Vista, or not to Vista March 25, 2008

I have been using Windows Vista Ultimate since December, for almost 4 months now. I have installed SP1 in February, which (installation) went quite fine.

Before Vista I used Windows XP since its release and was happy with it. But Vista’s new translucent interface, new fuctionality it offers and its “newness” tempted me to install it. Back then, I decided to instal Vista on a production machine (that is, not for testing purposes) because I had just bought a new computer with Core 2 Duo and 2 GB of RAM. I thought Vista would be a great companion to my new hardware. And it is a good companion indeed, although I had some major problems with drivers (and with a user profile once — it got corrupted somehow). I tested Vista, played with it during these months and now I have a conclusion: It doesn’t almost offer me anything new. Therefore there is no need to upgrade to Vista. Except one thing.

I am a gamer. I have recently bought a decent video card (GeForce 8800GT (G92) based) and it supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.0. Which is only available in Vista! Yes, XP doesn’t support DX10. You can play DX10 games on XP, but you won’t be unleash the video card’s full potential.

So, I am either rolling back to XP (there is a SP3 being prepared for it), or downgrading to Vista Home Premium. No Vista Ultimate any more. It is too heavyweight.