Impressed by Vista?

Vista Beta 2I’ve been catching a few of the Vista previews as they show up on CNET and Digg and I must say that I’m a little disappointed by the next generation release coming out of Redmond, WA. Albeit that it’s still a little early to discount the new OS, but so far there’s plenty of eye candy – yet nothing truly innovative or new that I can find. Although I will say that the revamped and tweaked Start menu has some welcomed performance enhancements, and the ability to diagnose your hardware and locate performance bottlenecks is nice. Yet I still can’t get over the fact that most of these features can already be incorporated into Windows XP through various applications, and then there’s the feeling that Vista will only “catch up” to Apple’s current OS X.

I’m getting this strange feeling like I was hoping that Vista would be a little more OS X (& Front Row) and a little less Windows XP. Well, at least I can look forward to the next generation of M$ Office.

Maybe I’m being a little too critical, but is anyone out there really impressed by Vista?

Sincerely,
The Closet Entrepreneur

» This entry was filed under General

4 Comments

  1. I haven’t seen too many screenshots of Vista yet but in years past I have always been disapointed by the pre release buzz. Then when they do release it somehow the magical polish has been added. Who knows, maybe it’ll bomb and some other company can increase market share.

  2. TOMAS

    Here’s a pretty thorough tour of Vista Beta 2 with plenty of pictures and commentary – Tour of Vista Beta 2.

  3. BobSongs

    Well, I’M impressed!

    I’m impressed that it took five years for Microsoft to produce the next generation O/S. It took a while between Windows 3.1 and Windows95 because it was a major upgrade, not just a face-lift. And I’m sure many are thinking: “Yeah, but Microsoft wasn’t asleep during that time, y’know. They released Windows Media Center and Windows 2003 Server!” Sure. But consider their release schedule with their previous Windows family line: Windows95 in 1995, Windows 95b in 1996 (major improvement in stability and added all kinds of support for new technology and FAT32), Windows95C in 1997 (with Internet Explorer 4.0 making Windows95 look and feel almost like Windows98). Windows98 in 1998, Windows98SE in 1999 and Windows Me in 2000. Longhorn should have been named Long-time-in-coming.

    I’m impressed that many of the promised features to be added to Vista were eventually reconsidered and… dropped.

    I’m impressed that some of the cutting edge, innovative new technology that will eventually be released with Vista is old Mac O/S X stuff.

    I’m impressed Microsoft decided to release Vista in first quarter 2007… for several reasons.

    First: each release of Windows lives a 5-year support cycle. After that Microsoft is no longer obliged to really offer any more support. So, in effect, home users of Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Home will technically no longer be supported. Technically. Microsoft tried to dump their support for Windows 98 but were shocked to discover they were abandonning a majority of their home user-base.

    Second: companies that sell computers are deeply disappointed with the release schedule because it will seriously damage their 2006 income. Vista could be released with various features removed for the end of 2006 while patches could be released to include the new features. But who’s going to tell Microsoft how to do things, right?

    And I have yet to be impressed by the price tag with which Microsoft is going to hit the end user. And by the line ups of the faithful who will lay down those dollars as though they had to.

    The list goes on…

  4. TOMAS

    BobSongs – I like the passion and detail in your comment; I should’ve let you write the original post! 🙂

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