By Gerhard Ramsaroop
(reviewed by Brian Persaud – a leading IT engineer)
Microsoft Windows is a computer operating system (OS) first introduced in November 1985 and today Windows has approximately 90% of the client computer market share worldwide. As a result, walk into any office in Guyana and chances are the computers are Windows driven.
Windows Vista is the most recent client version of the Microsoft operating systems (OS) available in several flavours – Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. It was released worldwide on January 30, 2007. Mainstream support for the previous version, Windows XP, ended on April 14, 2009. However, extended support for XP will continue until April 8, 2014, meaning that security update support, and information from Microsoft Knowledge Base and Help and Support will still be available for almost five more years. However warranty claims, design changes and feature requests have ended.
Windows Vista market share began increasing at a faster rate after April 2009 and will therefore be found on more and more PCs. I personally only began using Vista within the last 6 months, two years after its release, and so I haven’t experienced the frustrations of early users. Despite my reservations about Microsoft’s business practices, and knowing also that there are more stable and secure operating systems out there (Linux, Mac OS), I honestly do like Vista. I have found Vista to be smooth, attractive, and more than adequate for my personal uses. Mind you, I am a light user confined mostly to Word, Excel and the internet.
Vista comes with additional security features over XP that allow you to enforce stricter control. Microsoft says: “Like a babysitter who never sleeps, Windows Vista can enforce parent-guided restrictions to help keep children safer. The Parental Controls feature built into Windows Vista (all editions except Business and Enterprise) helps you manage how your children use the PC. You can oversee the games they play, right down to which types of games each person can play by rating, content, or title. You can also control the applications they can use, and the websites they can visit – and when. You can even set up specific times your children can use the computer and Windows Vista will enforce those restrictions.”
These restrictions should be enforced if you bring your work laptop home, or if you have a home office. This would effectively allow your one computer to double for home and office use.
Search is improved in Vista, and unlike XP, you can simply type a few letters of your search request, and the results appear on the fly. The built-in firewall has more advanced functions making it superior to XP’s. A new feature, User Account Control (UAC), stops malicious software (viruses, Trojans, spyware) from running automatically, as is prone to occur in XP. I must be careful to warn however, that as with any Microsoft OS, you are still generally more vulnerable to malicious software (malware) than any other OS (Linux, Mac OS). Safe practices, such as ensuring your OS and security software (anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall) are all up to date, surfing the internet wisely and being careful of what you download, are strongly urged. The latest major update to Vista is service pack two (SP2).
When purchasing a computer pre-loaded with Vista, be careful to ensure that it meets the minimum requirements for smooth operation. These usually are higher than Microsoft’s requirements, which are set to maximise sales and could lead to an unpleasant experience for uninformed customers. What makes Vista pretty is the Aero interface, but this is what really puts the extra demands on your hardware. At least two gigabytes (2GB) of memory (RAM) is recommended and AMD Athlon and Intel Pentium 4 are preferred over AMD Sempron and Intel Celeron processors (not that they won’t work). SATA hard drives will give you better performance over the older IDE type. For newer machines falling below these requirements you should downgrade to XP or upgrade your hardware. Attention to hardware is particularly important when buying a laptop since they are expensive to upgrade afterwards, and processor upgrades are usually not possible (especially here).
In Guyana, the purchase of a new computer still remains a major investment for most of us, and it must be protected from the power company, dear old GPL. It is imperative that the electrical outlet/point (or multi-outlet circuit) is properly wired to NEC standards, and highly recommended that it be independently run from your breaker/fuse panel and also independently grounded. Based on my experience, I recommend using APC products – Line Conditioners, UPS/Battery Backups and Performance/Network series surge protectors (let through voltage <40 volts – this is more effective than the built-in surge protection on the UPS and Line Conditioners which have a let through of 330 volts).
By no means am I advocating a change to Vista from XP solely for the sake of it. Overall, I do not believe the changes in Vista are that significant, and I would advise businesses to be cautious about rushing to Vista, especially since it would entail money and possible downtime. Once XP has already been established at your office it would be better to downgrade any new (Vista) computers coming in to XP. Of course, computers for downgrade can fall below the hardware requirements for Vista, but must remain sufficient for good performance with XP – at least 512MB RAM, any hard drive greater than 20GB, and any processor over 1.5 GHz.
The author would like to thank Brian Persaud (a leading IT Engineer) for reviewing this article prior to publication.
References:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy
http://www.statowl.com/operating_system_market_share_by_os_version_trend.php?limit[]=windows&limit[]=mac&limit[]=linux&mes=ndd
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/discover/default.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/windowsvista/torres_duel.mspx