Vista launched, but not ready?

As of today you can go to the store and buy Windows Vista. But the big question is: should you buy it? Is it really better? Off course Vista was already released to manufacturing on 8 November 2006 and it was officially launched to businesses on 30 November. But as readers of my blog know, I had a very rocky road testing Vista, and even today I am still not convinced it is ready. And I am not the only one. Research company Gartner (not just your average Joe Schmoo), also thinks that Vista is lacking especially in the driver department. If you are a long-time Windows user (or, as Mac users might joke: "a Windows sufferer") you might shrug your shoulders and say "what else is new?". Six years ago (Oct. 2001) when XP was launched, there was exactly the same problem: there were hardly any XP drivers for your hardware. But a big difference with Vista is, that back then you could - as a general measure - just use Windows 2000 or even Windows ME drivers. Sometimes it was enough to just change a line of text in the driver ".inf" file and it would work. With Vista you might be able to use a XP driver, but it will most probably fail.

I have experienced at first hand that something simple as a Webcam (Phillips PCV 630) that didn't need drivers in XP (native protocol) didn't work in Vista. Neither did my HP Scanjet 3300C (which is just simply a TWAIN compatible device). Neither does my TV/Video card work (in fact it screwed up many installations of the Vista Beta) nor was my onboard audio recognized. I had none of those problems back in 2001 when I got my hands on XP: everything worked as expected.

So is Vista done? Well, as Michael Silver, Research VP at Gartner put it in his blog of Jan. 4th:

Well, in a word, no. In past postings, we talked about the importance of Microsoft Update (MU) to Vista’s launch. The reality is that Microsoft could not have shipped Vista in November if real people were going to be using it en masse for real things right away. With consumers not getting Windows Vista until 30 January 2007, and most businesses just "kicking its tires' (if that) over the holidays, Microsoft and the Windows ecosystem have an 11-week extension between RTM and actual use. That Microsoft and the ecosystem are ready for the 30 January consumer availability is much more important than that they made their 2006 RTM goal.

And, as Silver wrote yesterday:

The bottom line is that, with Vista, as with any new platform, early buyers of new Vista machines should expect that there will be a few rough spots to be worked through during the next few weeks, and they will need to stay connected to both Microsoft and their PC maker.

So will I make the switch yet? No, not for a while: I have the full version already but I feel no need to install it. Maybe when I get a new PC. But for now XP is just fine for me. As it will be for millions of people. Funny thing is: when I got my first Mac with the first version of OSX in 2002, I had no problems whatsoever. In fact: I have never had those problem with my Mac.. Period...