We all have heard numerous  times about the issues with Vista: Vista does not work, is not compatible with everything under the sun, and blah.. blahs.  I am not denying some of these allegations. When I was running the IT at Music Intelligence Solutions, I made a conscious decision to standardize all our laptops and desktops on Windows XP - it was the right decision at that time.

Fast forward to now: I recently purchased a new laptop, which came pre-loaded with Vista. To be honest, I am pleasantly surprised and don’t have any issues. Granted, I don’t use too much of Vista, but  I can tell you that all the peripherals (printers, scanners,  etc.), WiFi and everything works out of the box without glitches.

Microsoft has just launched a new web site just for Windows Vista users: answers.microsoft.com. It’s currently in beta, and  is a support forum in the Q&A format. The biggest distinguishing factor is that anyone can participate and contribute, which is a huge deal. How many times have you wondered about vista-compatible peripherals? I am glad Microsoft is opening up their support arms for the public to participate. Look at none other than Ubuntu for public participated support forums. These days most of the people know the basics of computers, provided they know the resolution, could navigate around to resolve issues by themselves. But up until now, there is no one single place where consumers can turn to address their Vista issues. Hopefully Microsoft Answers will fill that void.

I believe Microsft is on the right path - if only they could attract enought public to participate and contribute.