Revolver Map.

Monday, December 3, 2007

VISTA is not an option.

Being a Linux user for 6 years, I was curious about VISTA. I signed up as an official tester for RC1 and RC2. My hardware consisted of an Epyx motherboard, 512 meg of DDR memory, AMD Athlon XP 2000 processor, Linksys NIC card, Sound Blaster audio board, NVIDIA FX 5200, 256 meg video card, Iomega 100 ZIP drive, 1.44 floppy, and a 80gig Western Digital IDE hard drive. I ran the tester to see if I met all the requirements of the OS. It said I could run any version, which turned out to be false. RC1 and RC2 failed to detect my NIC card, sound board, ZIP drive and my USB ports. I ran my Linksys disk and installed the driver for XP, and it worked. Got on the internet and started looking for drivers on the manufacturer's web sites. No one had drivers ready yet and most were not sure when they would be ready. Not a very good start for what is supposed to be the latest and greatest. I tried out all the apps and programs that came with the download and was very displeased with the speed. Very sluggish and unresponsive. Boot up time was around 2 minutes. There was no way I was going to downgrade from Linux to VISTA.
It has been a year now and Microsoft says VISTA is being adopted faster than XP was. But, in the real world people are buying new computers, preloaded with VISTA( you have no choice on branded units), removing VISTA and loading XP. Companies are not upgrading as fast as Redmond thinks, with new hardware requirements, increased license fees, training costs, and memory upgrades. There is no way I am going to downgrade from Linux to VISTA.
My Linux distribution, PCLinuxOS, is faster, more secure, needs less memory, is easier to install, and does everything VISTA does except get viruses, adware, malware, and trojans. The 3D desktop makes VISTA's aero look lame and only requires 32meg of video memory. Plus I am not tied down to the whims of the vendor, nor can they access my machine at will. Last, but not least, did I mention that it is all free?