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Windows Vista

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

So Windows Vista has been launched and I was stupid enough to sit and watch an hour of QVC where they were punting out the Home Premium and Home Basic versions. "It's a bit unfair to call it basic" says the presenter, and I think, yeah stupid name and then realise, not so stupid Microsoft. Of course they had to offer and affordable version but we all know the basic name will drive people toward the more expensive version.

Is it any good?



Unfair of me to say because I haven't tried it yet but after watching someone from Microsoft demo it for an hour I was left feeling a bit disappointed. Sure, it looks nice, although similar looks could easily be achieved with XP and some nice wallpapers and skins but there was just nothing there that made me go "wow". Perhaps if the Aero feature hadn't been leaked and we were seeing it for the first time at launch then it might have had a wow factor but apart from that,

what is there to shout about?

"Well it's got widgets down the side."

Yeah and so have I on my XP machine, I've been using google desktop for a while now so I already have a scratch pad, to-do lists, search, weather, calendar and rotating image gallery.

"Windows Media Center is now integrated into it so managing your media is easier"

Hmmmmm I already manage my media fine. The Sony Viao laptop I bought 2 years back came with a media manager thing, infact it looks identical to the "new" microsoft interface. Do I use it? No, I can find things quicker and easier without it.

"Yeah, but it looks nice and there'll be nice themes you can use"

I remember when XP was launched everyone thought the default idyllic hillside theme was great. I think I ran it for about 30 minutes before thinking it was too distracting and too much of a resource drain and quite frankly not that nice really. Over the years the PC I use has improved in spec but as the years go by I've turned more and more visual effects off from XP until today I run it at the most basic level. Does anyone remember going to the "more themes online" drop down in desktop preferences? I think you'll find that page has remained the same for many years now, there have been no new themes and the service is a chargeable extra.

So will I upgrade to Windows Vista?


Of course, eventually I'll have to, but I certainly won't be rushing out and will wait until at least service pack 1 fixes the major flaws that will be found.

Just to confirm I'm not anti Microsoft particularly (although the time I've wasted because of bad Microsoft products in the past does tend to eat away at my insides when I think about it) but I'm just offering my opinion based on what I've seen of Vista so far.

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