(Long Island, NY) Windows Vista is now on sale in stores, after five long years of promises, setbacks, complaints, and Microsoft hype. It really is here. And I won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
There is no way you could get me to be an early adopter. The headaches are too vast, the problems too complex for my poor WinXP brain to wrap around. Did you know that you’ll have to download a piece of software to help you evaluate your computer for its suitability for Vista? You might need to upgrade your machine before you can upgrade to Vista.
Best thing to do is to just buy a new computer with Vista already installed, at least in the case of those who are running old clapped-out operating systems like Win2000, or (horrors!) Win95. Are there REALLY people out there running such ancient operating systems?
I have had bad luck in general when it comes to these newfangled OS upgrades. I do not trust those partial software packages which claim to “help” you update from an older operating system to the latest thing. I’d rather bite the bullet, get the new computer all nice and soundly ready for me to use out of the box with the new gee-whiz stuff already ready, already.
I said already twice. It’s because my brain is whirling from reading Microsoft’s official page on what is required to update to Vista. I think it might well be an excellent cure for insomnia.
I am eager to read the reports of the first poor suckers who have upgraded to Vista; I predict tales of angst to include computers thrown out of open windows, baseball bat assualts on old PCs, and hate email sent en masse to Microsoft.
But I could be wrong. Maybe Vista is a dream OS. It could possibly be the world’s best new product in, like, forever, man.
But a little voice in my head says it won’t be. A little voice says that in a month’s time I’ll be writing another column which says “I told you so”. Maybe I am wrong, and maybe I am right. One thing is for sure; thanks to Vista’s heavy-duty requirements, the computer industry is going to be booming. People will be buying new hardware left and right, new machines, and new…everything. At least where it concerns being able to run your PC with Vista installed.
You have to hand it to Bill Gates, he’s a financial genius. He just kicked the computing business in the hindquarters again. I bet you a million Monopoly dollars that Jim Cramer, the TV investment wizard, will be recommending techie stocks like mad in the next six months. But I still won’t touch Vista until my personal BS detector gives me the all-clear.
