The Tech Spot: Five Reasons to Upgrade to Microsoft Windows Vista

By Justin Varner

Although Windows Vista will not be out for another three months, initial developer and advanced user feedback based on initial beta and release candidate versions of the new operating system seem to indicate significant satisfaction. Even still, the five-year-old Windows XP seems to have finally reached a level of stability and widespread consumer interest, so is there a real benefit for the average consumer to migrate come January 2007? Here five good reasons (among others) why you should make the switch:

1) Interface-Vista features a brand new user interface which combines the best aspects of XP while demonstration a new level of sophistication and aesthetic appeal. The start menu now has an integrated desktop search function to easily find files and folders. Moreover, the new explorers allow viewing of files and their contents without even opening them. But the perhaps the biggest improvement comes in with the Windows Aero GUI, which allows for some spectacular visual effects such as translucency, reflections, and desktop panorama viewing. Words alone can’t do the new system justice, so go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/default.mspx to see the new additions for yourself.

2) Security-All new security implementations have been made to ensure that Vista is the most secure version of Windows yet. User account controls have been improved to allow for individual restriction of particular programs, games, scripts, and files to be opened or used. With the new Windows Defender, which comes built in to Vista, provides real-time protections against spyware, malware, adware, and other potential threats. Additionally, Windows Update and Windows Firewall have been substantially improved.

3) Networking-Improving upon the success of Windows XP Pro, Vista features some streamlined tools to make networking efficient and easy. The enhanced network setup wizard allows anyone to easily set up a home network using either wired or wireless means. The new network explorer displays a visual view of all the network devices currently connected in the network. If there is a problem with a connection, the diagnostics problem will attempt to fix the problem automatically or provide detailed instructions on how to remedy the problem manually.
4) Performance-Speed is a big selling point for Vista. Though XP was responsive in its own right, Vista has built-in techniques to drastically improve performance even on minimum specification machines. Windows SuperFetch allows for extremely fast access to programs that are used most often, and this can even be specified by the user. Also, the new ReadyBoost system enables the usage of USB flash drives as RAM, which takes the focus off of using the hard drive as virtual memory (VM is very slow).

5) Gaming-Lets face it, there’s a reason why Windows is such a successful platform and that is because of gaming. No other platform allows for the versatility and compatibility to run such a vast library of games. Vista paves the wave of the future by enabling native Direct X 10 support, which allows for superior performance and new visual effects, such as Pixel Shader 4.0 and advanced CPU offloading. But of course, Vista still provides superior support in running all old Direct X games from years’ past.

Keep in mind that Vista is a very performance intensive operating system to run and as such will not be compatible with every machine on the market. However, it has been scaled tremendously well and is designed to work with a variety of machines and configurations. To find out if your machines is Vista-ready, visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=”659″26&clcid=”0″x409 and run the utility.

It’s been real.