Wait six months after SP1 before moving to Vista
By Jonathan Schlaffer
There are those that say Vista is riddled with problems, crashes and all sorts of other ills even 9 months after it’s initial release. The problem is people aren’t upgrading their hardware as well, if anything, Vista likes new hardware.
CEO of Rescuecom corporation David Milman told ComputerWorld, “[Users should] wait for six months after Vista SP1 [Service Pack 1] appears before moving to Vista.”
That advice is based on some 2,500 support calls his IT support franchise received of which 4.5% were Vista related with an estimated 5.4% of market share for Vista, it seems a majority of users are having problems but this is a limited sample and were probably business related.
Milman said and I agree with is statement, “Windows’ hallmark has always been its backward compatibility.” At the same time saying everything ever made since the beginning of Windows to be compatible with a modern operating system is like shooting yourself in the foot.
Sure, that Windows 3.1 program could be be made to work with Vista by sacrificing stability and reliability. Like it or not, Vista is more stable than its predecessors when used properly.
Vista doesn’t like older hardware from the Windows 98 days, it doesn’t like Windows XP drivers and heck, it doesn’t even like some hardware that worked perfectly in Windows XP. If you’re going to Vista make sure you can ante up for a completely new computer (or that the hardware you have is Vista compatible), here’s a program to do just that.
Replace anything that doesn’t pass the test and head off to the recycling center. I remember when Apple dumped the classic operating systems (everything OS9 and preceding) and built OSX from the ground up using Unix. Backwards compatibility went with that decision but it was best for the long run. This is similar to what Microsoft is doing, toss a great deal of backwards compatibility for stability and for that the company is being chastised by some saying Vista isn’t reliable or this peripheral doesn’t work or this driver installed and crashed the system.
Rule of thumb, if it wasn’t made in the last year or two, Vista probably isn’t going to like it and never try to force XP drivers on Vista, it doesn’t like that either.
Use Vista with hardware and drivers made for Vista and I promise home users a seamless experience. Vista still has some VPN and network issues to be worked out before businesses can be confident in deploying it.
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