I saw my first Vista demo last summer during a partners briefing/demo day. It looked awesome. Sure it’s “inspired” by OS X, but the two have gone back and forth “sharing” for years anyway, and that’s not a bad thing. Vista looked like a much-improved XP, with a focus on better security, better networking, and an overall better experience.
I had absolutely no intention of doing an upgrade from XP, but figured I’d sooner-or-later get a new laptop with Vista pre-installed. That’d make the perfect solution – I would get the best of both worlds. I figured, hey, when’s the next time I’ll be in Haiti?
My brand new laptop, as in the one that came with Vista pre-installed, shipped with out-of-date drivers. Let me see if that point is clear enough here. I bought a laptop, in the store, took it home, turned it on. Wrong drivers. Imagine buying a car, at a dealer, and they left the wrong tires on it.
It’s taken me a couple of weeks, but now I can proudly say that my brand-spanking-new laptop no longer crashes when I close the lid, nor do I lose the right-mouse button for hours on end. Anymore.
Clearly my productivity is at an all-time high.
My Vista test box is actually getting worse than when I last blogged about it (see http://hometheaterview.typepad.com/hometheaterview/2007/03/love_vista_just.html). Seems any time I open up Media Center for more than a minute or two – TV, radio, music, anything – it crashes. It also randomly crashes at other times and still doesn’t always come out of sleep mode with its Bluetooth peripherals intact.
I’m really going to miss the added security, pretty graphics, and dramatically better networking (it finds everything on the network – webcams, attached hard drives, WiFi printers, media players, etc. – without having to load drivers for them). But it’s gotten so bad I need to wipe it clean and start fresh.
-avi
Too funny Jeremy. Thanks for sharing. It’s hard to believe that any respectable OEM would sell a product without the correct drivers installed. I had a recent beef with Dell shipping Linux Ubuntu PCs without them being fully configured for customers. It’s beyond me why any OEM would shoot themselves in the foot this way?
I’m actually rolling back my Vista media center PC when I get some free time. It’s brought the system to its knees and since this was an upgrade provided through HP, I can’t even start with a pristine copy to see if some of the crap-ware is responsible. Also my VistaXbox 360 connection is undependable.