You may have heard that Windows Vista has finally hit the shelves. So should you run out and get it? Well, first I’ll say that I like Vista and I think Microsoft got a lot of features right, especially for the average home/family user which I’ve already blogged about. But before you upgrade you computer you might want to ask a few questions.
Will my old software work on Vista? Maybe. It would be best to Google it and go ot that software maker’s website to see if they have any updates for Vista. Vista has some features to help old software, but anything that is part of a hardware driver will need to be updated.
Will my hardware be supported? Maybe. Again you’d have to check the manufacturer for a new driver. Your old driver definitely won’t work due to changes in Vista. Most hardware vendors will be producing Vista drivers but they may take a little while and may have bugs. But for most hardware that is less than a year old it shouldn’t be a problem.
Can my computer run Vista? If you have to ask then I probably wouldn’t recommend it. Most likely it would be a better idea to just get a new computer when you are ready rather than upgrade your old one. There could be cases where you were going to pay for software that is included in Vista that would make it worth it to upgrade, like parental controls for family.
If you are still curious, you can download and install an upgrade advisor program from Microsoft’s site which will evaluate your PC, including software, hardware, and peripherals. It will also help you choose the version that you want. That’s right there are multiple versions with different features. You can find the comparison here. Most likely you’d want to go with Vista Home Premium. The only feature it doesn’t have that I would want is Remote Desktop server which is what allows me to use my desktop PC from my laptop here in my recliner in the living room. But there is free software that can do that, too.
So the big question now is when? Well, it is kind of ironic that I just purchased all the components to build my own PC last night, including a copy of Windows. So what did I get… I went with Windows XP Media Center Edition. It comes with a coupon that I can redeem for a copy of Vista as did new PC’s which were sold since last November. I’m planning on using XP for at least another 6 months and letting someone else get all the bugs worked out and then switching to Vista. I’ll let you know how it goes.
