It's Not Done 'till Firefox Won't Run
I wrote previously that I think Vista, in its current state, is inferior to Windows XP (particularly for businesses -- Directx 10 will make Vista a must for gamers). For my desktop computers, I build them myself and can still get Windows XP OEM through NewEgg. Unfortunately, for my kids new laptop, I had no choice but Vista. I have not been very happy. Here are my results so far.
- It is way slower than XP, even on a fast dual-core Intel machine with a Nvidia 7900 graphics card. You may have thought that the reboot and shut down process could not have gotten slower - WRONG! Shutdown alone takes forever.
- Many machines being sold today with Vista are not fast enough to really run it. In particular, if your laptop is more than a year old or you paid less than $1700 or so for it, it is probably not going to do the job
- Um, its pretty
- Firefox will not run reliably. It will install, and run once, and then it will give an error if you try to run it again. It does not uninstall fully, and once (I tried to install and remove several times) it did not even show up in the uninstall menu
- Unlike with XP, networking did not work right off the bat with Vista. I had to do a lot of fiddling in menus that the average user wil never find or understand to get it running.
- Of course, as is usual, Microsoft has felt the need to yet again totally reorganize control panel and the right-click-on-the-desktop menu. I am sure some day the new organization will seem natural, but for now its just a gratuitous change with no apparent benefit
If at all possible, I advise you to wait for Service Pack 1, and for Moore's Law to let average computers catch up with Vista's requirements. And don't even think about upgrading if you have old printers, scanners, and/or oddball devices you need to hook up -- there are very few Vista drivers out there for legacy equipmet
