Recently I had the experience of working on Microsoft’s new version of Windows, Vista. I was a PC user until about three years ago when I made the switch to an Apple ibook.
I remember when I first purchased a new laptop with Windows XP on it, I was so impressed, it could do this, it could do that… I was amazed. Then time passed and I learned more and more about Macs and thought that these machines are far more cool! After deliberation, I made the switch from PC to Mac. To tell you the truth I panicked at first, thinking to myself, I spent this much money on something that I can’t use! About a week later, the panic wore off and I haven’t looked back. Until yesterday!
Yesterday I played on a fairly new PC laptop that came with Vista installed on the system. It took a few moments to get adjusted, but like riding a bike, I was able to balance and do everything I use to be able to do on the PC.
I know what you are thinking – has she converted again? PC to Mac back to PC? No way. I said I haven’t looked back and I haven’t. I was so incredibly frustrated on the new Vista, everything I tried to do didn’t seem to work. All I wanted was to connect the PC to my wireless network, I have connect previously with a Windows XP to my Airport Extreme network, didn’t seem to have any troubles, but Vista wouldn’t. I had to turn to google to find an answer and after some time (and sifting through several webpages) I came across a detailed solution and I was able to pull files from the Vista machine to my wonderful MacBook. But atlas, my problems were not over! The few video files I wanted to pull from the PC, simple .avi files (my digital camera records .avi files and I read them perfectly fine in iphoto/quicktime), apparently did not copy over with the file properties, so all that played were white screens. Back to google. Oh did I mention how long it look to transfer files – WAY TOO LONG!
Needless to say my experience with Microsoft Vista was rather poor and it’s moments like this we all should experience to know how much we really need to appreciate the stability and ease of use that Apple computers provide.
What’s your take on Vista?… Or dare I ask!? 
written by Girl-J \\ tags: Microsoft Vista
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:39 am
I tried Vista once. Then I laughed. Then I never tried it again.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:29 am
Vista’s the reason I switched back to the Mac!
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:20 pm
My opinion on Vista is a bit one-sided as I’m an IT professional, so its in my nature to tinker until something works.
Having said that, my laptop of choice is the MacBook Pro. My next laptop, will most likely be another MBP, but my OS very well won’t be an Apple OS. Since Vista’s release, I’ve had it running in VM on my MBP. Quite some time ago, I made a bootcamp partition, and have run Vista fully (not in VM), and am impressed with the speed (or in Apple terms, “snappiness”, of the OS). My MBP is a 2.16 C2D with 2 GB RAM, and it runs extremely fast, and runs anything I need to run without a hitch. I’d safely say that 75% of the time I’m on my MBP, I”m in Vista. The rest of the time, I’m in OS X, is mainly b/c of my photos being organized in iPhoto.
Not that I have anything against Leopard, or TIger… I do have issues with every OS X pre-Tiger though… but quite honestly, it doesn’t offer me anything special, and I prefer my Vista experience.
I’m in the minority, but its the truth.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
From my vista, I can see more Mac sales.
May 26th, 2008 at 8:50 am
i have a mac and a pc, once autodesk and other design programs are made dual os compatible then macs king, i have a feeling though that Microsoft is going a new route, a more linux, light system route…..who knows what it will be in 2013
May 26th, 2008 at 10:33 am
Mat’s comment is interesting because he’s inclined to stick with his MacBook Pro despite using Vista.
I went to Best Buy yesterday, where there are PCs alongside Macs, and I noticed a distinct lack of manufacturing quality in the PCs. Hard to believe considering that Macs and PCs are built in the same factories, by the same people, but the quality level of the Macs was significantly higher, more than explaining and making up for the higher prices.
It turns out that in order to make a $600 laptop, you have to cut every corner in the book. I now have more appreciation of why Steve doesn’t want to be in that market, despite all the people screaming for him to enter it.
That being said, I’m about to buy a MacBook Pro at long last replacing my historic PowerBook G4. I’m actually looking forward to trying Vista safe in its VMWare or Parallels partition, just to see what all the fuss is about.
Based on cursory observation of the systems at Best Buy, the aesthetics look undercooked, and there are numerous design flaws obvious to the eye.
When looking at the cheery Welcome Screen with its speed measurements, I discovered I was only two clicks away from what looked like a horrendously confusing 50 page explanation of every metric used for the rating, complete with cross references and descriptions of individual video cards. I closed it quickly to preserve what was left of my sanity. As Steve Jobs says, sometimes less really is more.
D