Windows Vista did not take speed as Microsoft might have expected but one thing is clear, one day or the other almost all of us will be upgrading to vista. Recently I hit upon a page on Microsoft’s website 100 Reasons You’ll Be Speechless. Unfortunately I found only 31 to be useful for a “general user”.

Mostly the points were either repeated, have good alternatives in Windows XP or have better FREE softwares available as alternatives. Now you know why people find Windows Vista to be costly. It just doesn’t deliver what it promises.

1. It makes using your PC a breeze: Windows Vista features a breakthrough design and easy-to-use organizational tools that make it simpler to get things done and get on with life! Find what you need instantly, on your PC or on the web, with Instant Search. Bring more clarity to your tasks with the spectacular Windows Aero user experience and Windows Flip 3D, allowing you to see everything you’re working on at a glance.
2. Because all of your music is just a remote control click away: Navigate and play your music collection with just the click of a remote control! Windows Media Center and a compatible remote control let you quickly search and select tracks visually by album art, or by artist, album title, song, year, or genre. Share your Media Center screen and remote and give everyone the chance to mix and play their favorites.
3. Because you’re always on the run: Windows Vista offers new mobility features that let you stay productive and entertained on the go. Windows Mobility Center, Network and Sharing Center, and Sync Center help you stay connected and keep your PC and portable devices up to date with your latest calendar, contacts, and music. Choose an ultra-light Tablet PC and use a digital pen to handwrite notes or make sketches on the run. Take a break and enjoy your favorite TV shows, movies, music, and games wherever you find yourself, with Windows Media Center on your notebook PC.
4. Your PC can take care of itself: Performance Self Tuning, Self-Healing technologies, Built-in Diagnostics, and repair tools keep your computer running at its best and provide automatic fixes, so you can spend less time dealing with problems and enjoy a more reliable PC experience.
5. Schedule showtime on your time Windows Media Center makes it simple to get your favorite television shows on your own time. Use a compatible remote control and the built-in television guide to find, schedule, and record live TV—and watch your shows on your desktop PC, laptop, or television screen. Don’t miss a single episode!
6. Because your PC remembers to back up for you: Windows Backup and Restore Center offers improved backup and restore functions, with automatically scheduled backups to preserve priceless digital photos, music, movies, and documents.
7. Get your new computer up and running in no time: Windows Easy Transfer makes it easier to set up your new computer by automatically transferring your important content, like files, folders, settings, and e-mail messages, from your old computer to your new one.
8. Set up your home network in a flash: Network and Sharing Center puts you in control of your network experience so that setting up, using, and managing your home network is a snap! Connect to your wired or wireless network, share a high-speed Internet connection^I and printers, copy files between computers, or take a break and enjoy your favorite online entertainment at home.
9. It works with the software, hardware, and services you want: Windows Vista is compatible with a wide array of software applications, hardware devices, and services to meet your computing needs. Just look for the Certified for Windows Vista logo to ensure you’ll get a superior Windows Vista experience.
10. Take the handwritten approach: Windows Vista offers digital ink input and handwriting so you can be more productive on the run. Tablet and Touch Technology, allows you to handwrite notes, make sketches, and quickly navigate through files or websites with a flick of a digital pen on an ultra-light Tablet PC.
11. Connect to the network at work or school: Domain Join makes it easy to connect your computer to corporate or school networks that are set up to restrict access to users with a domain user name and password.
12. Because you’ll know it when you see it: Search and identify your files faster—by sight. Each file icon in Windows Vista is a small visual of the actual file, so you can view it at a glance and decide if it’s the one you want. A video file plays a short snippet of the full video. Adjust your icon size to your own preference to make searching even easier.
13. Keep your info under lock and key: Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption provides full-volume encryption and boot integrity checking to help ensure that the data on your compatible laptop PC stays confidential, even if it has been lost or stolen.
14. Because you have a need for speed: Need to speed up your computer? Simply plug a USB memory stick into your desktop or notebook computer and let Windows ReadyBoost do the rest.
