Vista, Vista, Vista… What’s so great about Vista?

Today marks the 3rd week that I have been converted 100% from Windows XP to Windows Vista, and it is sure time to ask, what is so great about Windows Vista? I will give you my list of Pros and Cons, and I guarantee you they will not be the same things on other peoples list. So here we go:

Pros

• Windows Vista looks much cooler! And more than that, it actually ad?s to the experience of using my computer. It is not just fluff, it actually helps productivity.
• Search is much better! I had resulted to using Google desktop search on Windows XP, and that was great, but it had its downsides. But now the search, although taking a while to get used to, is MUCH faster, and coherent. No more dumb little dogs trying to teach me how to search.

• Icons – This may seem like an infinitesimal point, but the truth is, is that the icons are so much better! They are dynamic. The folder Icon will change depending on what is inside the folder, if there are images inside, the folder icon will show those images, and if there are more folders, you will see those. A great idea, and it makes things a lot easier.

• Remember Alt+Tab? Forget it… the new hotkey for windows is WindowsKey+Tab. A new, very intuitive way to organize your open programs.
• My Documents organization. Vista got rid of “My Documents” and gave us a folder for our user with more things than just documents, we now have; Contacts, Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Favorites, Links, Pictures, Saved Games, Searches, Videos, and Music. This is much more intuitive. Because it is really simple to get to folders quicker now.

• Favorite Links – This is great! Now you can customize what folders you want to be able to access quickly via Windows Explorer. Greatly increases workflow!

• Windows Media Center – WMC has been completely revamped! Much cleaner, and fixed a lot of issues in the other version! Great job Bill!

Con’s

• Needless computer resource usage… Vista comes with gadgets, one of the gadgets is the CPU usage meter, and now it just makes me upset. Randomly, the computer will take 90% of my resources for the better part of a minute, for nothing. And it bugs me…
• Horrible memory usage… Vista just hogs memory! No wonder you need a “Vista Ready” computer, because most computers can’t handle it’s high memory usage.
• Buggy, buggy, buggy – Firefox 2.0 just will not run on Vista with any consistency, and I will blame Microsoft before I blame Mozilla. Whenever my computer is idle for more than an hour or so, most of my programs will time out. I do not have any hibernation or hard drive suspending on, it just errors out and takes about 40 seconds before Vista will respond to any mouse movement.
• Folder Navigation – I was used to Windows XP, it left much to be desired but at least I had my “Up one level” folder button. They got rid of it, and leave you with just the back button! What is up with that! They have this semi-intuitive way of going back to a parent folder, but I think it fails more than it succeeds, that is why it is in the CON pile.
• Security Crap – The fist thing I did when I got Vista was disabled al lof the security junk. And there is so much of it now! I do not like it! If you ask me, the dumb computer users are the ones who need the security stuff becuase they are the ones who get viruses. Oh well…
• The biggest con that I can think of is this: I was asked by a friend to tell him what were the big things that they changed from xp to vista? And I found myself searching for an answer. If it takes over 5 years, millions of dollars and millions of hours of time, there better be a clear answer… and frankly, there wasn’t. And that is bad.

Conclusion
I like Vista. It is not Windows XP SP3 as some have said, but it does not have any huge reason for someone to switch over to Vista. I would like to equate this to a car. Most cars change very little from year to year. Sometimes what they change is just the body and a couple of things on the inside, while the engine, components, drive, feel, price, and everything else stays the same. That is how I feel Vista is. They changed the body and a couple inside amenities, but that is about it. No reason to go and buy a new car if you r current car is almost the same, just a little older.