MicroSoft Vista, Part 2

Microsoft Vista is an operating system for personal computers. It usually is found installed on new personal computers.

For openers, let's discuss the concept of an "operating system." Simply put, the operating system is your computer's traffic cop. It directs all of the odds and ends that go on inside your computer.

All computers have an operating system - even your cell phones, your car's computer, your high-tech "IP" telephones, your "TIVO" (a TV's Video Recorder - VCR - on steroids).

If the operating system (OS) is good, you never know that it is there. It just does its job quietly, while it turns your keystrokes and mouse clicks into documents, screen images, internet 'activity', music, and the like. Good operating systems include

• Apple's Macintosh
• newer versions of Linux
• Windows XP, although it took a couple of years of patching before XP became a fairly good OS.
  

Windows Vista is still rough around the edges - and all the way through. Many industry pundits (and I) doubt that it will ever become a polished, well-running, unintrusive OS.

Technically speaking, Microsoft has stopped selling Windows XP and requires that all new PCs built by Microsoft Partners have MS Vista pre-installed. Oddly, even though XP is not longer being sold for installation on new computers, XP still outsells Vista. Go figure.

Why is that?

• Performance. Vista is overweight. It's bloated. It uses much more memory than XP or Linux. It requires a faster processor than those OSs.
• Quality. Vista is buggy.
• Usability. There are some computer components that will not work with Vista. There are MANY programs that will not work with Vista.
  

Some of those vendors - MicroSoft Partners - will thumb their noses at MicroSoft and will build you a less-expensive (but equally good or even better) PC with XP installed or with Linux installed.

They can 'install' XP because the Vista license allows you to 'downgrade' to XP. I challenge the use of the term 'downgrade,' but that's my personal problem. In any case, if you follow my advice, you'll insist that any new computer that you buy will have Windows XP - or Linux - or both - installed.

As PC operating systems go, Windows XP is a good choice. Most of the bugs have been worked out, and there is considerable available hardware and software that play nicely with XP.

It's a good time to consider Linux as an OS on any computer, new or used. Granted, Linux is not Windows, and not all Windows software will run on a Linux computer. But

1. Most Linux installations include software called "Wine". Wine is a product that is designed to enable you to run Windows software in a Linux environment. Not all WIndows programs will run under Linux/Wine, but 6500 Windows programs do....
2. Every day new Linux programs are released... programs that perform the same functions as MicroSoft-compatible programs - and usually faster than MicroSoft-compatible software,
   
3. These days, most people use computers for Internet browsing, e-mail, simple text operations such as writing letters (you know, those old-fashioned documents that required envelopes and stamps - and used complete words and complete sentences), preparing term papers, playing music, playing videos, and homework. Linux excels at all of those tasks.

Another option for running alternative operating systems is the "virtual machine." To use a virtual machine

1. take any computer running any of the Big 4 OSs: Vista, XP. Mac, Linux
2. install virtual machine software (all 4 have free VM software available)
3. use the VM software to create and install "Virtual XP", or "Virtual Vista", or "Virtual Linux" (Mac OS is different)

The virtual OS becomes a second operating system that can run simultaneously with the original OS and can share the computer's hardware resources: memory, disk drives, network, audio/video circuitry, and so on. You can switch between those 2 (or more) OSs on-the-fly without losing any data - or even with out 'losing your place' in what you were doing before the switch.

The point of all of this is that you don't have to buy a computer with an expensive, poorly written operating system (that would be Vista). You have alternatives.