Windows Vista

It's been around for a few months now so perhaps now is the time to ask: Should I upgrade to Windows Vista?

Which Edition?

The first question is which edition to choose?

Ultimate
Home Premium
Home Basic
Business
Enterprise

Enterprise is not easily available and would offer no benefits for small and medium businesses. So we can forget Enterprise.

Home Basic is well basic. Dell only seem to offer Home Basic on one model. So we can safely ignore Home Basic.

Of the ramaining three Home Premium has many more features than Home Basic. Vista Business has some extra features which make it more useful in a business network environment. Vista Ultimate has all of the features of Home Premium and Business and one or two more as well. So Home Premium will probably be the choice for most home users. Vista Business or Vista Ultimate are the choice for business users.

Here is a feature comparison table for Windows Vista.

Should I upgrade to Windows Vista?

The answer depends on who you are and what you do with your computer and what sort of computer you have or want to get.

Firstly Vista runs best on a computer that has a fast processor, has lots of memory and a fast video card. It is OK with 1GB of memory but happier with 2GB. That's 4 to 8 times as much memory as entry level computers of a year ago. I recently installed a new Dell with a 3GHz processor and Vista seemed quite slow. I believe that the graphics hardware was the weakness here.

If you are a home user with not much investment in fancy peripherals: printer, scanner etc. and your existing computer dies then Vista is a reasonable choice for your new PC. Some things are easier, better or just look nicer with Vista. The spam filter in Windows Mail works pretty well for example. The Vista Firewall is more advanced than that in windows XP. The Aero desktop looks rather nice but I would probably turn it off after a while.

If you are a business user or have a big investment in software or hardware you should resist the temptation to upgrade. There are problems with drivers for older printers and multifunction devices. Newer peripherals aren't necessarily safe either. Just because the manufacturers website has a Vista driver for a device it doesn't mean that it will work properly in practice.

Won't Install, Won't Run

Complex applications like Accounting, AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop and many others may not install properly or once installed may not be reliable with Vista. The thing here is: Don't be first. Check the manufacturers website for the support pages and look for Vista compatibility. Look for known problems. Upgrading software can easily double the price of a new PC so only go down that route in a planned way. Try Vista on a non-essential PC first, if you can, to see if you can live with it and your applications work.

For a year or so I wrote windows installations and so know how complex it is to create an install which works well. With a change of operating system the rules suddenly change and otherwise perfecly good installs stop working. The skills needed to write an Accounting package, for example, are very different from the very technical skills needed to fix a rare application crash. So don't be surprised when high cost software, particularly if it is an older version, won't work well with Windows Vista. Just because a company can write a useful application doesn't mean that they have the skills to debug that software.

The specification for a reasonable PC for Vista goes like this:

Memory: 1GB minimum, 2GB or more if you run complex applications.
Processor: dual processor Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2.
Disk: Minimum of 160GB 7200RPM.
Graphics: At least 128MB of ram. Ideally 256MB ram and as fast as you can afford. Some motherboards have graphics with acceptable performance built in, many don't. If you don't play games or run applications like AutoCAD there is a bit of leeway here.

If you have to replace a PC, Dell still offer Windows XP as an option. Or get a machine built to your own specification. It will be easier to upgrade and repair.

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