So, it’s been about 5 years since Microsoft launched Windows XP and now we have its successor, Windows Vista. Has the 5 years spent on developing Vista been worth it? Well, yes and no. There’s no doubt about it, it looks nice. The Aero interface is very cool to look at. The glass effect window borders, the 3D tab application selector and the graphical tooltips on the taskbar are all very nice, but what about compatibility and performance?
There are serious compatibility issues with some applications, games and drivers. Some users I know are experiencing regular crashes. Microsoft has done its usual trick of releasing an unfinished product and getting Joe Public to beta test it, report bugs and other issues so they can then release a service pack to attempt to remedy the problems (well, some of them).
What about performance? I have XP and Vista installed on the same machine, and wrote a little benchmark program to test the speed of them, like for like. On XP the program called the test routine 5000 times and took 523ms. The same test on Vista took 2507ms. Almost 5 times longer. No wonder the minimum spec is a 1Ghz CPU and 512Mb RAM. My system is a 3.6Ghz P4 with 2Gb RAM and it runs acceptably, anything less and it would run like a sloth on Valium.
My personal take on the situation boils down to this... If you purchase a computer with Vista installed you’ll probably be ok with most mainstream apps, but if you’re thinking of upgrading from XP to Vista, I recommend you wait till the first service pack to be released before doing so. That way some of the bugs will be ironed out, and driver developers will have extra time to come up with more stable drivers for your existing hardware.
4 comments:
I have a new computer that had vista installed when I bought it.
I was afraid that I would not like it as much as xp..but so far, so good. The only thing that I don't like is that fact that so many drivers don't work with it yet. For instance printers, etc...
but oh well. I can print off my old one anyway:)
Enjoyed my first time at your blog.
Hi sandi... Thanks for the comment. There's no doubt about it, there are some really nice features in Vista, but drivers are a real issue like you say. Give it 6 months and the situation should be better. It was the same when XP came out.
I dont think I shall be upgrading to Vista till about this time next year, the system drivers will be better, bug ironed out and cheaper!
Xp suits me fine!
Hi kim... I stuck with Win2k pro for the first year XP was out. The NT based OS's are better than the 98 based ones. WinME was an abomination, about as stable as a balloon on a wobbly stick. At least now all flavours of current Windows are NT based, but you're right about waiting. Thanks for the comment.
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