One Man’s marriage with Vista.

From: @Macnamara_Vasco

A couple of years ago I decided to buy a laptop after some time spent in a computerless state. At the time I had much less experience as a computer user and I was not aware of the new developments in Operating Systems. I knew I wanted a computer with good memory and a spacious hard drive in order to be able to use music production software. I wasn’t aware that Windows XP had been superseded by Vista, knowing absolutely nothing about the latter.

Going to buy a computer like this is almost like an arranged marriage. You don’t really know what you’re getting into. And chances are that things can go horribly wrong. I quickly found out that Vista had a terrible reputation, almost on par with bankers after the credit crunch. Then came the slow realization that my laptop would be better off without it. I was quite nonplussed by the fact that a laptop with a reasonable amount of processing and memory power was taken so long to log on and off, that it was quite common for applications to freeze. I noticed that on a different less powerful machine that had XP installed, one could log and off in much less time. Yes, my “marriage” to Vista was doomed from the start.

Like most people I kind of stuck with Vista because I wanted to avoid the whole tedious process of not only having to reinstall the OS, but also the myriad of programs that I had previously installed. As installing an OS will delete anything downloaded previously. So, I continued this unhappy marriage for a while in frustration with the way that Vista (dys)functions, everyday in frustration I would hurl a string of verbal abuse to it (trust me the Portuguese language is very colourful for insults).

Also having to admit to people that I had Vista on my laptop was very socially awkward. It was akin to being overheard telling a dirty joke by everyone in a family gathering. Being a Vista owner is almost like becoming the village idiot, either jeered or utterly patronized by everyone. Either that or you commiserate your misery with fellow Vista users. It’s funny how difficult is to find people that honestly can say that they like Vista; it’s actually easier to find someone who spotted the Loch Ness monster or even to spot Nessie itself, than finding a Vista enthusiast. A Vista enthusiast is definitely in the league of Nessie, the Yeti or Bigfoot in the grand scheme of mythical creatures.

When the news came that Windows 7 was about to arrive, everyone was in a weird mix of apprehension and expectation. Would Microsoft get it right this time? Would we be able to throw off our Vista shackles? I had a colleague that was using the Beta version and his feedback had been positive. The reviews in the Guardian were also very positive. Reasons to be optimistic, but in these situations the best thing is not take other people’s words for granted and just try it out.

Recently I decided that Vista had to go. Our abusive relationship had to be terminated as soon as possible as it evidently was going nowhere. Having managed to obtain Windows 7, it was time to say “Hasta la vista, Vista!” So I tucked up my sleeves, backed up my data and the final showdown had arrived (queue the Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme tune). I was quite keen to get rid of Vista. There were no moments of wistful wide eyed nostalgia remembering all the good times spent with Vista. There were no dramatic Shakespearean like speeches such as: “Alas poor Vista, I knew him well…” or “I came to bury Vista not praise him” It was more like Goodbye and good riddance.

With Vista gone and Windows 7 in its place so far the experience has been positive. It takes much less time to log in and especially to shut off. It used to be quite annoying when I wanted to go to sleep having to wait a bit before Vista managed to shut the computer down. Everything seems to be running a bit smoother. I don’t particularly like the icons pinned to the taskbar and how they are grouped together. Luckily, that can be changed on Task manager. Some people might think this is almost like blasphemy but I prefer the much more minimal and Spartan look that one gets when one sets the visual options for best performance and the actual taskbar looks like the old one from Windows 2000, rather than the sleeker default settings. I prefer a less ‘flashy’ look. Another thing that is great is the new added capability of burning Iso files which is quite useful especially if you don’t have a program like Nero installed. There are still a few differences in presentation in Windows 7 to get used to, but so far I feel a massive improvement. I still need to put it to a more serious test such as seeing how it fares when it has some memory consuming software like Ableton Live to attend to.

It seems that Microsoft got things right this time. Let’s hope that they had learnt from their mistakes on Vista. Especially now with Apple on the rise in the market, they can’t allow themselves to be smug and complacent and alienate their core users with inferior products. But so far it’s thumbs up for Windows 7.