Really, out of my dozen top hardware and software applications, only one worked - Microsoft Office 2003 - and even that was finicky.

In fairness, Microsoft can't control when software and hardware vendors join the Vista parade. Many eventually will release free Vista updates. Others, such as Quickbooks, see a sales opportunity: They will force users to buy newer versions.

But without better compatibility, Vista, for now, is unusable.

I do think Vista is a good product. But like any new major software version, early is not a good time to buy it.

After a month's trial, my suffering was complete. I put Windows XP Professional back on my shiny new Dell and wondered how next I might be asked to atone for your sins.



Source:San Antonio Business Journal: BitWits