What Desktop Operating System are you running now, and which one will you be running in a year’s time?
If you are planning to buy a new computer and are one of the majority of Windows users, after June this year you may not have much choice. Well, of course you will have a choice, but it would be one of the six editions of Windows Vista, or another OS. Currently Microsoft has a cut-off date of June 30 this year for Windows XP. After that you will not be able to buy a new computer with Windows XP pre-installed. This is quite short-sighted considering that Windows XP stills outsells Vista, especially in corporate sales.

InfoWorld launched a “Save XP” campaign earlier this year, and almost one hundred thousand people have signed the petition.

Apart from general resistance to change, what is the problem with Vista? Incompatibilities with hardware is the most common thing I hear about. Then there is a more serious problem: Vista is more secure than XP, but not as stable. This should be fixed in a Service Pack but Vista Service Pack 1 came with some nasty problems, not the least among them being to cause several programs no longer to run (one of them was the New York Times Reader).

Personally, I know I can’t delay getting a PC pre-installed with Vista for too long, because I still want to have the option of going back to Windows XP if I really need to.

Posted on March 8th, 2008 by mervyn