PUBLICATION CENTER

As mentioned in last month’s edition of Expand, the release of Windows’ new operating system, Vista, is just around the corner. The scheduled release date is Jan. 30, 2007.

This recent article in the New York Times provides some guidelines on how to prepare for the new OS. For wide-format printing companies, the trick will mainly be making sure that anything your computer drives, whether hardware or peripherals, is ready for Vista.

Ultimately, Vista will become the default platform for Windows, so like it or not, most of us will have to make the transition. As a software developer at Oracle recently told us: “I think it will be a big hit with the consumer space, except for the obvious requirements for ever more processing power and memory. The Microsoft-Intel upgrade bandwagon is hard at work these days. We have a mandate at Oracle to support Vista starting in January, so even Microsoft's competitors (that's us) have to take it seriously.”

However, the safest bet is to allow the new OS to go through the usual growing pains, and give hardware and peripheral manufactures about six months or so to truly catch up.