Anilrgowda

Well we took the plunge about 2 weeks ago. Downloaded Vista from Technet and installed it as a clean install on a system at home. True to all the promises, Vista installed well, with little assistance required from me at all. But that's about the only inspirational thing I can say about it. Sorry.

You see, soon after we installed it we let Microsoft Update go to work. The first driver it offered us was a driver for a SoundBlaster card. It blue-screened the machine on the next reboot - something I did not, in all honesty, expect to see - especially with a driver that Microsoft themselves offered up. So, with the help of Safe Mode and System Restore we are back in operation. Everything working well, a little sluggish, but working ok.

Here's the crunch, though. And I really can't get past this bit. From a Systems Administrator perspective, I see no really compelling reason to move any of our computers in the company over to Vista. Indeed even when we get new hardware that comes with Vista pre-loaded, we will most likely wipe it and put XP back on. This, I think, is going to be the biggest problem for Microsoft...the corporates.

I've been thinking a lot about this, ever since my son announced he'd need to update his computer to run Vista. My answer to him: "Why?". Think about it for a second. Would you go and update all your hardware (at substantial cost) just to run Vista? Isn't the computing experience about the applications that run on the computer and not so much the operating system? The simple fact of the matter is that Vista does not do a whole lot more than XP does. OK, before I get flamed, I know there are some differences, but there is not a sinlge app or game my son runs, or that I run in the office that won't run on XP. That said, arguably there are less things that will run with Vista at the moment.

So there you have it. Sure, it was nice and all but I just don't see us rolling it out in the office any time soon...and I guarantee I am not the only one. In time, sure, but not at the moment. I think Vista will end up being what XP was to Windows 2000, and there are still a heck of a lot of people working away happily on Windows 2000.