I recently bought a new laptop which came with Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. I have to be honest that I was sceptical about Vista due to the reviews I have read, and testing some of the early beta releases in 2006.

My initial thoughts with Vista are that it does definitely have a few advantages over XP. Below I will list my pro’s and con’s of the operating system:

Pro:
Enhanced search - The new search feature is extremely good. It’s fast and usually found what I was looking for in no time at all. In fact, you can almost forget where you store files on the computer because it’s so easy to just type in the file you are looking for and access it that way, it’s far quicker than trawling through menus to find items. The search function is docked on to the start menu for easy access, and is also available on most of the traditional explorer document view windows on the top right-hand corner. The only problem with this feature is, if like myself you disabled indexing on XP, then the search time is greatly increased. Therefore you really need to leave indexing switched on for it to be effective in Vista.

Navigation: The file structure in Vista is better than in previous versions of Windows. At the top of explorer windows you have a simple hierarchical system that makes it easy to step back and forward through the file structure. A little touch that I like is the removal of ‘my’ from documents/pictures etc. I never saw the point of calling things ‘my document’ or ‘my pictures’ especially if you had seperate logins on the same system which can hide other users personal files anyway.

Error messages: Yes, although I have literally just got a new laptop, I have encountered errors already. Firefox being the number one in fact. However, the error messages that pop-up are far more informative than in previous versions of Windows. I would think this is more of a useful feature to a general user rather than a Windows power-user. When I encountered an error with Firefox it gave a nice detailed description, along with a link to the Firefox download page so that I can upgrade to the latest version. This can be useful for software that you have installed, but have forgotten the url to get updates.

Cons:
Graphics: To get the most out of Vista Home Premium or Ultimate Edition you will need plenty of RAM and a quick processor. This means you may well have to upgrade hardware on your present system even if it’s only a few years old. There are all sorts of smooth animation features and transparency effects that are pleasing to the eye. However, personally I find them a bit pointless. They don’t add to the functionality of the operating system, they simply drain resources.

XP/Vista: Although I haven’t used Vista for long, it’s clear to see that it uses a lot of the features that XP had. It is built on the XP framework, and there again makes me wonder why it would be worth upgrading to Vista if you are happy with XP.

Conclusion:
As Vista came bundled with my laptop I installed it and have tested it out for my needs. As the laptop is fairly fast it seems to perform perfectly well. However, I don’t think it is particularly better than XP. I think it’s stability is similar rather than better.

I have decided that I will keep it going on the laptop unless I find it slowing my system down, in which case i’ll put XP Pro or even Ubuntu on the laptop. I don’t think it’s worth upgrading, but if you get it free with your PC or laptop then give it a go at least. You can always wipe it and put XP on instead