Well Microsoft has finally released it’s latest operating system Vista, it comes in 3 billion different versions instead of just 3 which would have been a lot better for consumers, but Microsoft’s infinite wisdom decided more were better, creating more support problems for them and sys-admin due to multiple OS’s to support from the start.
Before you rush in and upgrade, a few things you should do or note:
- Run the Vista Upgrade Advisor, this will check your machine is capable of running vista and which version you can install.
- Upgrade your machine, after running the program above you’ll probably find you don’t have enough ram, ideally you’ll want 1 Gigabytes or 2 Gigabytes
- Performance of windows should in theory increase due to the way windows now uses the graphics card to provide 2D acceleration for explorer, however for games performance you’ll see a drop in performance so if you’re constantly after the fastest fps in your games it’s worth holding off for a bit either for Microsoft to solve the problems or game patches come out from the people who wrote you’re favourite game.
- Drivers for some products are not quite at the level they are with XP
- Some applications will have problems on XP
- Running the 64bit version will cause more problems with drivers and apps than the 32bit version (which can run XP drivers)
- Service Pack 1 should be out this year if reports are to be believed
(the above list subject to change)
Of course some of these things happened when XP was released, driver and application compatibility was just as bad or worse. However without people running Vista the problems won’t be fixed so some people have to run it. I’m not saying don’t install it right now, but be aware of what problems might exist. Personally I’m waiting till service pack 1 is released till I install Vista.
Vista Website: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/default.mspx
Upgrade Advisor: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx
Slower games: http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_gaming_performance_reports