Please note the following observations are based on my own usage scenarios.

Microsoft Windows is a bit like a car, it starts off running well but 50,000 miles down the road and it begins to creak a bit.

At a recent event Microsoft announced that they have sold 100m Windows Vista licenses.

My own Windows Vista Ultimate install is just one year old this month.

Current Niggles

1) Cant print locally to a shared resource by IP Address, but can on UNC path.

2) When moving between my own Wired and Wireless network my pop3 e-mail will sometimes fail to connect. Although all my other Internet access works. So basically traffic on a port.

3) My Num-Lock key seems to come on at every opportunity.

4) The Remote Desktop Connection Credentials box can take about 40 seconds to appear. This is very frustrating when you are in a rush to help a client.

5) General performance seems sluggish. Those Hundreds of Windows Updates can’t be helping.

6) VPN connections sometime fail to connect for no discernable reason. I can jump on a Windows XP machine and connect in right away.

7) Copying files across the network is very slow. This is a well known problem.

The Promise of Windows Vista Ultimate Extras was just that a promise and an undelivered one.

9) In the real world no one uses Flip-3D after the first couple of days.

Windows Vista Observations

Power is everything. I thought my Core2Duo 2.0Ghz 2gig of Ram machine was powerful. However when I recently used Vista Ultimate on a Core2Duo 2.4Ghz it did run much smoother (naturally).

The advice here is buy a machine with plenty of power with a good video card.

For the past year I have running two computers: Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Ultimate side by side and I am of the opinion I would have been more productive running Windows XP.

Looking to the future

I am looking forward to rebuilding my Windows Vista Ultimate machine with Service Pack 1 in the hope of a more reliable and better user experience.

If I can’t make my own Vista install run smooth what hope do my clients and end users have.

Summary

A lot of what is wrong with Vista can be classed as an annoyance. Things that used to work in earlier versions of Windows now don’t (reliably). A slightly less demanding user will have a much better experience but the fact remains this isn’t good enough.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 10:26 am and is filed under Consumer Reviews, Windows Vista Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.