Chris Pirillo is breaking up with Vista due to a number of problems it’s given him. Scott Finnie is going with a Mac after a three month trial. I’ve upgrade two of our three home computers to Windows Vista and although things didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped, I still feel it’s a worthwhile upgrade if your hardware is up to par.

I wrote up a review a few months ago about my experience with Vista and it holds true as I read through it today. I’ve spent enough time with it now that I know my way around the product and can get to any setting I need. I can’t say enough about the integrated search feature. I can’t imagine going back to XP because of this single feature in Vista. It just flat out works! It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know Apple had this feature a lot earlier or I would have strongly considered switching. But I’ve now made a considerable investment in PC gear that switching to Apple probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Given the fact that I’m quite happy with Vista, I see no reason to at the moment.

I haven’t experienced the same level of frustration with incompatible software/drivers that Chris has. Nvidia drivers for my 6000GT card have worked great as have drivers from Creative for my X-Fi sound card. No problems with my three printers (Canon i950, HP 4L, HP 4215). I just haven’t seen many driver issues that couldn’t be fixed by downloading the latest driver from the hardware manufacturer’s website. Logitech hasn’t upgraded their drivers for my Bluetooth MX900 mouse but it works with the standard Vista drivers. I’ve had no problems with cameras, flash cards, or iPods.

I really like a number of small feature enhancements they made to Vista. Rotating pictures feels much faster on Vista. On XP it would pause before doing anything. They have done a great job with Windows Photo Gallery. Sometimes all I need to do is crop a picture and I can do that quickly in Vista without having to launch Photoshop or Picassa. I also enjoy the Sidebar which allows quick access to weather, stocks, a notes area, and network activity through the use of widgets.

Although not drastically different from XP, the small touches to the user interface are welcome. Vista just feels like a more mature product than XP in every way. They have paid a lot of attention to the overall experience. I don’t know if Microsoft Vista has reached Mac levels, but it just “feels” right.

Given the amount of time I spend on my computer, spending $250 for Vista Ultimate doesn’t seem outrageous as it has for some people. I’ll probably use it for at least 5 years which comes to $50/year or less than five bucks a month. The cost to upgrade would be less if you chose the Home Premium version.

Maybe I’m not quite as excited as I was when I upgrade from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 or even from Windows 98 to Windows XP, but I think much of that has to do with the fact that Windows XP has been quite stable for me. I’m no longer dying to upgrade to gain stability so many of the features take a little longer to appreciate. That’s not such a bad thing though.

I think that almost anyone whose machine can pass the Vista Upgrade Advisor would be happy with an upgrade to Vista. I don’t feel that Microsoft’s “Wow” ad campaign is an accurate description of what most users will experience. I’ve found myself uttering few, if any “Wow!” but many “hey, that’s nice”. People want that killer feature to justify an upgrade, and I’m not sure they will find it in Vista. You will find a solid, polished, feature-rich operating system. Whether that’s enough justification to drop a few hundred bucks on an upgrade is up to you to decide.

I thought this was an interesting read because I’ve felt much the same about my time with Vista. I like the new operating system and recommend it (after I disable UAC) to friends and family. But when they ask why they should upgrade I have a difficult time coming up with anything substantial. “The way it handles my digital pictures” doesn’t seem like a very compelling reason to drop $100-$250 on any new system if XP is working fine for you.

If you’re running Vista already, what do you tell friends when they ask if they should upgrade?

“On the other hand, nothing about Vista is truly innovative or compelling. With the exception of security (and we don’t know yet whether Microsoft’s security changes will be enough to significantly change the Windows experience), there’s no transformational, gotta-have-it feature in Vista”

–Link to full article

Sometimes I find myself singing to a song while I’m in the car or at my computer. I don’t give much thought to the lyrics especially if it’s a song I’ve known for many years.

But today I found myself singing the lyrics to “Ventura Highway” from America and realized I’d just said, “…..alligator lizards in the air….in the air….”

That made me stop and think for a minute. Great tune though!

[audio:ventura.mp3]

This is one of the strangest and humorous posts from the Dilbert creator.

“Convert your spare bedroom into a prison cell and charge the government $25,000 per year to house a convict. You could probably put two convicts in one spare room and earn $50,000 per year, minus whatever it costs to feed them slop”

On another note, have you ever worked on a project like this?

David Pogue of the New York Times shows us that Microsoft didn’t steal any ideas from Apple in developing it’s latest OS.

Source – haha.nu

TaIUkwPybtM

The always interesting, Random Good Stuff, links to one of the coolest footballs I’ve ever seen. A sensor in the ball determines the distance thrown. I would have loved one of these in high school or college….or NOW!

The 45 yards you see on currently see on the ball was a throw by Ty Detmer with a very favorable wind.

It sounds like a small number of Costco members took advantage of this policy to return big ticket electronics like big screen TVs in order to take advantage of large price drops.

It will be interesting to see if this policy change actually helps the bottom line which is the reason they made the change in the first place. A number of friends and family have purchased large item electronics at Costco because of their lenient return policy. I doubt that very few of them returned items to save a few bucks on a newer model. Will these people look elsewhere now that they won’t feel so safe making a large purchase?

Will the amount saved by taking fewer returns be offset by the number of customers that take their wallets to Best Buy, CompUSA or Wal-Mart? Only time will tell, but this sounds like a defensive move to offset the behavior of a select few at the expense of many.

Make it these two: Blog #1 and Blog #2 even if that means you stop reading my blog.

I’d cancel all my 20+ magazine subscriptions before I’d stop reading these two blogs. Heck, I’d probably cancel DirecTV when ’24’ was off the air for these two. 🙂

The HorsePigCow blog points to a quote from Khoi Vinh that I really like:

“Most features are for experts, but most users are intermediates”

I was reminded of this very thing as I researched Digital SLR cameras. Even the cheapest point and shoot cameras had features that would enable anyone to take excellent pictures. Made me wonder how many people spend $1500 on a DSLR and lens just to put the camera in automatic mode?

Is the product you or your company are creating for the experts or for the rest of us? As long as the answer was factored into creating the product, you should be fine. It’s the company that doesn’t know the answer that will produce an unsuccessful product or service.

Have you ever been at the doctor’s office and run into this scenario? The doctor finishes up with you, writes some stuff down and leaves the room. You put your clothes back on, jump off the table, open the door and have absolutely no idea where to go? This has happened to me several times and nearly always the first time I visit a new doctor.

Well, today I went to a doctor that took care of the problem. My doctor wrote up a prescription, said goodbye and then took off. I opened the door and started walking down the hall hoping to find the door leading me back to the reception area. Only this time I noticed large white signs that included arrows saying, “This way to CHECK OUT”. What a great idea! Maybe it was overkill having so many signs but there was no way anyone could get confused and not find his/her way back to the reception.

Kudos to Auburn Family Medical Center!