I have been reading posts (blogs and in more traditional press) since Vista came out (well, since long before it came out, actually) about how bad it is, how unstable it is, about how nothing works, about how disappointing it is, and so on, blah blah blah….
Today, I came across this post Vista Flops, Users “Upgrading” to XP (there are number of similar posts in the same place, I will not link to them all).
I am rapidly coming ot the conclusion that people in the computer industry are the biggest whiners in existence – even worse then Canadians (just kidding – I AM CANADIAN). I have been using Vista as my primary OS since before the first release candidate. I use it on 5 computers (3 laptops, 1 desktop, and 1 Tablet). I have found it to be at least as stable as Windows XP (and more stable than many other versions of Windows in similar stages of their lifecycle). Performance is as good as I had under XP for most things. Overall, I have found it to be pretty good.
Are there things which I would like to have seen? Sure. Are there things that were in the original preview of Longhorn I saw at PDC 2003 that I wish were in the final version. Absolutely. I also recognize that features get cut and modified over the course of development, usually driven by the marketing department and feedback from those same whiny users.
The biggest complaint I have had about Vista is not against Microsoft so much as it is against the hardware and software community surrounding it. The availability and quality of updates to drivers and applications has been abysmal. A fair number of the devices I use (especially on my Tablet) were not supported when Vista was released, and some still are not and probably never will be. What happened – you guys get surprised by the release of Vista? Didn’t know it was coming. Come on – get with it. The same can be said for products from Apple (iTunes) and Adobe (Reader – the number one crashing product I have under Vista).
Get off it people – if you do not like Vista – do not use it. But please, stop whining about it!
FredSpace 
I would not necessarily say it is “so great compared to XP”, but it is definitely as good (in my opinion). It depends on what you do as a user, as well.
There are considerable architectural improvements addressing areas such as process isolation, security, etc. (at least according to Microsoft).
From my perspective as a developer, I also wanted to play with some of the new stuff such as Windows Presentation Foundation (I know, I could do that on XP). Of course a major problem has been the lack of a truly “supported” dev tool on Vista, but I have managed.
Definitely the biggest problem I have run into is the lack of driver support for some devices, but this should not be a problem if you build a box specifically for Vista, with parts that have Vista drivers.
I think the big thing has been that from the outside, Vista is definitely not the big “wow!” it could have been – and we are a culture that thrives on excitement.
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I’ve seen all the negative press, including on “respected” tech blogs, and all of my initial impressions are negative, too. However, I am glad to see a positive, non-Microsoft blog entry on it.
I’d like to know what makes it so great compared to XP, and what does it have that XP doesn’t. I haven’t worked with Vista firsthand, so I don’t know what it has that would compel me to want it.
I won’t upgrade my XP computer, but I plan on building a Vista computer for compatibility testing sometime in the future. So, it would be nice to know what to look forward to instead of all of the negativity that is already making me almost loathe it.
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