Amit Maskara

As a computer guy, this is what I think about Vista:

Microsoft has released it, just like that.. as they did for their earlier versions. MS has skipped a lot of stuff that they had declared that would launch with Vista. Like a new improved File System - Win FS. Don’t know what happened to that. Work on Vista started quite a few years back with initial code name [Long Horn]. In the development process it lost that and became Vista. Sounds Italian! I wonder what it means in Italian?
Anyways, getting into the technicality, Vista has some improved features in Computer Networking. The way it manages connectivity has changed for good. MS has moved around a lot of other stuff that from what we are used to in Win Xp. For a naive user, the getting used to the interface will be almost like learning a new Operating System.
The GUI has changed for good. everyone noticed!! whoa.. what about the glossy looks. It’s pretty! Yes indeed, but for a hefty price. The new GUI uses so much of memory, that it is outrageous. You need 1GB of RAM to run Vista’s new GUI properly. If you don’t have it you will have to shut the graphics engine off. But it’s pushing the sale of more RAM, so the chip manufacturer’s are happy. But from the users point of view, you will have to loosen up some $$$ to get the new looks.. unless you want to switch to Linux and use similar GUI for 1/4 RAM requirement.
Other than looks and the new GUI, I didn’t find much difference in Vista from its predecessor Win XP. I mean the changes that MS made with XP while comparing it with Xp’s predecessor Win 9x series, it was awesome. At that time I recommended all my customers to switch to XP because it had a lot of good stuff as compared to say win 98 or Me or even Win 2000. Xp was undoubtedly the best MS had released so far then. But now, I don’t feel the same with Vista. If my customer is using Xp Pro, I would NOT recommend moving to Vista, unless you really like the new looks and are ready to pay the price for the hardware and the software.