My husband and I went to Future shop a couple of months ago to pick up a repaired DVD recorder. While we were there he decided to “look” at the computers and what was on offer. Always an expensive exercise. We ended up leaving the shop with a brand spanking new computer for me with Vista installed. My husband was right, my five year old computer has been showing signs of imminent death. First my dvd burner died, then one by one my usb ports wouldn’t work (or work reliably). And as my business is using my computer, he did have a point that a new computer was in the cards.

However, I was adamant that I didn’t want Vista. For a number of reasons. I object to the Big Brother approach of Microsoft. I hate the mentality in any business of bringing out a new model of something in order to have people feel the need to stay up to date. (don’t get me started on the cell phone and adapter issue) But from a practical point of view I knew that certain programs and peripherals I own were not going to work. First, my pda made by Casio is no longer supported by Windows, nor was Casio doing any further updates to it. It is fairly big and clunky compared to the lovely slim-lined pda’s that are out there today, but I use it, it works and if it ain’t broke, why replace it? (okay, I get an error with Outlook every time I close down that program, but I can still put in my contacts and diary dates so that’s no big deal) I’ve had it since 1999 I think, and in computer years that is pretty ancient, but I wasn’t prepared to go out and spend a few more hundred dollars replacing it. Second, I am doing more and more websites with cascading style sheets. These are supported in different browsers to varying degrees and there was no way I could have Internet Explorer 6 on a new computer. And I need it as I’m pretty sure more than 60% of people are still using that version. Heck, most of the clients I see have only in the last year switched over to XP from Windows 98! So I was really concerned that I wasn’t going to be able to see any issues as I worked on new websites.

So for the past two/three months my husband has been loading on programs on this new computer and I’ve been putting off switching over. Gerry has loved Vista’s look and playing some of the neat games that come bundled with it. And I did like the look of the cute clock on the right hand side of the screen, but honestly, it just wasn’t enough for me to get over my issues with it.

Finally we decided that the deed would be done over the holidays when no one would be asking me for updates or other work. And I asked him nicely if he would be terribly upset if we took off Vista and loaded on my paid for XP operating system. With good grace, he backed up Vista so I have it paid for when and if I’m ready for it, and I now have a computer that is running twice as fast as my old one, has twice the memory and still is able to use my pda and all the versions of software that I use.

But I’m not alone in my decision to keep with the old and put off new technology. According to a pair of surveys in ComputerWorld magazine, about 43% of all U.S. businesses in Dec 2006 were planning to upgrade to Vista. Eleven months later (after Vista’s debut) that number had dropped to 10%. Apparently, people complained that Vista took longer to do some tasks than it had with XP and the security features were more trouble than they were worth.