I have purchased several computers since Windows Vista first
came out, I just made sure they had XP on them or I installed it when the
computer arrived. Last week I got a new (Refurbished) Dell Studio desktop with
Vista 64 bit. The thought of 6 Gigs of RAM got me all geeky and the fact that I
could bump it to 8 Gigs just made it better.
The Quad core processor and the 64 bit Dell meant, even if I
didn't like it, the computer isn't backward compatible with XP because much of
the hardware has no XP driver available. Being a geek I bought into the Vista hating
crowd 
even though I had never taken a serious look at it. I have set up several
Vista computers for friends and relatives and I was always surprised by the
lack of follow up support they needed. The computer challenged seemed to get
along great with Vista.
After getting it out of the box and starting it up it took
about 30 seconds to figure out the navigation. It took another 20 minutes for
me to understand why my technophobic friends didn't have a problem with Vista.
It doesn't let them get into things that will screw up the system. That was not
a good thing for me however, I am driven to crack the registry, disarm every
little bit of power sapping programming, and must bend a computer to my will. I am
lord and master of my system and I hate vista... wait, I don't hate it at all,
in fact I am quickly learning to love it.
Once I did a little research and figured out how to unlock
the OS, I quickly set out to modify as much as possible and in doing so came to
the realization that I really didn't need to change that much. Vista works
pretty well right out of the box and removing bloat ware was my only real
concern.
I was a little disappointed with the speed of the system, it
wasn't able to break down the genetic code of my dogs very quickly or even
design a new robot assistant. What it can do, and it does it so well, is run
multiple programs that use a lot of resources individually. To fully test the
system I ripped a DVD, while streaming HD video from my DVR, loaded my 100gigs
of MP3 music into iTunes along with my 80 gigs of movies, all while surfing the
web and watching cats eat spaghetti on YouTube.
Now I feel the power at my fingertips and I am happy, ecstatic
even. Vista works, it works with all of my programs, it works with all of my
hardware, it plays nice with all of my XP machines, and it does it quickly.
I am sure I will find something I hate about it, I always do,
but so far I am only seeing good. If you have been sitting on the fence about
Windows Vista, it is time to dive in and give it a chance, you won't be sorry.