To Vista or not to Vista, that is the Question

Who has upgraded to Vista? I should rephrase that. Who, in their right mind, has upgraded to Vista? Microsoft have a track record with new operating systems (much like some game developers) they release their products in a somewhat unfinished state. How can I quantify this statement when the operating system itself does run, well it runs, but it still does not have complete driver support. While driver support may not be the responsibility of the creator of the operating system to supply it is necessary for users to have complete driver support to run peripherals and integral parts of their computer. Some manufacturers are saying that driver support for some peripherals for Vista will be another six months away. How can that be? Vista is apparently finished yet it may not run all of the hardware associated with your computer.

As another point of interest it appears that one of Microsofts own devices (the Zune) still is not Vista compatible. So, one of Microsofts very own products is not yet supported by Vista. “There's not enough drivers out there. Peripherals manufacturers are not all up to speed with Vista, so be careful what you buy,” Anthony Rodio said (Chief Marketing Officer at Supportsoft a partner who provides helpdesk support for Windows Vista).

This leads me to my main point of contention. Windows is Microsoft's primary product. Since Steve Ballmer suggested that the financial forecasts for 2008 were overly aggressive Microsoft's share price fell 2.7%. While this is not a large hit on the overall price it is apparently the biggest decline in the Dow Jones industrial age.

What would happen if Microsoft went belly up? No more windows support and no real alternative operating systems. While I know you are saying, hang on, I could switch over to Linux. Have you actually tried to run games on Linux? You have to have a degree in computer programming to get a game up and running. While Linux may be an alternative operating system it is not made for mainstream consumption. I spent quite some time last year attempting to get Quake 4 up and running on Linux and I did not have much success. The best result I could get was for the game to load only to crash my system and then for Linux to decide that it did not want to reboot any more. While we may be critical of Microsoft and their arrogance with regards to their hold over the IT industry, unfortunately, we live in a world with no alternatives. Microsoft have a relative monopoly over the OS market for non-Apple based PCs. For gamers, there really is no viable alternative to Windows for gaming. What would happen if Microsoft were to go out of business with no competitor able to offer a working alternative for gamers? Could this possibly destabilize the industry because their is no clear alternative. While you may say, well nothing could stop Microsoft, I am sure the Romans said the same thing about the Roman empire too.

There are many people who would like nothing more than to see Microsoft go belly up. The frightening thing is that there is no alternative. There is no suitable competition who could take Microsoft's place. Without a viable alternative there are no other options. The complete irony of the notion which we place in our free market economy which is meant to promote choice has actually created a situation where there is no other choice.

The other thing which has frustrated me is Microsoft's use of Vista and DirectX 10 to force gamers to upgrade their operating system. Releases such as Halo 2 on PC will only be able to be played on Vista. This is nothing more than corporate blackmail. Furthermore the recommended version of Vista for gamers is, of course, the most expensive version. As though gamers are made of money.

What do I actually think of Vista? Having used the Beta last year I must say that I was not overly impressed. Visually the OS looks excellent, however, I felt that it ran like a dog. The system in which I was running the OS was a 64 bit AMD 3400 with 2 gig of DDR RAM and a GeForce 7900GS. My system more than meets the recommended settings yet I still felt that it ran slow. As far as I am concerned a new operating system should run better than the old one. I couldn't say that about Vista. I also work in the IT industry and I can't imagine that businesses would be rushing out to upgrade to Vista. I believe that most businesses are going to have to upgrade some part of their hardware in order to run Vista (more than likely it will be RAM). Most work stations currently run quite comfortably on 256mb of DDR RAM. Vista will force them to upgrade to 512mb. These upgrades will be at a huge expense to some large businesses and with the possibility of huge compatibility frustrations for small businesses.

Anyway, To Vista or not to Vista, that is the question. I would have to say that I am extremely happy with how stable XP is that I won't be upgrading to Vista for quite some time. XP is finally a stable and, somewhat, secure operating system. It has just taken Microsoft a number of years to get it to that point. Vista is like a game that has been released unfinished. The publishers are desperately trying to patch a product which should have been released without the need of requiring patches to finish it. This appears to be the mentality of publishers/developers at the moment. It is a "She'll be right, mate" attitude that not even Australians would be happy with.