Microsoft’s painful blister: Windows Vista

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 27 November 2007 17:01

Opinion and Analysis

Certainly my own experience, after using Vista since RC1, then the Nov 30 RTM and then in January the true Vista Ultimate release, was of an OS that needed reloading a couple of months ago.

That I did, only to discover that the drivers I’d gathered for Vista had to be loaded in a specific order, and if you went to Windows Update beforehand and allowed it to install some of the missing drivers that way, you’d lose your ability to install and use USB devices!

Microsoft has since fixed that problem, at least on my machine, but it was most frustrating at the time, especially when the computer had been working before with proper Vista drivers!

But since solving that problem, and having loaded all the performance updates and security fixes, Vista’s performance on this 2GB ram machine, 1.8Ghz Core Duo Tablet PC has been solid and reliable.

I have to say that it’s the smoothest I’ve had Vista running so far, giving hope that Microsoft have finally smoothed Vista into the operating system it should have been when it launched one year ago, or will have once SP1 is finally released.

In that time, much has happened in the world of operating systems, online software and the increasing power of hardware at ever cheaper prices to challenge Microsoft’s OS and office suite dominance as never before.

One strategy Microsoft always has up their sleeve is dropping the price of Windows and Office, but surely they won’t do that until they absolutely have to.

Vista has clearly been a blister on Microsoft’s foot this past year, causing pain to Microsoft and users alike. But as the updates continue, it’s starting to heal at last, something that’s coming not a moment too soon for battle weary consumers tired of the fight with their own computer.

But Microsoft can’t rest a moment, as they work on their own ‘Office online’ strategies, continuing their work on securing and tweaking XP and Vista, working on Vista’s successor, Windows 7, and battling Google, Yahoo, Sony, Apple and others in search, advertising, console and online gaming, hardware, software, content and more – while keeping traditional retail and licensing revenues coming in for as long as they can and growing their online revenue streams.

At least new Vista consumers should now be getting much more of the original wow that Microsoft intended, although XP SP3 promises a 10% speed boost, while new OS X 10.5 and Asus Eee PC users have been having quite a few wow moments of their own, too.