Vista?

So... M$ releases a new OS at the end of last year and so far, in nearly a year since the release, they haven't solved some simple compatibility issues with software that's LESS than a year old. In fact, software that's been released since the new OS was released doesn't work with it because of OS issues. M$ says there are issues with it's memory management which is at the root of a bunch of problems. Yes, I'm talking mostly about games (and the demos).

The argument can be made that it's the game manufacturers' responsibility to make their software compatible with the OS, but it also means that the OS manufacturer needs to make the OS able to deal with NEW software and give the game manufacturers USEFUL tools and specs (that aren't out of date immediately and/or changed every 2 months) to use to develop their games. I don't think M$ has lived up to their responsibility, especially since their OS costs so much more than it should.

If you compare the features that Vista offers, to the other OSes out there that offer comparable features (notably nearly any version of UNIX, any distro of Linux, or release of MacOS), you'll find that Vista is over-priced by a factor of 10! MacOS X for instance costs about $40 and Apple is still making money on each copy they sell. If Vista cost only $40 a copy, I think we could more easily swallow its flaws. As it is, $400 a pop should buy me an OS that was ready for the main stream and has all the tools that was promised. This thing is reminding me of what happened with Windows ME (and even M$ admits that ME was a failure).

This may or may not happen with this OS, but I'm only partially impressed with the OS. It has NOT lived up to the hype so far. Sure, you can perform word processing, web browsing, and other mundane things in this new OS, but you can't play the graphically intensive games people want to play. There are 3 versions of Battlefield, for instance, that you can't play on a Vista box. There are a number of other games that perform significantly WORSE on Vista than on any other OS. This was after making adjustments for Vista's memory issues.

Oh, by the way, WoW seems to work fine, but then again, this machine is so much faster than the other machine I was using that I wouldn't be able to notice any performance issues Vista did or did not introduce because the rest of the equipment is so much better.

I think I'll have to dual boot my machine in order to run the apps I'd like. Currently, it looks like I should get a second hard drive and install XP Pro on it. That way, I can have my gaming setup on one drive and everything else on another.

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