The collected works of ScottyB

So about 2 months ago my PC died.

This is not something that I am used to. Generally I’ve had computers that lasted a forever. I still have my old Pentium 133 in the study wardrobe, in full working order. Hell, we even have our old Apple IIE and Imagewriter dot-matrix printer stowed away.

This was my first computer that officially ‘died’. i.e. That is, enough components failed that justifying repair and necessary upgrades were not possible - it was cheaper just to get a new rig.

I guess that’s the state of our throw-away society though. I couldn’t get the old P$ processor, couldn’t get the old Motherboard and the RAM wouldn’t fit the new Motherboards.. it needed a major overhaul, so instead, I settled on a new PC.

INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6750
3GB DDR2 RAM
515MB Nvidia 8500GT
160GB Sata II (and 250GB Sata II secondary) HDD’s

Operating System: …

Well that brings us to the topic of this post.

“Vista Ultimate or Premium?” I was asked..

“Ummm.. do you still have XP?”.

I’m an I.T. Widget. So despite my love of all things techy and the desire to always have the latest and greatest - or at least the greatest of what I can afford, I’d put off the adoption of Vista due to overwhelming under-enthusiasm for Microsoft’s new love child of operating systems.

“It’s too slow”, “It’s too much of a memory hog”, “It’s just eye-candy”, “I’ll wait for Service Pack 1″.

I’d heard it all before. Buyer beware, don’t get Vista.

And two months later, I simply cannot understand the mentality.

I’ve had no problems with Vista. All of my hardware is recognised and fully compatible. Its super fast. Its extremely convenient. The new GUI is not only pretty, but more functional. Its more foolproof. In two months, I’ve not found anything I can’t do in Vista that I could in XP. All my software works, even my older games work. And they run fine.

So what’s the drama?!

I really don’t know - maybe people are doing the classic upgrade we saw back when XP rolled out and everyone hated it. Installing on hopeless, old-gen systems and sure, it’ll run terribly. Really though, it looks basically like XP, feels the same. I just don’t see this ‘massive departure’ that I hard so many tout.

Regardless, the next-gen OS looks like it’ll suit me just fine.