Home Basically-There's-No-Reason-to-Buy-This

The cheapest version of Vista, Home Basic, is so crippled it can't run the Aero interface. Theoretically, that's a boon for owners of machines that aren't capable of running Aero.

But it's time for some tough love, people: If your PC can't run Aero, you have no need for Vista. Period. On machines that aren't Aero-capable, the rest of the OS will run slowly enough that you're better off sticking with XP until it's time to buy a new Vista PC. So why does Home Basic exist? So Microsoft can say that Vista costs "as little as $100."

Not fixable: Unless you consider not buying Vista Home Basic a fix.

The Large-Print Edition

If you like your current desktop-icon layout, you won't like what you see when you upgrade to Vista. Perhaps overly enamored with Vista's new photo-realistic icons, Microsoft went all AARP-friendly on us and bumped up the default size for desktop icons. That's okay, we guess. Plenty of people want bigger icons. Problem is, Vista's upgrade installation makes this layout-destroying change without asking you. And if you want to move all your icons back to their appointed places, you'll have to find the icon-size setting in its new location.

Fixable: Right-click your desktop and choose View, Classic Icons. Then spend far too long dragging your icons back to their proper positions. When you're done, you'll notice that the shortcut arrow now covers approximately a quarter of each supposedly beautiful new icon.

Labels: computers, microsoft, vista