Many newspapers and on-line media are currently discussing (and often destroying) Vista Professional and MS Office 2007 because of its insufficient compatibility with professional needs. This may concern time, data security or flexibility.
I got Vista Professional as a free Licence from my school, set it up one month ago on my personal laptop (I admit, it’s a 2 yr-old HP, 1.6Gh, 512RAM) and observed exactly the same problems. Slow performances, total or partial incompatibility with main software, hard drive’s running all the time, more heating, higher start-up and close-down times, etc. To sum it up, I have not seen the advantages of Microsoft’s new OS yet (all the new functions copied from Mac’s Tiger OS don’t work because of the “age” and the insufficient graphical configuration of my computer).
I am using my PC for personal use only and don’t expect a very high performance for what I’m doing. But I think I wouldn’t stand only one hour if my company would ask me to work under time pressure on this environment.
Concerning the critics on MS Office 2007, I agree on n the fact that it is slowing down considerably the whole operating system, but globally I found that it was rather well done. The more user-friendly interface of Excel, PowerPoint & Co. might become an interesting offer not only for private users, but also for companies. I’m specially thinking about all the consultants and commercial, who, before PowerPoint 2007, had to add specialized macros to their programmes to make the content of their presentations a little bit sexier.
What’s good news for companies is that every time that Microsoft is publishing new OS, they act as a leader and all the other software publishers and hardware industrials will follow up with adapted offers. Most companies don’t like to take risks. My guess is that Vista will begin to be purchased by professional users massively in 2008.
Pay one, take two! 