Windows Vista gets just as many harsh reviews as Windows ME did in the past. The sad thing is that this bad reputation may not be deserved. Vista does a solid job of introducing security to a Windows world that is such a target for security attacks that its amazing Windows XP has remained as safe as it has. In my opinion, Windows Vista helps prevent attacks by making the user have to actively work to make their computer LESS secure, whereas previous versions of Windows left holes open and made the user have to work to make their computer MORE secure.
I compare Vista to previous versions of Windows by using the visual of a home. In previous versions of Windows, all the doors and windows were open when you moved in, and you could leave them that way, making it more convenient to feel a cool breeze from a window, or go outside to get the paper and walk back in. With Vista, everyone has gotten used to this convenience, but now that they have a Vista home, which comes with all the doors and windows closed by default, they get aggrivated at having to open a door or window everytime they want to use it. This, built in protection is called UAC, which pops of asking the user to confirm that they want to allow potentially unsafe activities to happen.
UAC is a necessary evil since by default, most users want to have full access to all of their PCs capabilities, which equates to running in superuser or administrator mode all the time. This is a very unsafe because it means that anyone who gains access to your system, whether physically or by hacking in remotely, also has full access to your system. Operating Systems like Linux and Unix, avoid this by the safe process of having users log in with limited access, and allowing them to temporarily log in as an administrator on the fly to do things that require full access. Windows users have been used to having full access all the time, so the obvious thing to do would be to allow them to keep their access, but try to prevent them from compromising the safety of their computers. This 
is where UAC comes in. It may be an inconvenience, but the bigger inconvenience would be having Windows work in limited user mode, as Linux and Unix do. That would mean forcing users that are used to their computers booting up and logging in to have to login at bootup and then again anytime any advanced task (such as installing new software) is performed. For those who feel the prompts of UAC are unnecessary, they can be turned off in the control panel, although this would defeat the purpose of UAC, thus reverting to a lesser security level that is more like that of Windows XP.
Another problem with Vista is that it’s driver and software support was weak to start. This meant in some cases, manufacturers made the problem worse by making new hardware, but not providing windows support, or not supporting products that were out long before Vista was. This isn’t really a Microsoft problem, but to the average user, it may appear to be one. My own first upgrade to Vista was thwarted by the fact that Nvidia decided to only provide Vista support for its newer video cards. This meant that although Vista worked, any advanced 3D graphics, such as Vista’s aero interface or 3D games didn’t. In this case, the manufacturer dropped the ball. With all the time that elapsed while Microsoft was developing and testing Vista, they failed to write drivers because they were basically too lazy to worry about their older products and the numerous people who were still using them. This laziness also provided them the benefit of forcing users to buy their newer products (or downgrade to XP as I did).
In another
case, there was a new printer which was sold with a ‘Vista Ready’
sticker on it, even though the manufacturer hadn’t developed Vista
drivers for it when they made it. They dropped the ball by rushing a
product to the market that was labelled in a way that made users think
it worked with Vista out of the box, when in reality, it wouldn’t work
until the drivers were issued.
These
problems along with software compatibility problems can be resolved by
getting Vista with a new PC. With a new PC, the drivers, hardware and
software should be Vista ready, and solid. Since a new PC doesn’t cost
much more than a copy of Vista does, this is the best way to move to
Vista. |
In the 6 years between XP and Vista, there was no consumer operating system released.
In the 6 previous years, there were 5 consumer OS releases.
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If you then still have software that doesn’t work with Vista, but you have to have it, virtualization software can allow you to run an older version of windows from within Windows, and thus run its software in Vista. Microsoft even offers its virtualization software, Microsoft Virtual PC for free (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx ).
For those who are not satisfied with buying a new computer to run Vista, I would suggest Linux, or waiting for the next version of windows, which is reportedly due out in the next year or so if you trust Microsoft release dates.
The bad rap that Vista has isn’t really anything that hasn’t happened before with Microsoft. In the late 90s, everyone got used to Windows 98 second edition, and it was a rock in its time. Windows Me came out with more issues than a Maury Povich show guest, and noone was satisfied, although Me was the way to stay with the Windows 98 style OS and avoid upgrading to the NT based OS in Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was the next version of Windows, and was rock solid and based on the technology in Windows NT4. It had its own driver and software compatibility issues because it was new, and thus, there was some of the same outcry from users that wanted to 
keep Window 98 and didn’t want to move to Windows 2000. Windows 2000 was released in early 2000, followed by XP in 2001. XP was really just a more mature Windows 2000, made more fun to look at and user friendly, but with the extra driver and software support of having a year of Windows 2000 experience.
Similarly, the next version of Windows should be out in about a year and fix a lot of the concerns with Vista. The big difference was that between Windows 98 and Windows XP there were only a few years for users to get entrenched in using the OS, and with 95, 98, Me, 2000, and XP coming in such rapid succession, users were used to upgrading to the next best thing. That total of six years produced 5 consumer operating systems and the corporate based Windows NT4. In the 6 years between XP and Vista, there was no consumer operating system released. This allowed users to both get entrenched in Windows XP, and expect a lot from Windows Vista. Users had been used to Microsofts major upgrades being just that, major upgrades. They had also expected Vista to be near perfect since decent operating systems had been released in only a couple of years previously. This is where Microsoft dropped the ball. They wasted too much time working on Vista and trying to revolutionize the OS with ideas that had to be scrapped such as Windows FS (file system), when they should have spent a lot more time polishing the OS and working with hardware and software vendors on their Vista support. They had the same 6 years to get hardware and software certified and ready to support Vista, but they work hard enough.
So what is the verdict? Vista isn’t as bad as people think. Just like people had to learn the changes that XP instituted, there is a learning curve with Vista. There are just so many new features that Vista has that XP needed (such as built in automatic defragmenting, and the search/run field on the start menu which is tied into the desktop indexing), that the positives outweight the negatives in my opinion. The next version of Windows should have us all forget about XP. It may be better to learn Vista and get prepared for the future, than ride the XP ship into oblivion.
Article written by H. Young
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