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My background is in being an IT Project Manager but as a ‘user’ of IT personally, as my main passion is photography and graphics, I need reasonably powerful machines with plenty of main and back-up storage but not being a computer games player, have no need for “over-clocked” extremities that they go in for. I recently decided to retire my general purpose PC to testing duties and upgrade another PC I already had to replace it, I won’t bore you with all the intimate technicalities.

However the one thing I always forget about until I do it again, is just how long it takes to do a “virgin software build” of a new PC.

If you buy a brand new PC from someone like Dell, HP, Lenvo or Acer , the operating system and all the utilities are pre-imaged on the hard drive so in reality, it only takes 20 minutes to personalize a PC although the subsequent “service patches” on the software will take rather longer but, you leave it to do it by itself. However, start with a bare hard drive, load an operating system and then one by one all the utilities and individual software packages you need and before you realise it, 5, 6 or more hours have passed, it is a truly labour intensive operation.

This can be made worse with the increasing habit of software manufacturers requiring “on-line authorization” of their products as part of fighting software piracy so that re-installing something can sometimes require you to contact them for a new “authorization code”. Whilst there are a whole number of utilities that could be used that are fine in a “like for like” situation, most upgrades by their very nature are not “like for like” and anyway, you want a “clean” new install rather than dragging ‘clag’ from the past with you. From time to time I play with Linux operating systems and quite amusingly on the bigger distributions, they install both the OS, all the applications and update from scratch far quicker than Windows does these days !

Microsoft Vista

Which brings me to Windows and specifically, Windows Vista. The PC that I have just upgraded was running a 32 bit version of Vista Ultimate which had driven me insane when I installed it last Spring. However and eventually, I got it to behave and “talk to and see” other PCs on my home network . My impressions were that it was very pretty, does some things reasonably well but overall, I couldn’t honestly say that it was a “must have, must buy” product and particularly when I saw the Official UK Price List which was a total joke and invoked a “I’m not paying that !”, type reaction.

Clearly Microsoft thinks the same because you can openly buy what are called “OEM” versions for a third of the retail price. The OEM stands for Original Equipment Manufacturers but of course, it is yet another fantasy in the sense that you and I may be able to buy an OEM version from Amazon or whoever for £100 but the real ‘OEMs’ like Dell etc probably don’t pay £40 for that same licence.

To be fair, every software company has the odd “breakthrough product” as the product line evolves where it is a major break with the past and for Microsoft, Windows 95 and Windows 2000 both fit that description. The problem always is that the next “generation” to such products are always going to be a bit “So what ?” with the consumer and in this respect Windows XP did suffer somewhat from this reaction when first launched. However XP grew into a great product even though it required a couple of service packs for it to do so.

There is another factor at play here too, hardware, there has been a distinct relationship between Intel processor generations and Windows versions. Windows NT4 was closely tied to the Pentium II, Windows 2000 to the Pentium III and XP to the Pentium IV. Of course it isn’t just the processor, there are the chip sets, bus and RAM speeds also to consider. However, I recall having a fairly highly specified Dell workstation that was a Pentium III which came with Windows 2000 and it had no problem being upgraded to XP, there are few XP PCs today which will happily upgrade to Vista in comparison.

The problem is that with a company as conspicuously successful as Microsoft has been, if they make a mistake in their core business, people will be only too delighted to have a good laugh but in all honesty, are they wrong to do so ? The answer is No because whatever the intentions behind Vista as an OS, it is a total crock, the Windows 98SE of the 32 bit world and if MS had been wiser, they would never have released it and instead, have kept the “good bits” for the next version.

XP 64 vs Vista 64

I now have two pretty equivalent in terms of hardware, “graphics”PCs both running a 64 bit version of Windows, the older one by about a year Windows XP64 and my totally upgraded one, Vista Business 64. I was given a ‘virgin’ OEM version of Vista Business by a friend of mine as a gift but frankly, if I had paid any money for it, £80, £100, £200 or more, whatever price, I would have been so angry with Microsoft over what is clearly a totally flawed product.

I am very glad to have had the opportunity to compare these two systems – XP64 and Vista 64 on my own kit and using my own data because it means that my ‘opinions’ are ‘informed’, it is not just “chatter” from the streets. I said that both systems in terms of hardware are ‘equivalent’ but this is not really so, the PC running XP64 is based upon an older AMD system and a slower RAM and motherboard speed so in all honestly, the Intel system should be far better and yet isn’t. The reason is that Vista is a bit of a “bloater OS” so most likely, even the fastest PCs will only get “average performance” and the truth of the MS view of this pup is best expressed in there being an SP3 for XP scheduled for next year.

Microsoft just cannot admit they made a big mistake so I guess, sometime during 2009 they will announce the up-coming Vista 2010 which will bear little or no relationship to the “Vista” we know today in technical terms but as a ‘fig leaf’ to cover their embarrassment, why should we be unkind ?

My personal advice for fellow consumers right now is: Buy the best hardware you can afford and with Windows XP installed because it will be ready to run today and most likely, capable of running the next version of Windows beyond Vista which is probably going to be less system resource hungry.