Windows Vista, One Man’s View
It’s hard these days to buy a computer without some flavor of Windows Vista on it (unless your ordering from Dell, thanks Mike, also for those Vostro’s!).
Many people are asking, what is the big deal with windows Vista?
Do I need to upgrade?
Will it work with all my programs and hardware?
And what is the honest difference?
Click here for the basic difference between all the flavors
What does this all mean to you?
When it comes time, buy home premium, unless your in a business, then buy well…business.
The big difference your mainly going to notice first is the tweaked interface (the looks), Vista has taken note at the new clean sharp artsy shine of Apple’s Mac OS using Microsoft’s Aero interface (their fancy name for shiny new interface).
Included are many tools which help automate tasks for regular PC maintance:
Backup and recover, scheduled backup, SuperFetch (which is a PC search tool RAM eating nightmare) and other tools. You will also see new programs for looking at your photos and also doing minor edits (which can be achieved much cleaner with third party programs *cough* picasa *cough*.
For right now, I am not impressed with Vista, but I will adopt this slogan for my campaign at Vista:
Wait til ’08
Reason why?
Well many people who make the parts that are in your computer are having a hard time getting the translation books written (called drivers) for Vista, and making them play well with the OS (operating system aka Vista).
Many existing companies who write software are not exactly burning the midnight oil to keep up with the pushed out the door release.
GAMERS:
Many many many tests have been run, and Vista either crashes the games or runs them at an average 10-15% lag.
It boils down to this, if you remember it, when XP came out it was a hard bandwagon to jump to, but after everyone had gotten the wrinkles ironed out of there programs, everyone loved it, the same may come in time with Vista, but for right now, my advice is if you need a computer right now, goto dell’s website and order a Vostro, they are great PC’s that come with no ad-ware or trail based software and are still available to customize with XP.
Zapped! 
I actually bought a laptop last summer that has Windows Vista on it. I had to get a new computer, since my old one fried.
Anyway, my next question is this. What’s the best software you can get for ripping and copying DVD’s?
I would try http://handbrake.fr/ or http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (using the stream/save function)