ITWire

Some of these reasons may interplay with things I’ve said before, but for me, they are all important reasons why I’m sticking with Vista.

Reason number 6 is superior hardware and device driver support. Linux’s problems with Wi-Fi, monitors and other hardware types are legion. Sure, many can be fixed by fiddling around, and Linux support is certainly growing, but Vista has made hardware support and the discovery of drivers easier than ever.

I’ve been very impressed by Vista’s ability to just find a driver from its own online store of drivers – no operating system does it better, quite frankly.

Yes, there will be older pieces of hardware that will never have Vista drivers written, but at least you can use any number of virtualisation programs, including Virtual PC 2007, VMware, Citrix, VirtualBox, Parallels for Windows and likely others to install a copy of XP if you really, really need old hardware support.

You could continue using your old computer if it’s still working. Or you could buy a new scanner, printer or whatever it is you need that no longer works.

Sure, that costs money, but virtually all new hardware from the past two years has had Vista drivers written for it, and thousands of older pieces of hardware have had Vista drivers written in the interim.

I know there will be specific examples of older hardware that has no Vista driver, and will never have a Vista driver, but I can’t think of any new hardware sold on the mass market that doesn’t come with a Vista driver. And, despite the age of inflation we’re going through now, hardware has still never been cheaper or more advanced.

Reason number 7 is the widest choice of software. From a myriad of third party applications, to all the major games, browsers, browser plug-ins, utilities, graphic design programs, voice recognition, media players, Internet security, office suites, virtualisation packages, programming languages and much more besides, Windows has the widest software library – it’s something that simply cannot be denied.

Reason number 8 is support. Yes, you’ll find someone to help you no matter what operating system you use. But there are more Windows support options available, be it from knowledgeable friends to computer stores to onsite computer help-desk services.

And just as there are thriving communities of online support for Linux and Mac OS X online, there are thriving communities of support for Windows, too.

I’ve found help many times just by typing in an issue into Google and seeing what comes up, which usually is the solution to whatever problem it is I’m experiencing, be it for Vista, XP, Linux or Mac OS X. Seeing as Windows is the market leader, you’ll find online support for Vista to be as good, if not better, than for any other OS.

What are the last two reasons? Please read on to page 5.