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Five Reasons Not to Upgrade to Windows Vista

Many people have asked me if they should upgrade to Windows Vista. Here are my reasons why I think sticking with Windows XP is a better course of action.

  1. Upgrading any Windows operating system is not an easy thing to do, so upgrades are usually done to solve a specific problem. But Windows XP SP2 (service pack 2) is stable and works very well, so there’s no problem to fix, and not a lot of reason to upgrade.

    The only reason at this point to upgrade is Microsoft’s announcement that they will no longer offer Windows XP for purchase after June 30, 2008 to consumers. If you are planning to buy a PC after that date, look for a "business" class computer instead of a “home” computer, and ask for the "Vista Business Downgrade Bonus". Both Dell and Lenovo are offering this to customers.

  2. Windows Vista Business is a very large operating system, and it requires specific hardware and a lot of computing resources to run. This means that if you load Vista Business on a PC that was running Windows XP Professional, and do nothing else to upgrade the hardware, that PC will run slower because Vista requires more RAM and processor speed.

  3. In fact, most businesses are not upgrading to Vista. Vista was released in January 2007. Gartner, a leading IT research firm, polled its corporate clients and found that only 1% have upgraded to Vista on internal desktops since its release. Not a ringing endorsement.

  4. Vista was built from scratch instead of using Windows XP as a base. Hence, the design is quite a bit different than Windows XP, and many common software programs are unable to run on Vista. Software companies are not rushing to provide newer versions that do work with Vista, either. If you upgrade, you may find that some of your older software no longer works, and no fix is available.

  5. Your total upgrade costs can be considerable. Vista requires at least 2 GB of RAM, and 128 MB of video RAM just for a start, so you may need to upgrade your computer hardware just to get to a point where you can install Vista. In addition, an upgrade version of Vista costs anywhere from $159 to $259. On top of this, you may have to upgrade your anti-virus software and possibly your printer and scanner because your current equipment may not be compatible with Vista.

A newer version of Windows will be released around January 2010. Maybe Microsoft will realize by then that a newer operating system should run better than the operating system being replaced. I am going to wait and see myself.

Done with Windows Vista, take me back to Computer Tips


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