www.gadgettastic.com
Technology from around the world
Thursday 24 May 2007, 7:50 PM
Vista 30 Days After Install
Below is an article I published on my own blog (www.gadgettastic.com) about a week ago, with my experience in updgrading to Vista.
Its exactly 30 days since I installed Vista on my PC, I have to say I was a little nervous about doing it at first. I downloaded the Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor and ran it, everything seemed to go ok and the report showed only a few minor software issues, so I decided to go for it.
I scoured the web for information on Vista after reading many articles and tips I decided to buy Vista Home Premium 32 Bit edition, I managed to get myself an OEM copy from Microdirect for about £74 including the VAT & Delivery.
It arrived the next day, I had already backed up all my data, so I decided to do a clean install, I booted my PC, ran the interactive setup, formatted the PC’s hard drive and began the install. It took about 30 minutes, I rebooted and was ready for the usual problems that you get with a fresh install of XP, I have to say I was more than a little surprised, all my hardware was there and everything seemed ok. Here’s the spec of my PC, nothing spectacular:-
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.20 GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9-RH Socket 939
Memory: Corsair Value Select 3GB DDR PC3200 (3 x 1GB)
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro 265MB DDR3
Hard Drive: 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 Sata 2 Hard Drive
DVD Drive: Lite-on DRW-6S160P-05C DVD RW Drive
What’s the catch I thought to myself; it can’t be this easy can it? I was expecting some error messages to pop up on my desktop, after about 5 minutes of playing around with Vista I realised this wasn’t going to happen.
Surely it’s bound to go wrong when I install all my software, I thought to myself, so I went about installing my programs. After about an hour and a half I pretty much had everything I use installed, my email was working, I was able to browse the web, my antivirus was installed, so was my firewall, and the few games I play seemed to be working fine, and all the Vista updates (there weren’t many) were downloaded and installed.
I have to say I was impressed, normally a complete clean install of XP takes a good 3+ hours to get everything setup just how I like it, for a complete clean install Vista is great. its simple, its quick, its painless, as long as you use the Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor first to make sure you have no major hardware compatibility issues.
I have now got used to the new look and features of Vista, I love the Aero interface, and the glass effects, it looks and feels great to use, my favourite bit has to be the new Windows Sidebar, there are some great gadgets on the web to download to it from rss readers to media gadgets.
Another cool feature is the Instant Search, this allows you to search your PC for files, and other items, it’s so much better than the search function in XP, easier to use, and fast very fast, it also provides some nice advanced features.
There is a bunch of new security features as well, from the new User Account Control (which can be a little annoying from time to time but you learn to live with it), to the updated Windows Security Centre, to the Windows Defender. It a pretty comprehensive package and a huge improvement over XP. Combine this with a few decent free security programs from around the web ( I will talk about these later on in more detail) and you have a pretty secure PC, now I am not saying its 100% secure, but it is a serious improvement over XP.
In conclusion, I am glad I made the move to Vista, it was a pretty painless process, I have now got used to all its features, its fun and simple to use, very user friendly and has a bunch of cool stuff that make my computing experience better.
If I had to go back to using XP on my main machine I don’t think I could, there are too many new things that I would miss.
Read my other articles at www.gadgettastic.com
PreviousComments on this post
In the late seventies I was working for Eletronorte (Northern Brazil Electric Centrals), a federal government-related company that designed and built hydroelectric plants in the Amazon region. I was a software support engineer for maintenance of electrical systems on an IBM mainframe; we ran jobs with card input. There was a competitor to the IBM monopoly, CDC, which had installed a supercomputer in Rio de Janeiro and set up a network of thin clients, terminals one input card jobs on and received line-printed reports. The name was Cybernet. It was a nice alternative to our expensive IBM dedicated mainframe. CDC's system was a threat to IBM, so my manager told me to write a memo to all engineers to discredit the CDC publicity. Although the Cybernet was an exciting thing at the time, it was relatively painless for me to write the memo, because enterprise politics was not my primary concern--I was just an engineer--and it seems that I did a good job, because there was no dissension. I was promoted to manager, having a pair of engineer with master degrees in my section while I only held a bachelor's. Many years later, I came to regret what I had done, when I realized that I should have not written the memo, and should have instead convinced the manager that the Cybernet was good for Eletronorte, would save a lot of money in computing expenses and gain in efficiency. If Eletronorte fired me, I could claim unjust dismissal, or go to the press, then join CDC; that would be the right thing to do. I had lied just because I was told so; to keep my job and get a promotion. I am ashamed.
That must have been the main reason why I jumped into the GNU/Linux bandwagon in 1996: it was a chance to redeem myself from my earlier mistake.
And that is the reason why I feel sick when anybody accepts Windows Vista, praises it, or dismisses its defects as minor glitches that will be soon fixed. I feel sick because IBM defended its monopoly through corporate politics AND good products; it sent all users weekly patches to fix bugs; no bug was considered insignificant. Microsoft takes a long time to fix bugs not because it does not want, it is because it can't. Since Windows NT, MS decided to ignore software engineering principles and produced Windows 2000 with 30 million lines of source code, XP with 45 million and Vista with 50 million. The code that produces Windows Vista inherited thousands of bugs from NT, 2000 and XP, bugs that are dormant waiting for an intersection of circumstances to manifest themselves. People should be scared of Vista, because often the maintenance personnel have no idea where to look in order to fix certain bugs. They don't hit everybody because each person has a slightly different combination of hardware and circumstances. But there is the risk that at the worst moment Vista will freeze or fail to execute. Vista will never be a mission-critical OS, rather a very expensive multimedia player. If people knew the dangers, they would stay away from any OS of the Windows NT lineage (which was derived from DEC VMS).
That is why I use only GNU/Linux. Mac OSX is not for me, because it is too expensive, especially in my country.
So, whoever thinks that it is OK to play with Windows Vista, and find it cute and all, beware. You may one day be ashamed for being reckless, ignoring that you might be prolonging the dominance of a monopoly that causes waste and injustice in society. If you believe that you are not an evil person, then reassess your attitudes and loyalties. A bunch of money is not worth your dishonor.
This comment has been deleted at the users request
Very interesting and informative post Mariomiy, and I definately take your views on board.
What you have to remember, was , that this article was written from the point of view of of upgrading a Windows Xp machine to a Vista machine.
The purpose of my article was not to compare, Vista to other Operating Systems all of which have their own individual merits, but to compare it to its predecessor, XP, and how easy it was to upgrade from XP.
