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Reason 172: Solitaire

Wednesday, 7 February 2007 games microsoft vista windows

Everybody and their brother seems to want to give you a reason not to upgrade to Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Vista

Apple have cited their own inability to keep the iTunes software working for Vista (no doubt, to keep keen early-adopters from the platform) and a myriad of other companies (some more independent than others) have chimed in with various reasons ranging from increased hardware requirements to further incompatibilities.

I’ve been rather optimistic about Vista, really. I’m using it already and have been for a few weeks. It’s nice and it does do things, albeit a little buggily at times — but I’ve usually found workarounds.

That said I do have one major gripe with the OS. In updating Solitaire to take advantage of the new graphics capabilities of Windows Vista, they’ve made it completely impossible to complete quickly.

Vista's Solitaire

Regular readers may remember my record breaking attempt of 47 seconds. I just can’t come close to touching that in the new version. My fastest in 222 games has been 68 seconds. That’s a game and a half in XP’s Solitaire.

Therefore, if you’re an avid sol player in 2000 or XP, I’m just warning you now: Solitaire is harder to complete fast. Consider yourself well warned.