I have searched far and wide on the internet looking for someone saying something good about Windows Vista. It's a chore. It's not out there! And if it is, it's buried deep in the muck of negativity. So I thought I would buck the trend.

"I like Windows Vista"

                Brian Haas

There. I said it. That wasn't so bad. I haven't had to duck under flying objects yet.

I have been using Vista on my workstation for a month now and I can honestly state that most of the negative press is a bad rap. It's almost completely unjustified. Through all of my browsing I have read three consistent themes on Vista.

• No compelling reason to upgrade from XP
• Incompatibilities abound
• Extremely poor performance

And countless negative rants that say nothing concrete except that Vista stinks and Microsoft is doomed. Hold the parachutes. I don't think I'll dump my Microsoft stock just yet. Instead, I'll offer my opinion on these themes.

Compelling Reasons to Upgrade

I can't really disagree with this as a principle. But this is only because XP is a pretty darn good operating system, and this is not a knock on Vista at all. For me, the catalyst for change came when my workstation died a horrible death. Through hardware failure I was forced to upgrade my PC and if I were going to make the Vista leap anytime soon, this would be the time. We are in the business of creating software and more and more customers are running Vista so it does make sense for us to use Vista. And there's no better guinea pig than me. I am the only one here now sitting in front of Vista full time, but we all have experienced Vista over the past year in virtual machines while testing our software. Though I have not personally seen all the bad, bad experiences so many people have documented, the constant negative information has had its effect on me. Without a professional reason to be interested in Vista, I wouldn't have upgraded. But now that I have made the jump, there are some features of Vista that I really like and I expect I'll find more as time goes on.

1. The Start Menu

I really like this change. The feature I like the most is the automatic search of the start menu. I never dig anymore. I just start typing.

2. Previous Versions

Also known as Shadow Folders in Windows Server 2003. This feature lets you recall previous versions of documents simply by right-clicking and selecting the Previous Versions tab. I don't know if this is available on all Vista versions, but in Vista Ultimate it's just there. Apple must have thought highly of this feature as well since their Time Machine feature accomplishes the same thing.

3. System Search

Credit indexing as searching a Vista hard disk is extremely fast. I know XP has indexed searching too, but not out of the box.

4. Aero

I like the glass. I like the eye candy. Looks matter.

5. User Account Control (UAC)

Yep I like it. It took a little getting used to and we have had (and are still having) to write code to properly support it in our applications, but it is a good thing. Prompts really don't interrupt me very often. Between the UAC, the Windows Firewall, and our hardware firewall I have wondered whether Anti-virus software is really even necessary. It's here, but I have wondered.

Are any of these features compelling enough to upgrade? I don't know. There is certainly cost involved with upgrading even a small business. But what I do know is that four weeks into my leap, I have not found a compelling reason not to migrate as system hardware is upgraded. And I don't miss XP.

Incompatibility Issues

When making decisions on Vista between compatibility and security, it seems the folks at Microsoft always chose security. This is a 180 degree turn around from past Windows versions. But when for years a company gets beat up and beat up and beat up on how insecure their products are, they start to take it seriously. Well I think Microsoft is damned if they do damned if they don't. They just traded their insecurity bashing for incompatibility bashing. The jury is still out, but I bet Vista's tarnished image will cost them faaaaar more than their previous security woes. What's ironic is if the world really cared so much about security, they should be flocking to Vista. Yeah, yeah, I know. We have tools to secure the insecure windows world now and MS has already fixed most of XP's security holes. The beast we know is better than the beast we don't know. With all of Vistas negativity, just knowing that most design decisions from top to bottom likely favored security, I have the utmost confidence that Vista is far more secure than XP. Not totally secure, but far better than its predecessor.

I won't give MS a complete pass on incompatibilities as they are as guilty as the vendors they now seek to point the finger on. I know of one application (that I built) that will not run on Vista because of Microsoft's decision not to support their own Microsoft database engine (MSDE). Sure the owners of that application could migrate to SQL Express and they probably will if they haven't done so already, but it will cost them.

I did have to replace my printer because of one particular printer manufacturer who obviously chose not to support their customers. This was probably the most disappointing topic of my upgrade. My all-in-one printer worked great albeit a little slow. This came as no real surprise as I had to actually purchase the last updated drivers for XP. This is the last beating I'll ever take from Hugo and Paul. I have no worries though, because my new Brother came to the rescue.

But as for the incompatibilities that I was really worried about….No big deal! I use a lot of software and everything worked, with the exception of VMware, which is pretty low level. And I mean everything, right down to my 8 year old Photoshop 5.5. Utilities, applications, console apps. Everything, but my printer and VMware. Some applications required checking the box to always run as administrator but I expected worse. Much worse.

Poor Performance

This one will be short. Not true. Maybe if I ran XP on this hardware it might be faster, but I don't wait for much. Of course, I am a programmer, designer, entrepreneur, reader and writer of stuff. I am not a gamer. And for folks like me who constitute the bulk of PC users, Vista is not a dog. At least not on today's comfortably equipped hardware.

I like Windows Vista. It's been said. I am sure I there are more like me out there…somewhere. So now that it's been done at least once, maybe someone with a louder voice than mine will pick up this trend and say something good about Vista.