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As you may have seen, today is the official release day for Windows 7 beta 1.  As I was reading reviews today I couldn’t help but notice all the comments on Vista and how bad it was and how Windows 7 is so much better.  Now I’m not knocking Windows 7 - everything I’ve seen shows great promise.  However, I would like to clear the air on Windows Vista and maybe help explain why it has gotten such a bad wrap.

I will start with just one sentence: Windows Vista was ahead of its time.  You may not agree, but hear me out.  Vista debuted in November of 2006 with the following minimum requirements:

512MB RAM
800MHz Processor

The average price of 2GB RAM in late 2006 was $200.  Today it is $40.  Dual-core processors were just coming out and cost $400+.  Most computer vendors (Dell, etc) sold basic computers that just barely met the minimum specs for Vista.  That means that those computers could run Vista with all the Vista features turned off, but most people didn’t know that.  Anyone today will tell you that if you are going to run Vista you need at least 2GB RAM and a dual core processor.  In 2006 that would cost upwards of $2,000.  Today that costs around $400.  You can see where I am going with this: to get a computer in 2006 that would run all the feature of Vista cost more than the average person was willing to spend.  Spending $399 on the Dell special and complaining that it won’t run hardware intensive software is not the vendors fault - the problem was between the computer and the chair.

Now I have to say something about mac lovers.  I know plenty of people that say that macs are just so much faster than a Vista machine.  What they really should be saying is that a $2,000 mac is much faster than a $399 PC running Vista.  Now let me spend $2,000 on a computer with Vista and then lets compare.  I’m not really a mac hater, I actually prefer Linux over everything.  I just think macs are overpriced and that they are nothing more than a fad.  Sorry for the rant, I’ll move on.

So here is the deal.  Vista is not a bad OS.  I’ve been running it since the beta was out and I never really had any problems in a production systems administration environment.  I also run it on a machine with a quad core processor, 4GB RAM and 256MB dedicated graphics card.  It’s actually a pretty stellar OS.  That said, I’m excited about Windows 7.  Not because Vista needs to be fixed (darn mac commercials make you think that!), but because Microsoft really does a pretty good job with Os’s.

You may have noticed that it has been a long time since I’ve made any posts recently.  I did my best to stay away from computers over the holiday break, except for my grad school project.  Since Eli has been born life has been pretty full throttle, but worth every second.  Sleeping has gotten better and things are feeling a little more managable.

I finally finished up my first grad school class, which I thought was pretty amazing with everything else that was going on.  If you ever wondered what kind of stuff that entails, check out my paper.

I hope to be updating this thing a little more often, not just when we have a child.  Topics to come:

Being a dad
The Pursuit of Coffee and my French Press
The American Church

Take a look at a snapshot of Eli’s First Day.  Thanks to all those that have stopped by, we love the visitors (and the mocha latte’s, smoothies and biscuits)!

So last night was a late night.  We finally got cleared to move back to our “home” for the next couple days around 4am.  We made it to bed around 6am, but no one did much sleeping!  Here are some more pictures:

Bec and Eli

Eli (he has some good lungs!!)

First family picture

Eli Benjamin Whitworth

Born 12:12am on Oct 24th, 2008
7lbs 8oz
20.5 innches