Internet forums are all abuzz at the moment with discussion on Windows Vista: how will it perform, which version to buy, will this application work, etc etc etc.
Amongst all that there is a group of people who are sticking to a belief that serious users and businesses won’t bother installing Vista until the first service pack has arrived to “iron out the bugs”. This position is fairly common in the IT industry – that a version 1.0 product will be unstable, and version 1.1 will be far more reliable. It has some merit, some 1.0 products are rubbish.
When it comes to Microsoft operating system releases though this is a somewhat foolish position to take. Vista RTM will have bugs. Some of them security related, some of them usability related, some of them “by design” or requiring an adjustment on the part of the user/administrator as to how things are normally done. But the chance that Service Pack 1 will magically reduce the bugs and lead to a more stable experience is quite unlikely.
The fact is if for you Vista is worth using then it is worth using now. If we’d all waited for Windows 2000 or Windows XP to have the service pack release that “ironed out the bugs” we’d still be waiting. Each service pack fixes bugs, but the next service pack will fix more bugs, and more after that. Its the nature of software, particularly operating systems. If you want to wait for your operating system to reach some perceived level of stability before deploying it, be my guest. But if you’re waiting for the bugs to be eliminated, you’re going to be waiting a very long time.
