There was a lot of negative hype surrounding Vista during its development.  It seemed that I heard nothing but bad things about it.  So naturally, I wasn't very excited for its release.  But being impartial as I am, I was willing to give it a chance.  So I asked some people who have used Vista some simple questions:  What advantage does Vista have over XP?  What are the new features besides the spiffy graphics?  The fact is that no one could give me a straight answer.  So for me, it wasn't worth spending that much money for something that really didn't seem to have any benefit.

Well, being an IT professional, I managed to get my hands on a free copy of Vista Ultimate.  Now that cost was not a factor, I installed it on my laptop.  Just as with XP SP2, I had to make numerous tweaks to get the interface right, a new one for Vista being disabling the annoying and useless "User Account Control", of course.  Besides that, I had no problems with hardware compatibility or anything else.  In fact, I made quite a surprising discovery...

Vista is fast.  I thought the extra graphical effects would slow down the interface, but in fact, it's significantly more responsive.  Programs load and close much faster.  I've even experienced faster file transfer rates over my home network.

Microsoft just might have made a believer out of me.  And if you think about it, it makes sense.  XP has been around for over 6 years, and has since been hacked to pieces and bloated with thousands of updates.  Vista seems fresh and light-weight in comparison, with many of its sub-systems rewritten to work well with modern hardware.

So why all the fuss?  Do people not like change?  Are they afraid they won't be able to do as many illegal things anymore?  Are they upset that Vista won't work with their ancient hardware?  Welcome to the world of computers.  Things change.  Get with the program and upgrade your stone-age Pentium.

I used to agree with people who criticize Microsoft's business tactics.  What I realized, though, is that all of Microsoft's competitors are doing all the same things, and nobody points the finger at them and complains.  Microsoft gets picked on because they're the biggest.  I, for one, do not use Microsoft's products because I am somehow conned into it or because it is the most popular standard.  For instance, I used Java and IBM WebSphere and Eclipse for quite some time at one job I had.  Yet, the reason I prefer .NET, C#, and Visual Studio is because they are, in my opinion and for very specific reasons, better.  So yes, Microsoft is a formidable foe for competitors because they make really, really good software, and Vista is no exception.

So in conclusion, don't knock Vista until you've tried it.