Vista Release and Great Expectations
February 2nd, 2007I read a post by a disgruntled computer user yesterday complaining that the latest Vista features were not exciting or a compelling reason to upgrade. It annoyed me. Now I have not been planning to upgrade to Vista. I can see there are some really "cool" features, but they are really in the "shiny object" camp in my opinion. What I really want people to do is change their attitude about the operating system. It is there to run the applications and that is it. Our expectations have grown to the point that many expect an upgrade to the latest OS release should make your life more fulfilling and exciting. I just want a system which allows me to run my applications and then stay out of the way.
The real features I care about are security, stability and performance. With Windows 95 there was no memory protection which was introduced with WinXP which help cut down on the number of times the blue screen of death would appear. And over time performance has improved, but you could argue that Vista has been the first time that Microsoft has taken the time to implement security from the ground up now that computers are routinely connected to the internet. So Vista may round out 2 of the 3 major features I want, but I am concerned about performance with all of those visual features.
On Windows the only major feature I want to use it Alt-Tab, seriously. I log in and start up the applications I want to use. This is typically a chat client like Skype and a web browser, typically Firefox. From there I have most of what I need from my computer.
In a tangible way there has only been one feature in Vista which I will find worthwhile for an upgrade to WinXP SP2 which has been serving me quite well. I read about support for multiple monitors via Remote Deskop. At home I work with 2 monitors. My development environments are hosted inside Virtual Server so I use Remote Desktop to get into them. It would be quite helpful to fully jump into these development environments and make use of my 2 monitors.
Beyond this single feature I have not really found a compelling reason to upgrade. And I will not upgrade for visual effects. If I want to see pretty colors I can just change my desktop photo. At the moment a photo of Natalie Portman. That beats any of the default Vista desktop photos. 
