It’s not been pretty, reading editorials from CPU Magazine and Maximum PC regarding the operating system new to the market….

One of the editorialists happen to be the man who brought us DirectX as a Microsoft employee. Credibility in my book.

Long story short: It drags down your hardware (therefore, get ready to do major upgrades), it assumes there is much piracy and takes a very “conservative” look for DRM (digital rights management)….and now, I find out when visiting Bad Vista that it seems many mainstream programs will require an upgrade (read…more $$$ out of your pocket). Also, it seems Vista isn’t doing well with many games.

Seems to me the “complete re-writing” of the OS has left the run of the mill MS user in quite a quandary…stick with XP (better buy a copy if you’re planning on building a new system, MS doesn’t make it anymore), or dump a lot of cash for the OS upgrade (BTW, XP Pro will not upgrade to Vista Home Premium), then more into more memory (512M is the absolute bottom amount you can have, with 4GB (can you say “$350+, Thank you Mister Gates!”) being the “sweet spot”), and then….possibly have to buy upgrades to business programs.

Toss into the punch bowl a friend of mine recently hired his first employee and bought a system for the new guy and figured he’d just get two to establish a baseline. They came with Vista and he couldn’t use his Canon printers. Canon techs told him they can’t get drivers to work, so either buy new printers, or drop back to XP. He also had some problems with QuickBooks Pro 2005 not being able to run. Net result of this first person report: Scrubbed the drives and installed XP.

Bad Vista looks like a place to keep up with the latest gouge and get a few giggles for you Mac guys, too….

I’m sure the business world isn’t gonna be happy….

Trackbacked @: Third World County