When Vista no longer refers to Microsoft® Windows

Sometime in the next 1 ½ to 2 years, the successor to Windows Vista will hit the streets. Current Internet chatter has pegged the most likely timing as January 2010. The intent is not to make “Vista 2”, but rather to address many of the problems Vista has had, while maintaining compatibility with it.

If you know me, or know about my computer chronicles, you’ll know I was on board very early with Windows Vista. Our HP notebook came pre-loaded with Vista Home Premium. My learning curve on the new operating system wasn’t particularly high, but in many other ways the price of sticking with it was. I eventually added another gigabyte of RAM to the notebook (brining it up to 2 GB), and spent considerable time and not a little bit of money figuring out solutions to legacy software issues. (Note that “legacy” basically means built for an earlier technology). I learned to like many things about Windows Vista, while also grudgingly accepting work arounds on others. For example, there is the User Account Control feature. Argh. And there remains a string of incompatibility problems with various software titles (even those apparently designed to work with Vista). Oh, and there’s the fact that I could never successfully synchronize my PDA on the notebook. And … well, I’m sure you get the picture!

Over the past year and a half (the time I’ve spent with Vista) many things have come to light about this operating system. Many of those are not complimentary! Its issues with power consumption, legacy software and hardware, user accounts, and many other things have caused a groundswell, grassroots movement to speak out loud and long against Microsoft. Here’s a current example of another “nail in the coffin” for Vista. In this week’s print advertisement for Staples Business Depot, there’s a great deal on an HP Mini-Note Laptop. If you buy this laptop, guess what you can have for nothing? Well, let’s let the ad do the talking:

“Includes FREE downgrade to Windows XP!”

Yes, you read it right. They’re offering a free downgrade to Windows XP. This is the first such free offer I’ve seen. Telling, isn’t it? This follows on the heels of perhaps a year’s worth of tales of buyers taking their laptops back to the store (not necessarily Staples) and paying for a Windows XP downgrade. In fact, one of my AssistU Alumni virtual assistant colleagues was contemplating doing the same thing, while another was deciding on whether to move to Vista or stick with XP in her new purchase. Wow.

I’ll have more to say about Windows 7 in the coming months, and yes, I’ll probably upgrade the laptop’s, if not the desktop’s operating system a few months after the new operating system is released. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a quote from Bill Gates, on the occasion of his speaking at the Windows Digital Lifestyle Consortium in Tokyo, Japan this past May:

“We're hard at work, I would say, on the next version, which we call Windows 7. I'm very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don't have a lot of work to move that data back and forth.”

I’m tempted to say ‘thanks Bill, but you won’t have to worry about the new version anymore …’

Comments

[Kim Murray]

Rob, the "free downgrade" made me laugh out loud! Why can't these things be made correctly the first time out? I realize there are always bugs in new equipment and software, but seriously! I've heard so few good things about Vista, I'm afraid to upgrade to anything ever again. I'm keeping my XP OS as long as I can. Do you think a Mac should be in all of our futures? ;-)

[Rob Neilly]

Thanks for your comments Kim! In many other worlds, things are made correctly the first time. But, we're talking about Microsoft here. Whether leaked memos continue to educate us about Vista, or whether through our own experiences, those of us who went that way are 'stuck' for now.

BTW, I do know some people who have switched to Mac!!! I'm going to try to stick out the PC platform :)