Dan Warne22 January 2007, 1:25 AM
Microsoft says Vista offers a richer experience and that you should be getting ready for a new day? Cut the crap! Here are 10goodreasons you should get Vista.
My colleague Ashton Mills published the top 10 reasons you shouldn't get Vista this morning.
I see his point on some fronts -- admittedly, Microsoft's official publicity material hasn't done a great job of explaining the basic benefits of Vista.
Microsoft's talk of Vista's ‘richer experience' and ‘getting ready for a new day' just makes the hardened tech user roll their eyes and move on.
However, I've been running Vista at APC since the earliest leaked builds, and witnessed its extraordinary evolution as Microsoft meandered its way towards the final product.
Sure, the earlier versions included some bold features which were dropped for the sake of familiarity in the final version, but there's still lots to appreciate about the "RTM" version of Vista.
I'm not talking here about a nicer user interface or security - I figure APC readers already know how to run a secure XP box and how to de-Fisher-Price it.
Here are the real benefits: things that will actually make a difference to you day-to-day.
1. UI built for the era of video and digital photography
It's not actually Microsoft's key selling point, but the thing that everyone will probably find the most useful about Vista is that photos, videos and music are not treated the same as Word documents any more. When you open a folder of photos, they come up as they'd appear in Google Picasa or Apple iPhoto. There's inbuilt basic photo editing. Music folders come up in columns of ID3 tags, a bit like iTunes. Finally, you don't have to rely so much on third party apps to work with your files.
2. Image-based install
PC enthusiasts spend a lot of time installing and reinstalling Windows for their own and other people's PCs. The Vista DVD is actually a pre-installed version of the OS in a compressed form, making it substantially quicker to install. It's also much easier to customise for unprompted installation with the correct defaults, and you can even install your own software automatically at the time Vista is installed - like slipstreaming service packs but on steroids. Read more...
3. Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation
Enjoy the just-baked driverbase while it lasts (19,500 drivers large). If you do need to use a special disk driver during installation in the future