Product Review: Windows Vista Home Premium Edition

Recently I purchased a new Sony Vaio laptop, which came pre-loaded with the new Windows Operating System, Vista. I was somewhat leery of using something so new form Microsoft, especially without any patches available the day I bought it. But, I tucked my fears of the new bug-infested operating system deep inside me and decided to shell out the money for the new laptop anyway. The only reason I went ahead against my better judgment was because I already own one Vaio and love it. I thought for some reason that the actual brand of the computer would trump the inadequacies that would come with Vista. Well, since the version of Vista that was pre-installed was the Home Premium edition, I felt a little more at ease than if it were only the Home Basic edition.

Never-the-less I fired up the new computer, eager to see what all of the fuss was over Vista and how it could be so much better than any other Microsoft operating system. Even though it was set up a little different, it ended up being basically the same idea as XP. Microsoft has made it a little easier to understand which things do what and have re-worded some of the features and functions. Basically, it's so easy a monkey could run it. With this in mind, I then tried to add the new laptop to my wireless home network. This was where I was stopped dead in my tracks. As it turns out, Vista does not like to play nice with many of the routers already on the market. There are many reasons for why this is, from the firmware of the router not communicating properly with Vista or the router and Vista not "talking" fast enough and the packet gets dropped somewhere in the 2nd layer of the topology layers.

Vista Home Premium gets the big "Thumbs Down".

Credit: Gracey Stinson

Copyright: Gracey Stinson