Some computer advice

In the past few weeks I've had a few conversations with folks who were considering upgrading to Windows Vista because they thought it was bettter in some major way or that it fixed some significant security problems. I spent several months using the final version of Vista and have been following the recent press and thought I'd put some thoughts together for folks considering the upgrade.

While there are some pretty bells and whistles that make Vista look different, the majority of the new features are not things that you would normally interact with. Security and Product Licensing are the biggest changes. If you want to read Microsofts answer to "why Upgrade?" look here here.

When I was using Vista, the changes to security became very clear; almost any change to the system triggers a pop-up window asking the user to approve or disapprove. I can tell you from experience that it is next to impossible for the lay person to determine if all of these are appropriate (and there are a lot of these popups). The effect is to push the security problem back on the user, and the vast majority of users aren't prepared to handle these. I think this is a bad thing ( plus the popups are also numbingly annoying... see this Apple Ad for a hilarious example)

Vista will cost you extra, whether you buy the software disks or buy it on a PC. Vista requires more that twice the the ram (anything less that 1GB will feel real slow). Faster CPU and Graphics cards are also necessary.

One big reason for geeks to upgrade is that Vista is a 64 Bit operating system. If you've bought or built a high end PC in the last year or so you might have a 64Bit CPU. I did this on my home PC, but Vista won't improve my performance until the applications and drivers I use on the PC are also upgraded...

I would advise folks not to upgrade existing home machines to Vista. Keep Windows XP and make sure that you have good security features on it ( turn on Automatic Updates from Windows Update, get Anti-Virus (free) and a Firewall (also free)). Also, upgrade your browser to IE7 to get the new features and security availble there. If you are going to purchase a new machine you probably won't have a choice, but make sure you get the fastest processor and most memory (like 2 Gig) that you can afford.