It’s been more than 16 months since Windows Vista was first sold to consumers. Since then, Vista has developed a reputation that’s been, um, less than stellar.
Whether Vista is a success or a failure depends on who’s making the assessment. Microsoft says it’s sold more than 140 million copies — most of them preinstalled on new PCs — and that it’s starting to gain a foothold in the traditionally conservative business market.
Many tech bloggers and pundits will tell you it’s a disaster, with users suffering through nasty bugs and poorly thought-out features. Some even blame Vista for the steady rise of Apple’s Macintosh market share.
Most users I talk to give mixed reports. Some have no problem with Vista, and many even — gasp! — like it. Others hate it and ask me whether they can fall back to Windows XP on the new PC they just bought.
The fact is that Windows Vista, installed properly on a machine with hardware powerful enough to support it, works quite well. Many of the problems people have with it come from either a) buggy hardware drivers that haven’t been updated, or b) the junkware that most mainstream PC makers put on computers sold at retail or online, or c) attempts to make it work with outdated peripherals and software.
The recent release of Vista’s first service pack — a roll-up of tweaks, security patches and bug fixes — smoothed out a lot of bugs. And it’s been long enough that hardware developers have worked the kinks out of flawed drivers that were released early in Vista’s life cycle.
The issue of junkware remains a problem. But even that’s gotten better, in a couple of ways. Vendors such as Dell and Sony offer ways to opt out of junkware on some of their machines. And the software they do include has, as is the case with drivers, been improved.
So the outlook for Windows Vista is rosier than it was early on. If you need a new computer and have been holding out, waiting for Vista to mature a bit, the time may have arrived to make your move.
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