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Windows Vista Home Premium with SP1 Upgrade
From Microsoft Software
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Customer Reviews

Stability, speed, hardware support are poor
Microsoft’s latest OS is, indeed, more secure than Windows XP. But I have installed it twice on two different machines, and subsequently uninstalled it and went back to XP a few weeks later both times. Why?

- Stability is poor. The system frequently blue screens (crashes) or, more commonly, hangs. It’s not a hardware problem, because both systems experienced these issues, and neither system has any issues running XP. Vista Media Center slowly degrades over time (one of the computers is my living room DVR) until it is unusable without a hourly reboot (seriously!)
- Speed – I play a lot of games, and Vista is consistently and significantly slower on every single game I’ve tried. The difference is significant, even WITH the very latest “Vista Certified” video and sound drivers. Then, there are games that crash on Vista, but have no issues on XP. You can say “Well, they were tested to work with XP”, and you’d be right, but I’d rather be running an OS that games were tested with. And the DirectX 10 effects, which only Vista supports, are very ho-hum – they’re not worth the performance hit, in my opinion. For an example, check out the Crysis DirectX 9 vs. DirectX 10 comparisons on the net.
- Hardware support – this really is not Microsoft’s fault, but it is still an issue. Many hardware manufacturers quietly refusing to release drivers for their existing hardware, in an effort to force people to buy new hardware for Vista support. That’s totally not Microsoft’s fault – but make sure your devices are Vista compatible, BEFORE you buy Vista. Microsoft has a good compatibility guide on their website for this. Scanners, printers, music players, phones, and wireless network gear are the gadgets with the worst Vista driver support, as are notebooks not specifically “designed for Vista”.

I’m not saying you should NOT buy Vista, but if you do, be prepared for the problems you will encounter. It might be better for a business user who is buying all new Vista compatible hardware.
Great upgrade
Updated from Windows XP MCE to Vista Home Premium with virtually no problems. Amazed at how it handled unsupported drivers (disabled them and directed me to the manufacturer’s site where I could get updated drivers…slick). I had fewer problems with this upgrade than I had applying SP3 to XP. I was nervous about this upgrade with all the negativity surrounding Vista, but now I’m sorry I waited so long to do this. I installed on a pretty beefy machine (Dell XPS M1710 notebook with more than 2Gb of RAM) so YMMV.

Better than most people say
Windows Vista with SP1 is a pretty darned good operating system. Its main problem is that Windows XP is also a superb operating system, and most users will have difficulty understanding why we needed more than an incremental upgrade from XP. To the extent that the Vista interface deviates from the XP menus, I mostly have found this to be simply irritating.

That having been said, Vista with SP1 is very solid and reliable. In my experience on my Notebook computer, however, be advised that it runs a LOT faster and better with plenty of DRAM. It seems to need more DRAM to run well. My new Intel dual-core Notebook came with 1GB DRAM, which was usually enough in Windows XP (except for most imaging software, which needed at least 2GB). However, I splurged and upgraded the computer to 4GB DRAM, and the difference was literally night-and-day. Vista could get doggy with 1GB. With 4 GB DRAM it literally screams on my Intel dual-core machine.

The Vista interface is prettier. What more can I say?

One thing I think that Microsoft needs to watch is the security options. Security features are all well and good, but at the end of the day the beauty of a microcomputer is that it frees most of us, most of the time, from dependence on the IT crew in the white labcoats. XP and Vista have so many security protocols that in some instances it is rekindling this dependence.

Overall, I am satisfied with Vista, and I would not hesitate again to buy a computer that came pre-loaded with it. The upgrade learning curve from XP is really not all that great.