Windows VistaI think of my children anytime I get some new piece of hardware or software…I can’t wait to get it out of the box and toy around with it.  The day I received my action pack subscription with my copy of Microsoft Vista Business Edition, I had to dive in head first.

I of course had been messing with the beta releases all along in a virtualized environment, but I thought now that it was live, I might as well make the jump and load it as my primary operating system.

I decided to take a Friday afternoon and eagerly make the jump.  I made an Acronis copy of my work machine (thank God I did this) and started down the path of doing the upgrade from Windows XP Pro to Vista.  Everything seemed to be going smoothly, then all of a sudden I got the blue screen of death. When it rebooted, things just continued to go south, it wouldn’t boot anymore and the installer wouldn’t continue, I was completely hosed.  After an hour of googling and trying different things, I gave up, since I had to be operational by Monday.  I ended up restoring my machine back to XP Pro.  I wasn’t about to let one bad install stop me from persevering though.

I ended up trying the upgrade once again on my primary home machine, although definitely much more hesitant.  The install there great, no BSOD and we were up in running in a couple hours.  I have been using Vista full time at home since its release and we have several new machines in the Tradewinds office that I support that came with Vista installed.  Below are my honest observations having messed with it all this time.

The Bottom Line

  1. Incompatibilities - I have observed all kinds of oddities on the machines I support that run Vista.  I’d say 80% of the software we use works great, 10% has some caveats and stability issues and another 10% simply doesn’t work at all (TMW Systems TMWSuite being one of them currently which is a real deal killer).
  2. Bugs - I have stumbled across several bugs that still exist in the OS, some of them may be a result of some of the software I have installed, but the explorer process crashes from time to time, on one of the machines we can’t get the control panel to open and on another there are printing issues.  The list goes on, but it is apparent there are still some basic kinks that need ironed out.
  3. Beauty is Skin Deep - That saying is very true for Vista.  I really like some of the visual improvements and some of the new bells and whistles they have added to the general navigation and organization, but I certainly could live without these if I had to.  I really thought the 3-D windows tab thing was really cool the first time I saw it, but I honestly never use it, I still hit Alt-Tab :).  So all the really cool visual things that they have done, I’m not sure where the ROI comes into play, other than an initial “wow” factor.
  4. Resource Hog  - Vista itself is happy to chew up 1GB of RAM, so if you are going to install it on a machine, I’d recommend making sure you have at least 2GB.  My home machine with 4GB and nothing else running hovers at 56% available resources most of the time…so even if you give it more memory, it’ll take it. I honestly have not noticed any performance increases either.
  5. Drivers - Many manufacturers have been quick to release drivers for Vista, but  many of them also have issues.  We have had issues with some print drivers and video drivers.  Usually we find work arounds and the issues experienced are benign, but they are still an annoyance.

I have no doubt that Vista will be as successful as XP was and will eventually become the new standard, particularly with all the .NET evolution with WPF and WCF that are tailored specifically to Vista.  There are going to be some awesome applications with this new programming model, however anything in its infancy is weak and needs a lot of maturing.

My recommendation  is to put off any massive Vista upgrades until at least SP1 is available early next year.  And you should also make sure you have the hardware to support it.  Running the Vista Compatibility tool is a great first start.

I also recommend reading Paul Thurrott’s Vista Review, it might be one of the most thorough and best reviews of Vista on the internet.

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