15. Your music can look as good as it sounds: See your music more clearly with Windows Media Player 11: Customizable album art and a stacking view of your music collection let you easily find and enjoy your favorites.
16. Because you live to play: Windows Games Explorer makes it easier to install, organize, and play your games. Thumbnail graphics for each game give you easy access and detailed information, such as the game publisher, the genre and rating for each game, and when you last played.
17. Take control of game time: Manage playtime with tools that set time limits and control access to games with appropriate content for your family. Games Explorer lets you review and organize games according to game title, rating, category, or content. Parental Controls make it easy to monitor children’s gaming activity and to restrict access to inappropriate games.
18. Because you can get more done when you work together: Use Windows Meeting Space to invite friends or colleagues to work with you on projects over the Internet, a company network, or an ad-hoc wireless network. Pass notes in class, swap photos at a favorite hotspot, or share your desktop to edit documents or take notes.
19. Because success tomorrow starts today: Windows Vista makes it easier to find, use, and share your documents, research, and other schoolwork. Organize files by date, place, or person—or label them with any word you choose—and find them in an instant.
20. Because you don’t need a PC to watch your home movies: Windows DVD Maker lets you create professional-looking DVDs of your photos and home movies—complete with transitions and chapters—that you can watch on your home DVD player. That makes it easier to share digital photos and videos of your family events with all of the relatives—even if they don’t have a PC of their own.
21. Because you want your video memories to stay true to life: Windows Movie Maker lets you retain high-definition quality as you capture, edit, and publish movies from your HD camcorder.
22. Because it remembers what you like to do—and helps you do it faster: Windows SuperFetch helps improve PC responsiveness and helps make system performance more consistent by tracking which applications you use most often and preloading them into memory for quick access.
23. Help is always available: Whether you’re a first-time user or an expert, the built-in Help System is designed to aid you in quickly learning new tasks, providing step-by-step support, and solving problems that Windows Vista has not automatically taken care of for you.
24. Keep your files confidential: Encrypting File System (EFS) allows you to encrypt files and folders—so if two people are sharing a PC, the data of each user is not available to the other. Windows Vista makes EFS easier to manage by allowing you to store EFS keys on smart cards.
25. Send a fax on the spot: Windows Fax and Scan makes sending and receiving faxes directly from your PC as simple as using e-mail. With fax templates linked to your address book, it’s easy to retrieve a fax number, attach your documents, and just click to send.
26. Because everyone goofs sometimes: Have you ever accidentally overwritten, deleted, or failed to save a file you were working on? Shadow Copy helps you protect your data from accidental loss by automatically creating daily “restore points” that capture older versions of your files as you work. Quickly and easily retrieve documents that you might have accidentally deleted—even if you’ve never backed up your files.
27. It makes your desktop come alive: Windows DreamScene transforms your PC desktop beyond simple static wallpaper images, by enabling you to showcase full-motion visuals like home movies or other video clips.
28. Your PC can be multilingual: Support for multiple user interface languages means that multilingual households or people learning a language can install multiple languages on their PC and switch from one language to another without restarting the computer.
29. Take your game beyond the next level: Hit the latest high-performance games with ultra-vivid 3-D graphics. DirectX 10 technology makes gameplay more engaging and allows you to use the same game controller with both your PC and your Xbox 360. With faster performance and more stable connectivity, it’s a blast to go head-to-head online against your best friends or other gamers anywhere in the world.
30. Check your e-mail without booting up your PC: Windows SideShow lets you read an e-mail message, confirm a meeting location, or check an airline flight reservation—even when your PC is off! Portable computers and other devices equipped with secondary screens allow you to view important information regardless of whether your laptop is closed or in Sleep mode.
31. Work your own way: Tablet and Touch Technology gives you new options for interacting with your PC—if touch input is available on your computer, you can use your finger to do many of the things you do with a mouse or a tablet pen.

