Reviewing offline software is a bit out of the scope of this blog. But still, since I’ve been spending a couple of weeks with Vista, I thought I’ll write a detailed review. But I won’t. Here’s why.
The thing is, it has some good points, it has some bad points, and it has some mediocre points.
But my overall impression is that it’s just not that important. Not Vista or Windows, but a desktop OS in general. The world has changed in the last 6 years. Desktop OS is not the be all and end all of your computer experience. Six years ago you wanted to start your computer up, open up your applications, and work as fast and as efficient as possible. Now, you don’t really want that anymore. You need that. You expect that. Those are the basics. You want something else.
What you want now is to get online, and you want the web to work the best it can, because the web is your new playground.
Of course, you need your applications and games to work. But let’s get realistic: they worked in WinXP, they (except the games) work in OS X, and they work in Linux. New versions of applications will come out and they’ll work with Vista perfectly even if some of them stutter at this moment. But all that is nothing to get excited about. Are you excited when a plumber comes to your house and swaps some old pipes with new ones? Didn’t think so.
You know which applications I used mostly in my couple of weeks with Vista? Besides Firefox, they were: Gmail, a couple of CMSs for the sites I work for, Netvibes, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, a text editor and a bit of Photoshop. Although I write all day (and night), I’ve barely felt the need to open Office 2007, although I have it installed. And you know what? All those worked exactly the same in WinXP. If you’re a gamer, you can get mildly excited over Vista and DirectX10. But not right now, as the games don’t work any better yet. I did, though, try out over a dozen really cool new Web 2.0 applications. But I didn’t need Vista to do that.
The analysts which predict that this will be the last ‘big’ version of Windows are probably right. It’s just not a big deal anymore. Let’s get over it and enjoy the web, cause that’s where the fun’s at.
Those are great points about the OS becoming less relevant. Not completely though. I’ve been running Vista for a little over a month and while it’s not perfect, everything is a little more refined than in XP, particularly networking.
In a way, that’s a big letdown considering the amount of work that went into Vista. But even my girlfriend (hates computers) thinks the interface is really slick.
Then again, I spend most of my day using Firefox and Office 2007, popping open an XP VM when I run into a compatibility issue. Vista isn’t a must have, but I don’t think most people would go back if they had it!
@Steve: exactly: it’s not bad, but it’s also not a global phenomenon Microsoft would want it to be.