Top 5 Reason Not to Get Vista

Today I say a video at cnet TV that was entitled "Top Five Reasons Not to Get Windows Vista" by Tom Merritt. I thought he brought up some very good points that I agree with. I am, by no means, a windows hater; I use windows at work and at home, so you could say that I am a mild Windows user. It is good enough to do the things I need it to.
Here are Tom Merritt's top 5 reason not to get Windows Vista:

5. The search function is buried
The search function is not on the desktop, something that everyone sees every time they boot up their computer. Although search in Vista is harder to find, it is found in more places than in XP.

4. Closed Microsoft Ecosystem
The Vista Welcome Center is nice but it is pretty much Microsoft only Service Center. Vista comes with a built in RSS reader but it only works with IE. It's just another example of the Microsoft monopoly.

3. Lack Native Applications
All the non-Microsoft software companies are scrambling to get their programs to work in Vista. Even Apple has not come out with a compatible version of iTunes for Vista. What's so great about Vista if you can't use all the old programs you can't live without.

2. Price, Vista is Expensive
Here is the break down of prices for Vista:
Full Version
•Vista Ultimate $450
•Vista Business $341
•Vista Home Premium $269
•Vista Home Basic $233
Upgrade Version
•Vista Ultimate Upgrade $269
•Vista Business Upgrade $224
•Vista Home Premium Upgrade $179
•Vista Home Basic Upgrade $116
With Vista Ultimate priced at $450, for the same amount of money you could get a new computer, but it probably wouldn't be good enough to run Vista.

1. Disappointment
You can't have all the features advertise in the commercials unless you get the top Vista package (Ultimate). So all that cool stuff you saw on TV only comes with Vista Ultimate. Tom said this about the lower level Vista versions "Sometimes less is more but this time it's just less."

I am sure one day I will buy a new computer and it will have Vista on it and I am ok with that, but until then there are a lot of wrinkles to iron out.
If you are one of those people that wants to have the Vista feel or look but don't have the cash to go out and buy a copy, I saw another video at cnet TV that can help, "Make XP look like Vista."

It was another video by Tom Merritt, he gives some suggestion on how to get "the flavor of Vista for free."

Widgets:
Widgets are little programs that float around your desktop. In Vista, widget are located in the Windows side bar. You can get a desktop side bar from desktopsidebar.com; you can even download a skin to look like areo glass, that fancy Vista "look" that everyone talks about. I have not personnel tried this out, but a program similar to this that I did use is Rocket Dock, it is an OS X-like Dock for your Windows computer. The widgets that I use come from the Yahoo! Widget Engine, which is very similar.
Update: I downloaded a copy of Desktop Sidebar and tried it out. It works our really well on my work computer where I depend heavily on Outlook for email and scheduling, it all integrated into the sidebar. I haven't been had to get the Feed function to work yet but it will be really nice once that is up and running. The only issue that I have with it is that I takes up a lot of your screen if you have it up all the time, so I have it set on auto hide so it pops out when I need it and then when I am done it slides off the screen.
I also found out that the latest version of Google desktop comes with a side bar that is pretty comparable to the Desktop Sidebar. If you are one of those people who is all things google, you will probably like the Google sidebar better.

IE7:
Internet Explorer 7 is the default browser in Vista. So you can get that Vista feel using it. My suggestion as far as IE7 is it my look like Vista but it smell like Windows, meaning there are still some security issues with IE7 that could leave you vulnerable. Plus there are so many other browsers out there that are so much better, "so why settle when you can select" browsers like Firefox (my personal favorite).

Hover over programs the task bar get a preview:
You can download a Windows XP Power Toy called Alt Tab replacement. I downloaded it and it's pretty cool, instead of the little box with all the icons of your open programs it's a little bit bigger box with a preview of the window your are switching to.

Tom's final suggestion is if you want to power through and redo everything and have your Windows Xp look exactly like Vista you can get the Windows Vista Transformation Pack. It's free all you need to do is go to windowsxlive.net. This redoes your entire machine to look like Vista, and it even includes a side bar. He does offer a word of warning in that this installation changes systems files so you shouldn't just do it on a whim, you should read all the documentation first. He also says "once installed you can fool all your friends and family into thinking you have Vista"

So enjoy your new Vista (wink wink)

Technorati tags: Windows, Vista, Microsoft, XP, widgets

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