« Look up Awesomeness in the Dictionary…
Final ShakeShack »

Why Upgrade to Vista?

Published November 30th, 2006 in Tech & VC

ballmer_tongue.jpgIt seems to be the $64,000 question in this buzzless launch: Why upgrade to Vista?

  • It sounds like the whole Aero Glass UI is just going to bog down my computer.
  • I don’t need Vista for Office ‘07, so I won’t have compatibility issues that force me to upgrade.
  • It costs money (and more importantly, time) to upgrade.
  • I don’t have a touchscreen, so all those cool tablet bells and whistles are useless to me.

I’m sure I could go on, but the point of the post is not why I shouldn’t upgrade. I have plenty of those reasons. I want to know why I SHOULD upgrade? Techmeme doesn’t seem to have any answers in the wake of Ballmer’s announcement. Ballmer certainly didn’t convince me. I just don’t get it, and I think many people are in the same boat as me. That’s why the buzz on this OS launch is flat.

9 Responses to “Why Upgrade to Vista?”  

Feed for this Entry
  1. 1 Eric Ni Nov 30th, 2006 at 8:31 pm

    Most of the money Bill Gates makes from selling Windows will ultimately go towards saving the world. So think about that.

  2. 2 Andrew Parker Nov 30th, 2006 at 9:36 pm

    The percentage of the profit from my copy of Vista that feeds orphans in Ghana is so small, that I am quite unconvinced.

  3. 3 Eric Ni Dec 1st, 2006 at 1:22 am

    You’re probably right. However, Gates and his money drives much more influence than anyone’s and really gets things done. You’d also might consider how the average party goer can easily drop 100 bucks for a good drunken night, accomplish nothing and don’t remember anything.

    Of course these probably aren’t logical considerations to upgrade to Vista. But it may help you feel a little better when you eventually give in!

  4. 4 Ken Berger Dec 1st, 2006 at 8:30 am

    Because at some point you’ll have to*.

    The old OS (XP) won’t really be supported, service packs will come out for vista but not xp that at some point will be critical, etc, etc.

    Many if not most IT professionals tried to stay away from XP and stick w/ windows 2000 as long as they could, and that’s how it went.

    *Unless you just jump to Mac completely and forget it!

  5. 5 Andrew Parker Dec 1st, 2006 at 8:57 am

    Ken,

    I had Win2k and I COULDN’T WAIT to jump ship to XP because it was 8X more stable. Win2k crashed every few days for me, but the early reports on XP was it was crash-proof (and those reports turned out to be pretty true from anecdotal evidence).

    The same is not true thus far with the Vista release. All early reports seem to indicate that Vista is totally bloated and will decrease system performance.

    You’re right though, I’m sure I’ll have to upgrade once XP is no longer supported (in a few years, I would guess).

  6. 6 Ken Berger Dec 1st, 2006 at 9:25 am

    Interesting, my experience was quite different.

    Before XP SP 2, I heard countless IT professionals and CIO’s who made the exact same arguments about 2K->XP, word for word like what you say below about XP->Vista.

    Then XPSP2 came out and the same professionals were in even more loathe to migrate, citing inability to roll-back the ‘upgrade’, and other issues they feared. They finally acquiesced as SP2 admittedly gave major fixes in security, AND lots of software soon only worked on SP2.

  7. 7 Andrew Parker Dec 1st, 2006 at 9:34 am

    I was in an academic environment at the time, which is likely quite different from a corporate environment. That said, the Stanford IT Dept embraced XP immediately across all the clusters in the school quite early on due to its stability. That might have something to do with the fact that one of the biggest buildings, which houses the biggest department, on campus is named “Gates.”

  8. 8 Dennis Jones Dec 13th, 2006 at 12:15 pm

    There is no point in changing from XP to Vista. If your set up is working then you may find it doesn’t work so well after the change.

    I remember all those scanner, printers, etc. that would no longer work after upgrading to XP because different drivers were required. Drivers were never written so thousands had to replace their perfectly good printers and scanners etc. a waist of hardware and money.

  9. 9 ed fauver Feb 29th, 2008 at 7:15 am

    the clock is ticking on how much longer xpsp2 will be supported just like in the past with winme, win98se, etc. im pretty sure ms and the pc manufacturers, as well as the companies that produce all those scanners, printers, etc. all see this as a boon to their bottom line. pc’s are not like cars, where after market replacement parts will pretty much be available for decades on end. the consumer is forced to upgrade everything to meet with the minimal requirements with os upgrades, such as with vista. if your stuck with a non upgradable piece of equipement, then its a new pc that you will have to purchase. and if any of your peripherals are not supported with upgraded drivers for vista, well you have to buy new one of those as well. new and improved is great, but it sure takes alot out of your wallet after its said and done.

Leave a Reply