So I am making the plunge to switch to the new Windows Vista.
It is not such and new thing for me though. I have been playing with it since it was in beta 1. But now I am dual booting with Windows XP as I test it out for the final switch.
So far things have gone pretty smooth. The only issue that I am having with my hardware is that I have a Hauppauge WinTV-GO+ card that is recognized by Vista but is not recognized by the media center in Vista. Also, the WinTV2000 program that comes with the card does not play any audio.
This is pretty much the only thing that is holding me back.
Things that I really like about Vista are:
- The image handling. I love the fact that I can be looking through my pictures and find one that I like but is a little off in color or brightness and I can just click the Fix button and fix it on the fly. No firing up Photoshop or Picasa to fix stuff. I can do it right there.
- Gadgets. I was using Yahoo Widgets in XP but I like the fact that I do not need to load a totally separate program to get the basic functions that I want.
- The interface. It is sexy. Is it a rip off of Apple’s. Maybe but I like it. It looks really nice on my 22″ wide screen monitor.
- Windows Media Center. This is really nice. So nice in fact that I am considering ditching the low scale Hauppauge card and getting something a little more “Vista” to take advantage of the cool interface. See my computer at home also doubles as a TV for our room so the media center is right up our ally.
- Icons. It is about time that Microsoft graduated from the Windows 95 style icons and went to ones that are dynamic and more scalable.
- Chess. I know you can probably get a better chess game on the internet for free but I like this one. Again, it comes with it and I don’t have to hunt it.
Other then that there is not much to bark about. I mean it is a operating system. How cool can it be by itself?
Anyway, as soon as I figure out my TV tuner card thing I will be getting rid of XP on my machine.