My $.02 Vista Review
I guess I’m once again on the other side of popular opinion in computers, but I rather like Vista. The reason for this may very well be that my standards for Microsoft are much lower than my standards for Linux, but I still arrive at the conclusion that Vista is not a bad operating system. Even though I turned off User Account Control after exactly one minute, four seconds of usage, it was a valiant effort by Microsoft to combat serious problems the majority of users continue to have.
The bottom line is that Vista is marginally better than XP (if you want a real review…). It is enough to move it from my ranking of third-best operating system (behind Linux, generally, and Tiger) to second-best. Don’t get too excited, though, Apply fanboys; Vista is (and Tiger was) a distant second to Linux, and from my perspective when I use my Linux box, it is hard to really tell who is in second anyway. (It’s only when I muck around with the common trash that I can even really tell.) The point is moving slightly behind to slightly ahead would normally be a great accomplishment, but in the end, it’s still second place.
In any event Vista is definitely not worth the price — as high as $400 for Vista Ultimate edition. I think it’s probably worth, to me, about a hundred bucks (hey, this is a compliment!). But, then again, aren’t the best operating systems free?
July 24th, 2007 at 16:00
Yeah, UAC is a nightmare. After that, my biggest complaint is actually towards IBM/Lenovo - no Windows key on my Thinkpad so I can’t use the pretty WindowsKey + Tab feature of Aero to switch active applications. Yes, I may sound odd, but the pretty-ness is the only reason I can justify an upgrade. I don’t need the multimedia, and I’ve disabled UAC which is a huge selling point. I haven’t found Vista to be any more or less reliable than XP (or even Windows 2000 actually). All being said though, I wouldn’t want to switch back to XP and give up my eye-candy.