A few days ago I finally repaved my laptop and desktop machines with Windows Vista. I held out for so long because of all the reported problems many people seemed to have. The last thing I need, or that anyone needs, is for a less-than-par OS from which to develop on. I kept hearing of horror stories running Visual Studio on Vista, and weird things like simple file copy operations taking forever, among other various problems.
But I finally got to a point where I wanted to take the risk, knowing full well that I might repave my machines back to Windows XP if I had any of the problems so many others have endured. And to be completely honest, Vista rocks, and rocks hard.
I've barely missed a beat and can complain of zero problems, and I've been putting it through my normal workload (more actually). The user experience is so much better than previous versions and the thing I'm most surprised about is how *fast* it is. Both my machines definitely have more snappiness to them, and that's running Aero to boot. I also find the digital media management capabilities to be very nice, especially Windows Movie Maker, Windows DVD Maker, and of course the built-in functionality of Windows Media Center (which is connected to both of my Xbox 360s, a feature which my wife and kids also love).
So I know there seems to be this mass exodus of Microsoft developers abandoning the Wintel platform for the more hip alternative (and more power to them as I know they all rave about it), but I'm actually quite impressed and pleased with Vista. Maybe someday I'll get to hang with the cool kids, but not just yet.
Print | posted on Sunday, January 06, 2008 12:53 AM