Thursday, January 25, 2007

Hasta la Vista, XP?

About every 2 years I buy a new computer, giving my 2-year old computer to my wife, and dumping her 4-year old computer. Next new computer is due somewhere in the middle of this year. But when I buy a new computer, I automatically buy an operating system that comes pre-installed with it. And by the time I buy my new computer, that operating system might well be Windows Vista instead of Windows XP, as the official mass-market release date for Vista is in 5 days. Which of course makes me wonder whether everything will run under Vista.

Apparently the first game people tested when seeing whether Windows Vista runs games is World of Warcraft, like in this Extremetech article. The only games that don't run well are those that use the Starforce copy protection program. But Tom's Hardware reveals that with the current drivers games play slower on Vista.

I don't think that is a big problem. In a few month the driver problem should be solved, and most games should be patched to run perfectly under Vista. If I would still buy a Windows XP computer in 2007, and keep it until 2011, I'm more likely to run into the other problem, the games of 2011 not running under XP any more. I guess going for the future-proof option will be the better bet.

I looked at the gazillion different versions of Windows Vista, and think that if I get the choice I'd prefer the Home Premium edition. Hey, I'd take the Ultimate edition if I get it for free, but I'm not willing to pay money for a bunch of extras I'm not likely to use. But the Home Basic edition is too basic for me, and doesn't have the fancy Aero UI. Not that I'd really need it, but it would be nice to actually see that something changed.

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