Taking (re)stock of Vista

Given the generally glowing press that Microsoft’s Windows Vista has received, the terse notice I saw posted at a service counter at a south Florida Circuit City came as a bit of a shock to me. I can’t recall the exact words, but in summary, it said: 1. Vista is a totally new operating system. 2. Circuit City isn’t responsible for any existing Windows XP applications not running on it. 3. If you bring your Vista computer back because of Item 2, you still will have to pay the 15% restocking fee.

My unintentional research is restricted to a single store, but it is clear that this store — or perhaps, the chain — is having issues. Although it has been a long time since Windows XP was introduced, I don’t recall any similar situation developing back then.

Of course, back then people were migrating to Windows XP from the “blue screen of death” all too frequently offered up by Windows 2000 or Windows NT. One wonders if the success and robustness of Windows XP makes it that much harder for Windows Vista to make a difference.

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Given the generally glowing press that Microsoft’s Windows Vista has received, the terse notice I saw posted at a service counter at a south Florida Circuit City came as a bit of a shock to me. I can’t recall the exact words, but in summary, it said: 1. Vista is a totally new operating system. 2. Circuit City isn’t responsible for any existing Windows XP applications not running on it. 3. If you bring your Vista computer back because of Item 2, you still will have to pay the 15% restocking fee.

My unintentional research is restricted to a single store, but it is clear that this store — or perhaps, the chain — is having issues. Although it has been a long time since Windows XP was introduced, I don’t recall any similar situation developing back then.

Of course, back then people were migrating to Windows XP from the “blue screen of death” all too frequently offered up by Windows 2000 or Windows NT. One wonders if the success and robustness of Windows XP makes it that much harder for Windows Vista to make a difference.

Recently we’ve had some of our users pine for their old XP, as in: “I love my new notebook. . . . Can we just get it with Windows XP?” Given the admitted face-lift that Microsoft delivered with Vista, however, it is hard to tell whether this is just a short-term, learning-curve response to the “newness” of the Vista user interface.

With this as background, I thought it would be interesting to take stock of some user experiences by checking in with about a dozen converts — or should I say, converts in the making.

The Circuit City notice pointed out (among other named vendors) compatibility issues with “Apple’s products for Microsoft.” This only can be iTunes. That problem apparently has been fixed; it shouldn’t be an issue for corporate users in any case.

The group I queried were running on new, brand-name machines tagged as Vista-ready, but several complained that they seemed slower than if they had been running Windows XP. One application of Moore’s Law used to be that, as newer operating systems and applications placed a greater demand on system resources, the new systems had more RAM and more disk space and were sufficiently faster that performance backsliding typically was not an issue. One wonders if this time computer makers are trying too hard to serve up inexpensive options — low RAM, usually — that are causing problems.

Not ready to take the plunge for Microsoft Office 2007, some of our Microsoft Word 2003 users simply say, “Word keeps crashing.” I know that we had problems elsewhere with Microsoft Outlook 2003 because of the 2007 trial versions that come with Vista. Because the newer modules were incompatible with older ones, the trial had to be stripped out before loading Microsoft Office 2003 was loaded.

To our chagrin, we found out that our antivirus vendor had not yet finished work on its version for Windows Vista. I could only think, “Where have they been?” With all the Windows Vista delays. they still couldn’t finish on time? We were told to use the home version until they finish.