by Keen Johns

Created on: April 25, 2008

Microsoft Vista is in the main a new concept in operating systems, and above all, needs to be so.

Micro-technology has progressed with vigor these past few years. Manufacturers of hardware have discovered new ways of improving their product, in some cases the old windows operating system could not cope because improvements demanded more in the way of software interaction, in other words, operating system to hardware communication needs an overall rethink as hardware developments are introduced.

OK, Microsoft can keep on providing software updates to cope with new developments to a degree, before a complete operating system rewrite becomes the only successful solution in this world of escalating advancement in hardware development.

An analogical example may assist us in understanding this problem.

There is an old chair that develops a wobble due to a defective leg, the solution is perhaps to put a larger screw in to remedy this defect. As time goes by more, and larger screws, are required to make the chair once again usable. But there comes a time when it is not possible to effect any further repairs in this manner, so a new chair is required in order to rectify the seating problem. The chances are that the new piece of furniture does not use screws, due to the technological developments within the manufacture of furniture.

So it is with computer hardware developments in the interest of improvement. A whole new toolkit is required, in this case a brand new operating system that can cope with the demands of hardware advancements.

THE PROBLEMS THAT THIS CAUSES.

A brand new computer system will be taking advantage of the new hardware features, and that means using an operating system that can handle the new hardware addressing. This means that the computer can not be successfully downgraded by using Windows XP, there are two reasons for this. One is obviously the need for the operating system to address the new hardware, the other reason being that the manufacturer is, quite rightly, not going to deliberately downgrade their effort by supplying drivers, if indeed that were possible for use on an XP based system.

The other problem is that some existing XP software will suffer due to compatibility problems. For instance, I have an expensive software program for video editing, and now find that I can not install it on my Vista based notebook. Vista absolutely refuses to run this software, obviously because video editing extensively utilizes hardware graphics facilities etc.

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>