Thread: Windows Vista--Thumbs up or thumbs down?

My biggest gripe about Windows, apart from the general suckiness of how it does things in the background and that you have to REBOOT ever time you install system upgrades and certain software and that it has more holes than a swiss cheese and that it's bloated beyond belief, is the way applications can make things go tits up. I mean, sure, I've had applications crash under X-Windows on Linux, but then the application disappears and you get a core dump file you have to delete, but nothing else happens. On Windows, an application crashing can kill other applications, and can even bring up the Blue Screen Of Death, or in some instances even reboot the computer without telling you there was a problem. Not very user friendly, IMHO.

Having said that, Windows wins hands down if you look at hardware support. Plug a new piece of consumer hardware into it, and it usually works. It may be annoying to wait while Windows installs the hardware drivers (with rebooting occurring now and then) to get it to work, but at least it works. With Linux you have to tweak the system by hand much of the time, install half-assed home cooked drivers, and pray to Linus Torvalds that it will work, and even then you might have to besiege some haughty Linux gurus online and nag them into revealing the arcane secret switches you didn't know existed and didn't know you had to supply to the driver in order to get things to work properly.

OTOH, when some hardware doesn't work on Windows, it's usually close to impossible to coax the system into making it work, for a layman...

I still run Windows 98SE on one of my computers, and Windows XP Home on my laptop, mainly because I have more programs for Windows, and because most computer games I own are for Windows.

I only have experience with pre OS X Macs, so I can't say anything about the new Macs. I never liked the pre OS X Mac operating systems, though. Whenever I sat down with a Mac, I would usually get the "bomb" popping up and have to reboot the computer, losing work...

Just my 2 cents.

/Nicholas

Edit: Oh, and regarding the original post: Windows Vista... I've heard that some software that works under Windows XP won't work on Windows Vista, so unless you are going to buy all software new and "Vista proof", you probably should stick with XP.