Vista Vexation

I am a reasonably techno savvy person who likes to have the newest gadget when I can afford it.
So, when my old laptop died, I jumped at the chance to get a replacement that was state of the art.
Since Vista operating system for Windows is the newest therefore it must be the best right?! Well, yes and no but mostly it was more hassle than the trial version was worth.

A trial student version of Vista office suite 2007 was pre-installed on the Hewitt-Packard Pavilion notebook I purchased. It crashed when I downloaded Mozilla Firefox, stopped working the day after I registered on-line (which was a lot shorter than the advertised 2 month trial period), does require repeated permission to complete any change (just like the Mac commercial) but its worst sin is lacking backward compatibility with any earlier windows version without a Microsoft download patch.

The e-mail I received for registry confirmation of the trial version of Student said “File Conversion kit – Your friends and colleagues will need this kit to convert files and documents created using the trial program back to a version compatible with older software.” At this site you can learn more about Vista and download the 60-day trial version. (It is a cheery yellow color too-perhaps to offset the angst of consumers.)

When it stopped functioning a day later, I discovered there is a lock feature that will only allow viewing of the existing document. This lockdown was supposed to occur at the end to the trial-not the beginning. I tried in vain to cut and paste my lengthy document into another prior version of windows version I’d hastily installed. When it locked up I was under a deadline and needed to get it working without spending the money for the full version. My eventual solution involved installing a Windows office suite version 2003 on my PC and retyping it from the locked Vista office 2007 version of Word.

The same compatibility issue plagued my transported jump-drive documents. If I wanted to take my work and continue it at any FCCJ computer-I couldn’t. I wasn’t able to work on my writing projects because Vista’s documents will not translate to the old office suite. And I don’t have administrative rights to download software onto those machines. The documents created in Vista won’t even open so you can retype them on a machine that lacks a Vista installation.

This is monopolistic behavior by a large corporation forced upon consumers. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the world-wide production of documents. The upgrade expenditures alone will be dramatic not to mention the training cost and time.

Vista is not all bad. (Though it did hi-jack my document.) It is a valiant attempt to advance Word by adding many bells and whistles. Additions to word include new colorful easier to read horizontal bars that visually display previews of various fonts, sizes etc. when the cursor moves over them. It makes sending information via snail mail much easier and automates bibliography research papers’ styles such as APA and MLA. Vista has a new translate function and allows quick insertion of tables and other graphics into the text. Many more time-saving details have been incorporated to automatic from manual. Several documents can be displayed at once on the desktop in a variety of ways. One of the most useful new functions for students given a writing prompt is an automatic word counter that tallies the number of words in real-time as the document is created.

It is the future of Microsoft operating systems so I registered again and downloaded again. Vista is functional for the moment…
Vista’s marketing boasts “It’s a new day. It’s a new office.” But set-up time for the new way is inconsistent and time consuming and productivity is essential to any office. My advice is to stay with Windows XP or earlier version and boycott these unfair practices by Microsoft. When faced with these growing pains, I pine for that Mac book Pro I considered buying.

After learning of my ordeal are you ready and willing to ‘upgrade’ to Vista?