Okay Geek Farm
Windows Vista - A love story - It Wasn't THAT Bad
Red PandaWith Windows 7 out and getting quite a bit of spotlight, I'd like to look back on Microsoft's previous attempt known as Windows Vista. And while many people would bawk at it for being a crappy operating system, to be honest, it wasn't really that bad of an operating system. Think I'm spouting blasphemy? Well... there's an old Japanese saying: "ishi no ue ni san nen". Literally it means "under the rock for three years". Figuratively it means it takes a while for things to work. Or in my bastardization of it, if you're going to try something, try it for a while. Besides, Windows Me, Vista wasn't even as bad as it.
I had the option back in 2007 when I bought my laptop to either have it run Windows XP on it, or Windows Vista. Since I'm was a poor college kid, I thought I'd give Vista a go since after all, I have XP lying around and it'd cost extra anyway (or some BS like that) to get it on the laptop preinstalled. To be honest, I've yet to have had a single problem with it until I put Windows 7 on it recently. Of course you could just bawk at me and go "if you're so happy with Vista, why'd you upgrade to Windows 7?" Well, why not?
We could point fingers all day at who's at fault for Vista's initial launch problems. We could say Microsoft for a. not implmenting promised goods and b. changing the overall NT architecture that made drivers hard to get. Or we could blame hardware manufacturers for not providing those drivers which would at least give us a basic pleasent computer experience.
But in any case, during the days before SP1 which supposedly fixed Vista, I learned to work with it. I first started off without UAC (yes, there was an option to turn it off). But as I worked with Vista, I came to realize how to "master" UAC. Mostly because by 2008, I got a new desktop, and I packed it with 6GB of RAM. So I had to use Vista x64, and I had to learn how to make UAC liveable since well... Security!
Considering that UAC is only triggered when you attempt to change the system or make file I/O operations in protected areas, things become a bit clear and UAC is liveable. The former isn't avoidable, the latter is, all you have to do is mark your account as "full access". Whallah! No more UAC when you do file I/O. And unless you're installing programs day in and day out, or changing system options every two hours, then UAC on that part isn't a problem.
But enough about that, there's also the concern with memory hogging. While I admit that Vista by itself does consume a good chunk of memory (the 512MB requirement), the rest it consumes is typically for your benefit. Superfetch. Supposedly for the first two weeks, Vista attempts to learn what your most commonly launched apps are and then loads core components of them into memory when you boot. Thus when you start up these apps, they load faster. I can't tell you if this is true or not because I could care less, but I do notice that I can load the items I have in my Quick Launch fairly quickly after a fresh boot.
As far as what I normally use a computer for... Games, well, if I wanted to be anal about 35FPS over 30FPS, geez. I wouldnt' be a fun gamer. But that's about it on that deparment since there's nothing else to worry about.
Overall Windows Vista isn't as bad as a majority of people are claiming it to be. It works, it may not be revolutionary like Windows XP was versus... Windows Me or 98, but it certainly wasn't a disaster like.. Windows Me. I keep mentioning Windows Me because people seem to forget it in light of Vista. Vista was just a victim of media hype, that's all.
Which Microsoft shortly learned afterwards, never hype up your operating system if you can't deliver.