Other points were repeated or else have better alternatives available over the Internet. Qualifications of people behind the development of the website content, which gives the 100 reasons, must be rechecked. Re think your marketing strategies Mr. Gates!

Check our vista tips category for some useful vista related tips.

With so many articles published under the same heading, I need to be different to glue you till the end. Right? OK then, read on to learn if the WOW factor of Vista and the new advertising campaigns of Mac OS X were actually showing you the real picture.

OS X is facing the lack of support for Macs by different Internet service providers. That is sad but true. A major reaon why Macs still are not covering that bigger market as Microsoft does. But lets start comparing point by point…

Talking user easiness, one of the most important parts of the battle, it’s a win win situation for both.

Agreed that Vista does not crash very often but the applications that run in it are prone to hang as ever. Why ‘minimize’ ‘maximize’ ‘close’ buttons look identical until you hover over them in OS X? Why one is asked to click ‘Start’ button in Vista when he/she wants to stop using the computer? Why one cannot re-size application windows in OS X? What was the need to bring in Flip 3D in Vista when Alt-Tab is the most convenient way to find the right application window? Why in OS X we have to press Apple plus backspace keys to delete files instead of just pressing delete key?

Oh, and where are the OS X games? And why does Front Row feel like the poor, backwards relation of Windows Media Center?

The issue of security gives an edge to Macs with the UNIX shield supporting it. The default setting of an Apple PC is such that it has all its ports “closed”. Printer sharing, remote login, FTP and many such daily use services are switched off by default. This minimizes the vectors available for a hackers to penetrate a Mac.

Vista on the other hand tries to deliver a lot easier interface for its users along with heavy security. But when it comes to making things easy for your customers you have to, by default, leave some loop holes. This is where Vista looses. Microsoft recommends you update its main protective shield every week, but with so many of spywares being released how long would these updates keep you on the safer side. This of course is a debatable topic. Plus you need to find some 3rd party virus protection to keep your heart beating. Vista provides the out of box solution but it isn’t enough for heart patients.

And with more number of people experimenting with Vista than do with Apple, Microsoft is bound to have more number of negatives in there favor.

When it comes to performance OS X initially was no where near its counterparts due to its inbound love for PowerPC processor. But with OS X falling in love “again”, this time with Intel, battle for performance is evenly matched.

Video encoding, image processing, ultimate graphics, mind blowing sounds and many more such points are NOT too different in either of the two.

But lets get to the gaming world. Lets talk about 3rd party applications. Be it games or the most wanted 3rd party tools, companies prefer to first launch there software for Microsoft and then later think about OS X. It’s the reach of Microsoft, or one can say the promotion (negative & positive) of Microsoft, which gives it this advantage. And do not forget Direct X 10 which will ultimately be accepted by everyone in future.

The larger user base seems to provide Microsoft an easy edge over Apple this time.

Who is more social? Vista is. It is malleable, easy to get on with and not afraid of trying new things, such as experimenting with new form factors. If it fails, users can seek the advice of almost any nerd in land as everybody knows what makes Microsoft tick.

OS X doesn’t mind losing the larger quantity of users. It dose not care if people do not love it, Steve Jobs does and will keep doing that.

OS X has that different touch in it but Vista has fame & the user base, in short, the easy path to success as compared to OS X. Simple enough?

You did not like the idea of Microsoft bringing out Windows Vista at heavy prices? You are not happy about the way Microsoft keeps earning money out of every release? Still, I am sure you will be trying Microsoft Windows Vista atleast once. Except for those who will be using the pirated versions (not yet available though) here is a quick description to all the flavors of Windows Vista with a EXHAUSTIVE study give n here.

Related:
1500 Page Vista Tutorial By Microsoft

As of softpedia here is an alternative perspective on the six editions of Windows Vista. One that is focused less on the actual features and more on the new fields that the operating system will deliver to its users.

Windows Vista Starter is the edition aimed at emerging markets. As such, it is a stripped down version of Vista Basic but it also introduces enhancements in the following areas Searching and organizing, Security, Internet Explorer, Sync Center, Ease of Access Center, Parental Controls, Networking and Pictures.

The new Search capabilities are common for all the Vista editions, as is Internet Explorer the Sync Center, the Ease of Access Center and the Network and Sharing Center. In this regard, Home Basic delivers extra sharing options as well as Windows Easy Transfer.

With Windows Vista Home Premium, users will be getting their money’s worth. Home premium offers on top of the Home Basic features: Windows Media Center, Windows Aero, Mobile PC and Tablet PC features.

Windows Vista Business has a Backup and Restore Center, Windows Easy Transfer, Windows meeting Space Small Business Resources on top of what Home Premium offers, but without Windows media center.

Windows Vista Enterprise builds on top of the Business edition with features such as BitLocker.

Windows Vista Ultimate delivers the whole Vista package, including Searching and organizing, Security, Internet Explorer, Windows Aero, Sync and sharing, Windows Easy Transfer, Ease of Access Center, Parental Controls, Backup and Restore Center, Networking, Windows Meeting Space, Windows Media Center, Pictures, Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption, Mobile PC features and Tablet PC features.