It’s been almost two whole years since Windows Vista was released and more than two years that we’ve been hearing the endless criticisms and statements shooting down the operating system. No doubt Apple’s “Get a Mac” ads (whose nature subsequently turned into “constant anti-Vista preaching”) have played a large role in diluting people’s minds and implanting the idea that Windows Vista is crappy. Most of the time, many small issues in Vista get over exaggerated into huge problems.
And what’s worse is that majority of these Vista-haters probably have not even used Vista before! – the idea in their head just came from word of mouth from friends, the net, comments in some of the so-called “technology magazines/websites” or some of those ridiculous Get-a-Mac ads. The most they do is probably walk into a computer shop, use a PC or two running Vista (use as in move the mouse around for a bit, click on the start button, open Internet Explorer) and conclude “oh it looks pretty… but it’s probably slow and useless anyway”.
My first experience with Vista was somewhere in February 2007, not long after the final release by Microsoft, where I had Windows Vista Ultimate running on a then-new HP notebook. From that point in time until now, I have been using Windows Vista and have never looked back. During my 23 months with Windows Vista, I have not had many issues with the OS at all; aside from the system coming up with an occasional dreaded blue screen of death during my attempts to run some ancient games (read: 1996-1998 games) and incompatibility with Norton Internet Security 2007 at the initial stage.
I’ve also been able to run Photoshop CS3 (and quite recently, CS4) and many, many modern games smoothly on Vista…. umm, not to mention multi-tasking (running many programs; plus some heavy ones like Photoshop with multiple RAW images loaded) is part of my daily life. Hey whaddaya know, no crashes, my system isn’t laggy, and I haven’t got a BSOD since my last attempt to run a 1997 game 13 months back. All in contrast to the usual Vista stereotype.
I had “another one of those days” again this week, when I was using my HP Compaq 6510b (yeah it’s an old notebook, anyone care to sponsor me an Elitebook? =) and was approached by some guy who happened to see my Windows 7 wallpaper which became the conversation starter. Apparently once you get an impression of something, it sticks in your head, even if you never tried it before.
Dude: Hey is that the latest Windows?
Me: No, it’s just Windows Vista with a wallpaper which says Windows 7.
Dude: (looking confused) So this isn’t the latest Windows? How come this (points to “Windows 7″ on the screen) doesn’t say Windows Vista?
Me: It’s just a wallpaper I downloaded from the net.
Dude: Oh… anyhow, I heard Windows Vista is horrible.
Me: It’s not as bad as people say. I’ve been running it fine for almost 2 years now.
Dude: But it’s slow right?
Me: Not exactly, unless I’m running a few huge applications at one go… in which case, any PC would run slowly.
Dude: Then it must be laggy in something, like playing games…
Me: I play lots of games at home, mostly on their highest settings on Vista and they still run quite well in fact.
Dude: That can’t be right. Windows Vista is huge and slow.
Me: Have you personally used Vista before?
Dude: No, I just heard from people that it sucks.
Me: That’s not always true. No doubt it uses a little more memory, I think it’s still as usable as previous Windows versions.
Dude: But in the end, it’s still laggy, isn’t it?
Oh bother! The era of insane, sometimes completely false, anti-Vista sentiments will soon be over… I hope Windows 7 will turn future conversation pieces of the world from “Windows Vista sucks” to “Windows 7 rocks”.
