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TechZilla Says:
The other day I was installing a keyboard on a laptop that had been recently upgraded to the new "Vista" operating system. My first assumption was that it looked like XP with a different theme and then the person told me it was Vista. In addition to several keys missing off the keyboard, he couldn't seem to get his Dell all-in-one printer to work. Apparently, Dell support had tried to help him but had no luck. The guy was partially deaf and the other occupants were totally deaf so I was able to communicate through him to the others what I was doing and would try to fix it for them. Poor guy bought Vista as a Valentines Day gift for his wife and probably now wishes he had bought flowers instead.
I checked the Dell Support site for Vista drivers for the printer but only found Windows XP. I was able to get the driver to install eventually. Vista seems to want to ask permission to do anything. It's worse than an overactive personal firewall in learn mode. Everything I know about navigating and managing the computer is at least 1/2 way out the window when it comes to Vista. The Start Button menu for instance, calls "My Computer" just "Computer". I bet Dell had the same trouble as the registered operating system for that system was actually XP.
From what I've heard, the upgrade versions of Vista actually require Windows XP to be installed on the system unlike earlier Windows upgrades. All you would have to do was insert the previous version cd in the cdrom drive when it asked for it. Actually this isn't entirely true and there is a workaround for this from what I recently read.
The guys in the video editing discussion group I belong to are finding that many of the applications they use don't work in Vista. They all recommend to wait until all the Vista patches are out for all the software they use or they may find they are out of luck. A good word of advice.
I'm not sure if the clients printer was actually in working condition or not regardless of the operating system,,,but it failed to print anything with Vista.
Based on my "First Look", I would say if you are curious about upgrading or changing to Vista, buy a new computer with Vista already loaded and all the software and hardware you need for it at the same time....all being "Vista Ready". Microsoft was ready to release Vista but the rest of the world isn't ready to support it yet. As with all other Microsoft Operating systems...wait until Service Pack 2 is released and you may have a stable operating system and all the software and hardware vendors will have worked out some of the bugs as well.
Microsoft has just extended support for XP home and Pro so there really is no hurry to jump on the wagon.