Recently my Compaq Presario 2700T laptop's screen has been flaking-out on me. With the crash in laptop prices, I figured it would be more cost effective just to get a new laptop with a Core 2 chip and Vista. Why not? I'm a developer and I need to stay ahead of the curve on new technology.
My first stop was at CircuitCity.com where I purchase a new Gateway laptop with 2GB of RAM, and a 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo chip. This used to be my "wow" developer configuration, but apparently it's the status-quo for home users. I feel so uncool now.
The laptop came with Vista Home Premium, which is cool in its own right, but I need Vista Business or Ultimate. You can't upgrade laterally to Vista Business from Vista Home. Rather, you have to use the Vista Update Anywhere tool to go from Vista Home to Vista Ultimate. I didn't realize this until I purchase the laptop AND Vista Business separately. Oh well, I can re-use the Vista Home Premium license for another computer ...
Many of you may not remember the day when Windows 95 came out. I do. Back then there was Windows 3.1, and everyone thought it was hot stuff. So when Windows 95 came out, many people balked at it and complained about it being "too different." Many of the same complaints are made of Vista. Sure, there are compatibility issues, and the interface is a little bit different. Mostly, though, these lamentations are lame and unfounded.
I found Vista to be easy to install, easy to setup, and even easier to use. Vista was able to setup the driver for my HP Business Inkjet 1200 without me doing anything except clicking on a few buttons. Yeah, it's a network printer too, and it found the printer without fail. XP couldn't do that without locking up my entire shell for about 10 minutes.
Then I started to migrate my old data over to my new computer. This is where it gets really cool. I copied the "My Documents" folder from my old computer to the appropriate documents folder on Vista. During the copying, Vista figured out that I was copying these special folders, and was able to redirect the "My Pictures", "My Music" and other "My ..." folders to the appropriate NEW locations in Vista. Plus, it was smart enough not to automatically clobber the existing index files for these folders. How cool is that? Try that on a stinky-mac!
So far, the only software that has not been compatible is Norton SystemWorks 2005. I've gotten warnings about VisualStudio 2003 and 2005, and of course SQL Server 2005, but they all seem to work just fine. I have projects that are in the hundreds-of-thousands of lines of code, and Vista with VS 2003 and 2005 both crank!
ActiveDesktop is finally a first-class citizen with Vista. That's the nifty gadget bar on the right of the default desktop. Microsoft has made it easier to customize and program now that you can create HTML gadgets instead of ActiveX controls. Another hoo-ra for Microsoft and Vista. I saw AD released back in the early 90s and thought it was cool back then. Today, it's even cooler!
Probably the most important features for the end user of Windows are startup time and shutdown time. Vista startsup super-fast now, probably a whole 50% faster than XP does on a clean install. Shutdown is nearly instantaneous. My 1.6 Ghz Vista laptop kicks my 3.5GHz XP Pro desktop, seriously.
Because of some compatibility issues, I wonder if some business users will just wait 6 months to upgrade to Vista. I had thought about that too, but figured, why wait. It's not like Microsoft just went on vacation and isn't working on compatibility. Plus, to be fair to Microsoft, the vendors have had Vista in hand for over a year. They've had plenty of time to get their software Vista Ready. If nothing else, new Vista users will experience what it's like to be a Mac user with no software available to them. The only difference is that the Vista user is guaranteed to have an ocean of software open to them soon, whereas those Mac users, well, keep that inner-smile!
My first stop was at CircuitCity.com where I purchase a new Gateway laptop with 2GB of RAM, and a 1.6 Ghz Core 2 Duo chip. This used to be my "wow" developer configuration, but apparently it's the status-quo for home users. I feel so uncool now.
The laptop came with Vista Home Premium, which is cool in its own right, but I need Vista Business or Ultimate. You can't upgrade laterally to Vista Business from Vista Home. Rather, you have to use the Vista Update Anywhere tool to go from Vista Home to Vista Ultimate. I didn't realize this until I purchase the laptop AND Vista Business separately. Oh well, I can re-use the Vista Home Premium license for another computer ...
Many of you may not remember the day when Windows 95 came out. I do. Back then there was Windows 3.1, and everyone thought it was hot stuff. So when Windows 95 came out, many people balked at it and complained about it being "too different." Many of the same complaints are made of Vista. Sure, there are compatibility issues, and the interface is a little bit different. Mostly, though, these lamentations are lame and unfounded.
I found Vista to be easy to install, easy to setup, and even easier to use. Vista was able to setup the driver for my HP Business Inkjet 1200 without me doing anything except clicking on a few buttons. Yeah, it's a network printer too, and it found the printer without fail. XP couldn't do that without locking up my entire shell for about 10 minutes.
Then I started to migrate my old data over to my new computer. This is where it gets really cool. I copied the "My Documents" folder from my old computer to the appropriate documents folder on Vista. During the copying, Vista figured out that I was copying these special folders, and was able to redirect the "My Pictures", "My Music" and other "My ..." folders to the appropriate NEW locations in Vista. Plus, it was smart enough not to automatically clobber the existing index files for these folders. How cool is that? Try that on a stinky-mac!
So far, the only software that has not been compatible is Norton SystemWorks 2005. I've gotten warnings about VisualStudio 2003 and 2005, and of course SQL Server 2005, but they all seem to work just fine. I have projects that are in the hundreds-of-thousands of lines of code, and Vista with VS 2003 and 2005 both crank!
ActiveDesktop is finally a first-class citizen with Vista. That's the nifty gadget bar on the right of the default desktop. Microsoft has made it easier to customize and program now that you can create HTML gadgets instead of ActiveX controls. Another hoo-ra for Microsoft and Vista. I saw AD released back in the early 90s and thought it was cool back then. Today, it's even cooler!
Probably the most important features for the end user of Windows are startup time and shutdown time. Vista startsup super-fast now, probably a whole 50% faster than XP does on a clean install. Shutdown is nearly instantaneous. My 1.6 Ghz Vista laptop kicks my 3.5GHz XP Pro desktop, seriously.
Because of some compatibility issues, I wonder if some business users will just wait 6 months to upgrade to Vista. I had thought about that too, but figured, why wait. It's not like Microsoft just went on vacation and isn't working on compatibility. Plus, to be fair to Microsoft, the vendors have had Vista in hand for over a year. They've had plenty of time to get their software Vista Ready. If nothing else, new Vista users will experience what it's like to be a Mac user with no software available to them. The only difference is that the Vista user is guaranteed to have an ocean of software open to them soon, whereas those Mac users, well, keep that inner-smile!