Let me set the scenario up for you… I’ve been using Linux as my main OS (and dual booting to XP for gaming) for a few years now. I use Debian Linux because it’s been very stable and provides a good platform for my work. But late last year I came up with the idea that I was going to switch back to Windows when Vista came out. Why? Because I was curious, plain and simple.

So on January 30^th I went out the door with some money in hand and a wild look in my eye. The goal was to score a new hard drive and a copy of Windows Vista Premium. This wasn’t as easy as I thought. I got the drive ok, but most of the stores were only displaying upgrade versions of Vista and I wanted the full boat. That way there’d be no excusing errors or failures later on. Finally, I found a copy at the local Best Buy. Now, I know that many Best Buy employees love technology as much as I do, but some of these people are annoying. I get to the checkout and the young man says “Now you know that this is the full version and not the upgrade, right?”, I nodded eagerly wanting to pay and get out so I can continue my adventure in OS upgrades. But he wouldn’t leave it alone, “Do you have at least a gig of memory?”, he asked with an overly friendly smile on his face. At that moment I cracked… I hardly remember what I said to him due to the migration related haze in my mind, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t too kind. Soon I was out the door with my copy of Vista and on my way home for some good clean computing fun.

After stopping for some fast food on the way, I settled down at my desk and cracked open my new OS. Vista comes in a nice clear plastic case and I marveled at the shiny new DVD in front of me. I decided I’d better start planning things out before I actually installed the OS, just to make sure that I didn’t leave anything important out. I had already ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor to make sure I was compatible and gathered the sound driver that it suggested. My hardware isn’t exactly top end, but I thought that I could squeeze by with what I have until summer and then upgrade. The rest of the migration plan related more to data migration and application conversion. I use Vmware Workstation for my job, so that would be an issue. My license is for the Linux version so I’d have to either buy a license or use another product. Fortunately, I also have a Parallels license, the only remaining problem was converting my image. I also had a large body of data to move, but I could easily use my external drive for that activity.

I installed the new 250 GB Western Digital drive and started the install process, it was pretty easy, very little interaction and it was complete. When the system booted up after the install, I added the sound driver and started looking around in the OS. The first thing I noticed was that I had no Internet connection. So, assuming that Vista didn’t have a driver for my on board network interface. I shut down and put in an old Linksys card and restarted. After I restarted, it discovered the on board card and not the linksys! So I shut back down and pulled the Linksys out. After starting back up, everything was fine. I’m not sure if I was just too hasty about device discovery in Vista or it was having some other issue.

Vista has a performance tool built in that runs some tests and comes back with a number called the “Windows Experience Index”. This tool measures things like processor speed, graphics, and hard disk performance and gives them a rating from 1 to 5.9 according to how well they perform with Vista. I’m not sure how they came up with that range, but maybe it’s documented somewhere. They also base your overall score on the lowest individual score you obtain. After running the tests, my score was a 1, pathetic! The low score was due to my extremely old Geforce3 video card. Knowing that I intend on upgrading my processor, motherboard, etc. later in the year I decided to just do a minor upgrade on the video card for now and picked up a Geforce 6200. This brought my index score up to 2.2 and seems to make everything functional.

Since I was taking the Windows plunge, I also purchased a years worth of Windows Live One Care. My plan is to stay with as many Windows OS supplied applications and utilities as possible, since they’re so tightly integrated. This affected my choices for firewall, browser, email, anti-spyware, and media player. I’m hoping that this will payoff in the long run, but I’ll be honest this is the first time I’ve ever used IE as a default browser and the next gen of Outlook as an email client…. I’m scared!

As far as my personal apps go, I’ve installed Open Office, TextNotes Pro, Quicken, Parallels, Keepass, and GenoPro 2007 without any problems. Games are a different story though, while I’ve managed to get all three games I’ve installed so far to work, it’s been a complicated exercise in tweaking. Learn to love your compatibility tab in properties, you’ll be spending a lot of time there! So far I’ve got Anarchy Online, Planetside, and Space Empires V up and running. But I had to put Planetside back to 98/ME compatible to make it work. I’ve seen others have it working in XP compatible mode, but that didn’t work for me and I’m not sure why.

All things considered moving to Vista doesn’t seem any more scary than when I moved to XP. It’s very stable for me (but from what I’ve read it can be a terror for those that try to maintain an XP dual boot scenario) and I’ve had no real problems. The Aero desktop is beautiful, even with my retro video card. I’m guessing it would be really snappy if I had a high end card. The organization of the start button and file manager is much better too. So if you’re willing to pay for an OS and not afraid of tweaking a few apps, this is a good move. For those of you on the fence between Windows and Apple, the answer has been the same for many years, do you want mainstream compatibility with a large choice of hardware and software or a fringe system with very few choices. Also, for my open source Linux and BSD friends out there, none of this really matters, you’ll make your OS work for you on whatever you use…..