Microsoft are to end support for Windows Vista in April. Meaning that it won’t be releasing any new security updates after this time or offering any technical support. This applies to all versions of Vista from home basic upto the ultimate edition.Updates offering new features were stop being released for Vista back in 2012.
So as if next month you have a computer running Vista you will need to be prepared to either migrate to another OS or run the risk that your computer will be at greater risk of malware and hacking. Windows Vista was launched 10 years ago but got a bad reputation early on in it life for being slower on the same hardware than XP. It also suffered from compatibility issues with some software and peripherals not working under Vista. These problens made people reluctant to upgrade. This was partly down to the fact that Vista was marketed by Microsoft as being able to run on PCs with 512mb RAM. Which although it could run it with that little RAM there was hardly any free memory left after the OS had booted to run anything else. Therefore Windows would have to use virtual memory if you lauched any programs which brought the computer to a crawl. Actually on high specification PCs with 1gb+ of memory Vista was just as speedy as XP. But then soon after Vistas launch small mini laptops with Intel Atom CPU’s became popular and the low spec of these netbook devices meant they were only suitable to run XP which was another nail on the coffin for Vista.
Vista did have some good things going for it it came with a host of new security features built in making it the most secure version of Windows at the time. But some thought these security measures were too nanning asking for confirmation for even the most basic tasks. By now its reputation had already been tarnished and only 2 years later it was replaced by Windows 7 which was essentially just an updated and rebranded version of Windows Vista with these niggling faults rectified.
If you are still running Windows Vista on your computer you can check out our article on what to do with an old XP computer as much of the same advise will apply.