We as computer users have known for about the past 9 months that Microsoft is going to come out with a new operating system, making your computer now obsolete. Everyone has seen ads everywhere - newspapers, buses, subway cars, and seeing that people are selling parts of their bodies for advertising space nowadays, maybe the greeter at Wal-Mart’s forehead! You get the idea - Microsoft has been making a gigantic deal lately about how great and amazing and revolutionary this operating system is going to be to the computer industry, but is it really? By the screenshots provided below, you can see that the two don’t look much visually different. Now, as the saying goes, “looks can be deceiving”, in a way, that is true. There is more to it than just looking alike to XP. First of all, the start menu has changed. Instead of having to go click on “my documents” to see your files (by opening up a new window too), all you do in Vista is click on it, and it opens up right in the start menu where you can access them, move them, copy, paste, rename, etc., so basically, in a sense, it is sort of replacing windows explorer! The next major feature, which has been used frequently in the ads is the Windows Flip 3D, which is switching though applications (like you do with the Alt + Tab combination in earlier versions of Windows), except you get to see what is in and what’s going on in the windows in a 3D stacked view (shown below). Also, in the case that you don’t want to open up Windows Flip 3D, you can hold your mouse over a minimized window, and it will show you a small snapshot of what is going on in that window (individually, rather than showing all your applications like in windows flip 3D). Finally, adapted from Mac OS X 10.4’s “Dashboard” feature with “widgets” (more info
here) are Microsoft’s lookalike version called Gadgets. This is SUCH a rip off of Apple’s idea, it’s not even funny… they could quite possibly sue…
For the veteran computer users out there (that have been with it since… say… windows 95 or 98), a question that I am surprised that has not come to the mind of many people is: why is it that EVERYBODY is complaining about the switch from XP to Vista, yet there were seldom any complaints about going from 95 to 98 or 98 to 2000. My opinion is because this is a generation where most people are tech savvy, and most people use a computer just about every day. This was not the case previously with the 95, 98 and 2000 generations. It used to be a luxury to have a computer, and only advanced businesspeople and sometimes schools would use them, where they were merely data entry, word processing, sometimes data transfer and research devices, whereas now, they are used for chatting, email, slideshow presentations, music downloading, poker, stocks, news, gaming, etc., and having the top technology is necessary to be able to do this. When all you needed to do was word process and enter data, as long as you could type a few things in, nothing else really mattered - just as long as you could get the job done, which is why, out of the few people at the time that used them, it didn’t really matter to be on top of the trends or not.
All in all - Windows XP is still robust and gets the job done for most people, so unless you have been struggling with XP (which I doubt!), and that Microsoft will still support it for another 5 years to come, it is not worth it to switch to Vista yet.
Oh yeah... and here are the
screenshots i promised:
Windows Flip 3D:
Windows Vista Screenshot:
Windows XP Screenshot:
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