The short answer to this question in our opinion is no. It is very easy though for one to feel like they are in very much in the minority if they happen to be of this opinion. This is not the post that lays out a full review and all of the pros and cons of Vista compared to XP in great deal. However, I have very recently seen several articles on effectively the topic of “Why Vista Sucks” printed in mainstream, non-tech journalistic publications and I think they are very unfair. Criticizing Vista has become both fashionable and a good way to get journalism numbers. The truth is we design, deploy, and support technology in small business and operate our small business with complete dependence on technology… and we run Mac OS X (just kidding, we run Windows Vista Business Edition on our business critical desktop systems).

Windows is an overwhelmingly broadly used platform and must cater to that very broad range of use cases and requirements (i.e. those of home users, students, small businesses, large enterprises, etc.). On that note, there are many reasons why I think after they make it through switching, home users would like Vista better (including the new “prettier” user interface, improved media center functionality, etc.) but for now let’s focus on the improvements that will improve life for small businesses (and do improve my life as a small business owner). Here is a short and simple list:

1. Integrated “Start Menu” Search – The days of clicking Start –> All Programs and then searching through the list of programs for the one you need are over. In Vista, click start, type the first few letters of the program, and there it is. It works for quickly accessing files as well. Saves me 20 minutes every day I would guess than when I ran an XP system.
2. BitLocker – Full disk encryption for hard drives is truly one of the smartest (even critical) thing a business can do to secure laptop computers and protect the data on them in the event it gets lost, stolen, etc. In Vista, a feature called BitLocker encrypts the entire drive and is very easy to use. Big plus.
3. Backup Utility – The backup program in Vista is far better than XP. Good enough to actually use it for backup.
4. UAC and Security – Security in Vista has clearly been better than any prior Windows version (and than in Mac OS X as several of the recent hacking competitions have proved). Much of the reason is User Account Control which is not available in XP.
5. Auto-Logon – There are many very small things that turn out to be very useful in Vista. I really think auto-logon is a good example. For a shared “on all the time” workstation, it is often handy to have the system automatically logon. In XP you had do an actual hack in the registry where in Vista, you just check a box. Small but convenient, stuff like that comes up all the time.
6. Integration – Some of the best of Vista in small business is yet to be seen. I think that is the integration with the new Microsoft Server products including Server 2008, Essentials Server 2008, and SBS 2008. This integration will make managing your network and security much nicer than I think it ever has been in the past.

These are just a few quick things, the bottom line is that why people are still buying XP machines today (and even complaining that they won’t be able to in a few months) is crazy to me. Yes, there are a few compatibility problems, I had a scanner that is not supported on Vista myself. You know though, it was a terrible old scanner and it’s time was up anyway. I found the rumors about software incompatibility to be false. There are ways to run old software in compatibility mode and it works great in every case I have had to do so.

OUR RECOMMENDATION

Don’t run out and buy copies of Vista for all of your current hardware. However, don’t go buy new hardware and get XP machines unless you have an old line of business application you are just sure won’t work on Vista (and if you’re not sure if it will and you’re a managed services customer of ours, we can just come in with one of our test machines and find out for you… we have found there are very very few that this is actually the case). When you replace computers, buy Vista computers. Do not obsolete your system the day you buy it.

Let us know if you would like a Vista machine to try out, we’ll loan you one to test drive if you don’t want to take our word for it!

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