Vista isn’t that bad

Vista isn’t that bad… Those were the words from my company’s CTO over a year ago pleading with people to bring their laptops in to be “upgraded”. I found that really amusing. I was also one of the hold outs. Lucky for me my client did not allow Vista on their network so I was put on an exception list not to be up graded. Good. No annoying emails to ignore for a year. But then the project ended, and worse yet my computer needed servicing. Well that next thing you know I have to go in. And that means I get the “Upgrade” to Vista. Whohooo. This is something I had actually been dreading.

Funny as I work with technology I am certainly not what you call an early adopter of things. More like I have to be brow beaten into believing there is a reason to use a piece of new technology. I normally want to know what it is, what it does, and how affective it is. Then I avoid it for a year or two. Why, I don’t know this is just my way. I figure I am getting along fine the way things are why mess with them. Basically if it ain’t broke don’t fix it…. That is unless you are adding more power, then by all means fix the crap out of it. But new un-tried, un-needed before today things, nah forget it, when I absolutely need it or I have to replace something and only the upgraded version is available then I will get into it.

Some examples are as follows: I did not buy a GPS because google maps and mapquest worked fine for me. Or I could just get out the huge atlas I keep in my truck. But then I was going to England to work and I didn’t want to be distracted figuring out where to go and how to drive so I broke down and purchased a GPS. Now I love it. Hardly use it, but if I go somewhere new it comes along. Windows 98, I skipped both Windows ME (except on a laptop that came with it) and Windows 2000, and did not upgrade until XP. This turned out pretty good for me. I had a stable set up I reused on a dozen of machines and it worked great. Until wireless and some new apps why did I need to change? So I didn’t. I wouldn’t use Vista right now if I had the choice either.

Now last fall I did end up dealing with Vista long before I had planned. I bought the wife a laptop of x-mas and her birthday. I didn’t want to go through the trouble of rebuilding the thing and it came with Vista. Fine I didn’t have to use it, she did! Of course she really likes it because it is pretty but that was never my concern, in fact even on XP I would always run in classic mode. But now I have to upgrade. I have no choice. It is work’s laptop and they want it to run Vista. So I have been “side-graded” as I don’t really consider Vista to be an upgrade. It is prettier and I like the integrated search the rest of it I am not impressed. It is slower, crashes just as often, and now I have to search for things that I used to know where they existed. But it is not that bad, there was just no compelling reason to switch.