Well, I did it–went through the process and ordered my Express Upgrade from Windows XP Pro to Vista Business. Now, I just have to fax the fulfillment company a list of answers to personal questions and wait for the mail carrier to run. It’s hard to find words to tell you just how ambivilent I am about this upgrade. On the one hand, it seems that there might be some interesting features in Vista, and I’m curious about just how good the security and search features are going to be. On the other hand, changing (or updating) an operating system qualifies as a major pain in the rear.

I’ve chosen not to participate in the beta program, so I’ll be seeing Vista just like all the other retail customers. In the meantime, I’ve been reading reviews like this one from CNet. Boy, that 7.4 rating really excites me.

I’m already hearing that the real upgrades will come starting with Service Pack 1. There’s some historical basis to that prediction, but I’d hoped that Microsoft would do a better job of rolling out a truly superb product from the get-go with Vista. Oh, I knew that the new file system had been taken out some time ago, and tht a number of other features had been pulled in order to maintain something resembling the originally-stated release schedule, but I truly wanted something to help me feel excited about using this tool once again. We’ll see if it happens, but my expectations have been tempered.

Categories: General computing, Software