Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2006 > March > 23 > Entry
Hasta la Vista, Microsoft
I’m actually thrilled that Microsoft has delayed its Vista operating system, the heir to its not-quite-so-broken Windows XP OS.
I have a lot of things to do this year and upgrading my desktop computer in the blind hope that everything will still work when it comes out on the other side of that scary tunnel is not high on the list.
Windows XP was a huge improvement over the buggy Windows ME, and while XP isn’t perfect, it’s a lot less prone to crash and much improved in recognizing devices like digital cameras, external hard drives and, say, iPods. However, as the continual security updates I’m asked to install indicate, it’s a major virus target.
And each upgrade of the OS requires a significant box to run. Most casual PC users will have to upgrade their hard drive space, RAM or other hardware to move up to Vista, if past Windows upgrades are any indication of system requirements. The move from ME to XP, while seemingly incremental, still took most of a day. And sure, it paid off in terms of stability in the long term, those first few days were frustrating. Items (like Windows Explorer and the built-in CD player and Briefcase) disappeared, only to be found later, huddling like scared children in the massive C:/Windows directory. Some devices that worked fine in ME suddenly stopped working in XP. And many older games refused to run after the upgrade.
So you’ll forgive me if I enjoy running my stable Windows XP system a while longer — I’ll probably wait even after the Vista launch to upgrade while all the early wrinkles in the OS are ironed out.
Or better yet, I’ll keep using Mac OS on my laptop and work computer. At least with Apple, I know the leap to a next-gen operating system (evidenced lately by the switch to Intel processors in its newest systems) won’t be full of so many nasty surprises.
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