After using Vista for almost a year I am now in a reasonable position to critique it. As with most software, time is needed to fix start-up kinks and iron out any small problems. Their time is up.

Many people have criticised Vista on many levels. The fact that a full hardware upgrade is often necessary, it was missing many critical drivers and it didn’t have full backwards compatibility, gave critics the ammunition they needed to destroy perceptions of Vista before it had really gotten off the ground.

After almost a years use I could not go back to XP. Vista is different but essentially simpler. Finding files and documents is quick and easy, the control panel is even easier to use after a while, and it looks very nice. On a fast enough computer Vista runs smoothly and easily, loading times over the year have become shorter and it adapts to my computer needs.

My favourite positive on Vista is that when something goes wrong, Vista not only reports the problem to Microsoft but it reports back when a solution is found. Something that simple makes a huge difference when faced with a problem that could take hours of research to fix. If there is an official fix, you will be notified almost immediately and be able to correct it.

Although Vista has gotten some undue criticism a lot of it is warranted. Visible bugs are still apparent; I always get errors with video drivers and .avi (video) files. And to add insult to injury my graphics card is supposedly Vista compatible. Just two days ago, after months of no major problems, I received a blue screen and the computer had to restart. I was surfing the internet when it happened which hardly drains any resources.

Although Vista does have some great updates and improvements over XP which I can no longer use a computer without, its continuous bugs and random crashes are unacceptable. This after a year on the market place and service pack one released. If Microsoft wants to keep its huge share from the seemingly always working, always better and simpler Apple, then it’s going to have to step up its game. If it wasn’t for their large XP following and people’s lack of Apple knowledge, they would not be doing very well right now.