Advantages Of Windows Vista Over XP?
source: Ashutosh, www.tekblogger.co.cc
Windows Vista was the most ambitious project of Microsoft this decade and can very well be treated as ‘unsuccessful’ if not ‘very unsuccessful’. Users who were using Windows XP have not dumped it out of their PCs and Laptops. Had it not been for Microsoft’s deals with vendors and hardware manufacturers, Vista would have had even less followers than are now. Though XP users find it hard to digest the pros of Vista over XP, there are some virtually very descent features in Vista that favor it over XP and other Windows OSs. I list out only few of the advantages.
- The first and the most attractive feature of Vista that runs XP down is Windows Defender. Highly secure environment makes you feel safer than ever. The best part of it is that it updates frequently and protects you against all kinds of threats. The advanced firewall, encryption and decryption of data, all make Vista safer to operate within. No programs install without security permission which again I feel is a better part of it.
- The photo gallery is another improvement over XP’s picture and fax viewer. You can do almost anything with your pictures (In XP, you would have required an extra software to do so). From editing images to redefining images from high resolution, digital cameras, everything is possible using photo gallery. Guess what, it also shows previews of movie files.
- The third thing I liked in Vista was the search. You start typing in what file or folder you wish to search and instantly a list pops under, letting you have a view of all files with characters that you typed in. Also, the look of the explorer changed to my liking (I was a bit pleased to see a renovated Windows Explorer).
- By creating a separate user account for your child, parents can control the activities of their children on the internet as well as the PC. From blocking games to controlling the websites that the children visit, parents can keep an aye on their child’s PC usage.
- I have used Vista for quite some time now and I feel, the OS crashes a lot lesser than many other Windows OSs including XP. At least I have not faced a crash yet in Vista. Driver failures are detected as soon as they occur and are corrected without you having to restart your system.
- A good reason to trust Windows Vista is that the feature Windows Update is now built into the system rather than requiring you to go to Microsoft’s website and fetching it. It is automatic and hence is a a lot safer than Windows XP.
- I have had a 64 bit version of Vista running on my laptop for around three months now, and what primary effect I have observed and heard from a few friends who also use 64 bit Vista, is that programs tend to run faster in 64 bit version than 32 bits. Though I must mention that the laptop uses more than 4 GB of RAM. Another significant thing to note here is that you must have application software that are designed to run in 64bit mode lest you may not observe any significant speed variance.
- The start menu is a boon. It feels so much faster to have the folder tree like design. You no longer need to wait for the options as they would come after a slight delay in XP. Though people will have to learn to type ctrl+R rather than click on Run in the start menu.
- For more non techie people, Windows Vista has a slightly changed user interface. It somehow tends to attract people. Microsoft has called this new interface as AERO. A changed desktop, enhanced icons, desktop sidebar, new Windows logo instead of START, all these give Vista a fair chance to be called as best looking Windows ever, though not many of us would take in that as an advantage or a reason for downgrading Windows XP.
- Also, for corporates, the imaging technology, introduced in Vista, has made it possible to have a cost effective upgrade in large offices where you will not need to upgrade each system individually (reduced per system cost).
- You would certainly love to have some programs running quicker and without much delay. Vista provides a feature called SuperFetch which accesses and loads programs quickly into your PC’s memory. This makes it a lot quicker than you you running it without SuperFetch. The intelligent SuperFetch designates priorities to programs you use most often and decides which programs must be loaded quick.
- Addition of a USB drive or a flash drive instead of a new and additional RAM drive was one thing I liked about Vista though I was much confused and still am, whether it would have significant advantages. You could plug in a USB or a flash drive and use it as an additional RAM to support your requirement for more main memory.
- Another thing I liked about Vista was the Introduction of Sleep feature. The fairly faster sleep and resume capabilities allow you to have a quick locking and sleeping of your PC, without you having to hibernate it or shutting it down. The system resumes from the state from where it was left unused.
- Microsoft has taken a lot of pain to add a lot of help to the user community with huge amount of ready information on Windows Vista available on the Windows site, which surely makes Vista easy to use and user friendly.
- To create a new partition in Windows was never so smooth and fast. You will need around 30 sec to make an entire new partition on your HDD. To add more, you will not even need a restart to create this partition and install the new drive!