I got my hands on a new Vista laptop yesterday and I have to say I was impressed. I had to set it up from scratch, the only thing which went wrong was AVG, in the end I gave up and installed Avast. Aside from that it was quite a smooth experience. It was quicker to set up than an XP machine and had no trouble detecting the wireless signal I use.

It was Vista Home Basic running on a 1GB Dell Vostro 860 and it was as fast as XP running on a similar spec machine. I think it is slightly slower to hibernate and restart but not noticeably. The interface is nice, generally familiar to an XP user and the search function works well. From the outside it looks like an enhanced version of XP.

Adding applications was simple, aside from my AVG problems everything I tried (Acrobat, Flash, Firefox, OpenOffice 3) worked first time without any glitches. It is a good OS and I’m surprised it gets all the bad press. Perhaps this is because I waited for SP1 and bought it with a new machine so I didn’t see all the infuriating errors. That said in a straight comparison with Leopard I think it stands up well and bear in mind I am running a Mac Pro with 4GB RAM to compare it.

The recently announced Windows 7 suggests MS is going back to quicker iterations of its OS with less fanfare. Looking back we could view XP, XPSP1, XPSP2, Vista and VSP1 as essentially iterations of the same OS in the way OSX has had Tiger, Leopard and so on. I think this is a good sign as Microsoft’s traditional strength is writing competent software, not doing jazzy PR.

Pic: WVS

I’ve been reading through some more of the coverage on Windows 7 and two things struck me. First of all Vista has been abandoned. I don’t know what the release date for W7 is but its perfectly conceivable that most users could stick with XP then jump straight to W7, assuming they wanted to stay with Microsoft at all.

The second thing is that with all the features that were demonstrated at D6, touch screens and the like, along with the other devices which have dribbled out like the interactive coffee table MS is looking beyond desktops. Now it is true that Gates has stepped down but I don’t think the current leadership has sufficient imagination to deviate from the strategy he has laid down. In a way they would be stupid to abandon it entirely as whatever else you can say about Bill Gates he is a brilliant strategist.

What it seems to me is that they are creating an operating system for an entire house, not just a desktop. I think MS imagines a world in which it runs your TV, mobile device, coffee table, fridge etc. etc. in the same way in ran your desktop and everyone will have to dance to their tune as everyone did in the nineties. This is why they put all the money into the Xbox – the games console as Trojan horse for the living room. Unfortunately Nintendo have thrown a spanner in the works with the cheaper and much more innovative Wii.

I think MS are as likely to succeed with this as they were with their ill fated attempt to usurp the Internet with MSN. This is not to say that MS has no place in the future but they will never have the dominance they had over the PC desktop. They are not the only company to suffer from such delusions, Apple seems to have similar ideas with Apple TV, iPhone, iTunes and so on. And they have made a similar mistake by tying down their STB to such an extent nobody will use it. They have taken the wrong lesson from the success of the iPod which thrived as because it was built on the back of filesharing, not the iTunes Store.

What any large company aiming to control everything fails to grasp is that those days are over. The ultimate goal of any company wanting to succeed is to look at what their users want rather than what they want. Users are in control now and the companies that recognise it will be the ones that prosper.

Leaked screen shots of Windows 7 have been posted by Crunchgear. All I can say is CONGRATULATIONS MICROSOFT!!!

It looks just like Leopard, only badly designed!