Windows Vista - what's the hype????

Six years ago in 2001, I witnessed the launch of Windows XP at Starhill area.



Yesterday, I witnessed the launch of Windows Vista at the driveway of Low Yat Plaza. So what is so great about the Vista over XP?


The launching program was very grand. There were many people dressed up in white T-Shirts with logo of Microsoft and their supporting partners. There was also a local famous DJ, JJ from Hitz.fm who conducted quiz and competition on the stage constructed at the end of the drive was. Microsoft Malaysia really poured their money out to launch the new operating system together with their appointed software and hardware partners.

I managed to have a small test drive on machines that are installed with Vista. My opinion... ehhh... nothing so great about the Vista. I can see a better looking wallpaper. The navigation looks and feels like the IE 7 (which I do not enjoy, I prefer Firefox as a browser). The programs and folder icons looks more 3-dimensional. The desktop have more things now other than the desktop icon but it looks an Apple desktop.

However, I found out what was worse. Unlike the XP versions which comes with the Home and Professional editions, Vista comes with four (4 different versions) Even the Home version has two version which are the Home Basic and the Home Premium. Then there are the Business and Ultimate versions. Click here to see the comparison between the versions of Vista. Of course each version comes with different prices and available functions. It's a real let done now because you need to pay more for more functionalities of the operating system.

Comparing the pricing of each of the full version version, I got another scare, here we go:

Vista Home Basic RM 715-00 (RM859)

Vista Home Premium RM 848-00 (RM1,020)

Vista Business RM1,055-00 (RM1,271)

Vista Ultimate RM1,415-00 (RM1,703)

The above prices are only offered during the launch. The price after the promotion period are in bracket.

Of course after spending so much time and money to develop (and re-develop) the operating system, Bill Gates would want to recuperate whatever Microsoft have invested in this system, but would I spend the about money to get the Vista?

The answer is a big NO. The XP have been working well with me for the moment, I need not upgrade by CPU, memory and graphic card just to enjoy the smoothness of the system and view the icons. What I am using now is sufficient enough to get me though another 3 to 4 years which then the cost of hardware and software will definitely come down.

For the moment, my pirate friends are lying low due to the extensive clamp down on them by the authorities. Incidentally, I think that its a coincidence that the authorities came in to clamp down on the software pirates that have been operating for so many year(their shops at the plaza has been closed for the past 2 months). I thinks its because of the launch of Vista that the authorites were requested by certain people to clamp down on the pirates to make sure that the launch of the Vista is not marred by pirated copies of it. It would be a shame to see pirated copies of the Vista selling along with the original ones when it is launched.