Windows Vista Home Basic. Believe it or not, its really the full version of the operating system. As per usual Windows didnt manage to finish there product. If you look around the internet, you will find out that Microsoft are currently creating there new operating system Windows 7. Many reviews state that Windows 7 is actually going to be the completed version of Vista. Now, sorry if I seem to be mean, but that seems very unusual to me. Windows 7, the product there currently working on is the full version of Vista. So really, we are the beta testers of Windows 7. Windows Vista Home Basic is not a full operating system, its a beta for the new version that will be released in several years time.

The first time I purchased my laptop I bought it through the company I worked for. I had actually book the day off work so when I arrived to pick up my laptop, my Managing Director had already opened up the box and was just about to start it up. He likes his technology almot as much as I. At first it looked very good, sleek design, but we waited and waited, and it seemed like it had already crashed. It look about 30-40 minutes to load up the first time I used it. I was expecting it to ask me to insert a user name, setup the internet connection etc. But nothing, I was prompted to do nothing for 40 minutes. After it managed to load up I was initially impressed with the new start menu, and the sleek design of the desktop. So I shut it down and took it home with me.

Next problem...My laptop also came with a DVD drive so I could play my movies on it, fantastic I thought, I would watch a movie on my laptop with my girlfriend, that will be really nice. Put the DVD in, and...it did not work. Suprise Suprise. Windows Media Player 11, the fantastic program full of all those amazing updates cannot play a DVD. Ok, so I went out to PC-World, and bought a DVD Player for my computer, installed this and then, I managed to Load up my DVD, fantastic, another £30 or so pound and I can watch a DVD. Started watching Pirates of the Carrabean, fantastic movie. But it started lagging and slowing down, and I was getting very frustrated by now, tried restarting the computer, shutting down all the background programs, but it would not stop jittering. I thought it through, it couldn't be the performance specifications of my laptop, as I have played more dvd's on a machine half of the specification of the laptop. This problem continuted the rest of the day. So I decided to leave the laptop for the night and come back the next day.

Now I have a pet hate of when you open a folder it opens in new windows, so luckily this feautre wasnt enabled, however, after a month, my folders started opening in a new windows, and this really annoyed me, at first I thought my brother wanted to have some fun by changing my system settings, so I went to change the system settings back but the computer clearly stated that the folders would open in the same window, and not a new one, but this wasnt the case. I tried using virus checking and spyware checking to see if it was an error caused by a virus, but my computer was clean. So again, I reverted to forums. Many other users were having the same problem it turned out to be another bug that Microsoft has not removed from its operating system.

Windows Vista, is in a strange way, Windows XP wearing a really pretty dress. That doesnt fit. Vista, uses up most of your system resources, trying to make itself look pretty, and then it leaves you with none to do your work, normally this wouldnt be a problem because you would turn off all the fancy enhancements that use up all the memory. However, because of a bug that I talked about earlier, it won't let you perform these actions. My copy of Vista seemed to turn everything that was fancy, such as all the Windows visualisations, special effects, etc.

The support avaliable online for Windows Vista is very poor, also the built in help service is very poor and in a strange way, very patronising. If your speakers are working, it tells you to check they are plugged in, and such comments as, are you playing music? The most help you can get for your windows distribution is on Third Party Forums, that just let you know, that Windows has a bug and thats why your computer is not working correctly.

With most distributions of Windows Vista, you get a Windows Anytime upgrade CD. This allows you to upgrade your version of Windows Vista to any other version of Vista that are available (Home Premium, Ultimate, etc).

Many games from XP such as Call of Duty still work with Vista, and the new versions of DirectX mean that gameplay is further improved.