Vista, Microsoft’s new flagship operating system, was released in January 2007 replacing the six-year-old XP family of products. Since its release, we’ve seen major computer manufacturer’s move from offering Vista exclusively to offering their customers a limited choice of Vista or XP versions. This started the buzz that Vista was just not ready for full time use. Yet, there are those who bought new computers with Vista who say it’s everything that Microsoft touted it to be and more, far better than XP. Who is right?
While the majority of applications that worked on XP work on Vista, this isn’t always the case and is even more apparent in the drivers that are needed to support your printer, camera, scanner and other peripherals that we attach to our computers. Vista needs a new driver for nearly every device and that is where the problems come from. Companies who manufacture these devices or specialty software like security applications or accounting programs are also the ones who have to integrate these items into Vista. These companies had access to Vista from Microsoft as it was being developed. They needed to decide how to allocate their resources and efforts across Vista, XP, new products, old products and in some cases, other operating systems. Many of these companies focused their Vista efforts on their newest products and only did the basics for older products, if anything at all. Companies like Intuit ultimately decided that if one wanted Vista, they had to buy the latest version with no support at all for older products.
This created the corundum that we see today. Products we are happy with on XP require us to purchase a new version in order to run on Vista. Drivers that were mature and fully functional on XP now are cursory and unstable on Vista if they are available at all. Few want to buy a new Vista certified hardware component to replace something that runs fine on their XP computer. Manufacturers, looking to capitalize on the migration to Vista, angered many of their customers and reinforced the decision by many to not adopt Vista.
New systems offer a huge advantage most of the time over a system that was upgraded. While these still can be plagued by immature drivers, unless you are running a critical piece of software that can’t be upgraded to Vista at this time, there is no reason not to make the move. But if you are running critical software or older hardware and cannot or do not want to purchase a new version, if you are looking to upgrade an existing XP installation, do not move to Vista at this time. The issue isn’t entirely Microsoft or Vista, the issue also is the ability of vendors to effectively support their products on Vista.
If you need help determining if moving to Vista is right for you or need a new custom-made PC to support XP today and Vista tomorrow, call RJM Technology at 661-254-2017.