Well, what an anti-climax it is. OK, I’ve not been as exposed to the hype as I was before the release of XP, but overall Vista’s just so much *yawn*.
I haven’t used it much. Finding someone who’s got it on a machine is quite hard. Everyone I’ve stayed with is still on XP (or Linux in Jörn’s case), as are all the cybercafes. I read that one of the UK PC sales companies even returned a huge number of their install licenses to Microsoft as customers still want XP. I have also heard that the home edition is somewhat unstable while the business or whatever version isn’t bad.
The over-riding impression I get, though, is that it’s just a big fancy graphic-heavy front end that achieves absolutely nothing over XP. It looks pretty, yes. It’s slick, yes. It needs a stupidly powerful PC, yes. But it doesn’t increase productivity, it offers nothing new that you couldn’t download as freeware for XP and… it needs a dog’s bollocks PC to run it.
I’m sure if I played for longer or read up on it, there’s a lot going on under the bonnet in Vista I don’t know about yet. But I don’t care. I’ve slipped from “geek” to “user” over the last 18 months, and looking at it from this perspective I just don’t see the point in “upgrading”.
I can see myself sticking to XP for some time to come. I was still overcoming compatibility problems with older software on that. Shifting to Vista would be a nightmare.
