Oh no, no! No, not the Vista!
Actually. I’d say "Yes yes the Vista". I quite like it. Very snazzy with loads more options that XP Pro shoulda had. Now, the only question is whether it is affordable or not. There’s going to be 7 different versions. Of course, I’d love to get Vista Ultimate, but the prices Microsoft charge, it’d probably be AUD$1,000! If I’m lucky I might be able to get Vista Home Premium.
Here’s a summary from PCWorld:
Windows Vista Home Basic: For consumers that want to simply use the PC to browse the Internet, correspond with friends and family over email or perform basic document creation and editing tasks, Windows Vista Home Basic will deliver a safer, more reliable and more productive computing environment.
Windows Vista Home Premium: Will help consumers utilize mobile or desktop PC functionality more effectively while enabling the enjoyment of new, exciting digital entertainment experiences - all with the benefit of added security and reliability. Windows Vista Home Premium includes everything in Windows Vista Home Basic, plus the Windows Vista Aero(TM) and Media Center and Tablet PC capabilities.
Windows Vista Ultimate: Windows Vista Ultimate is the edition of Windows Vista that has it all. It is the first operating system that brings together all of the consumer-oriented features available in Windows Vista Home Premium with all of the business-oriented features available in Windows Vista Business.
Quite probably Home Premium will be sufficient.
Vista runs very well on my PC. I got a "Windows System Performance Rating" of 3/5 which isn’t too bad, I suppose. If only there were some analysis of what the numbers actually mean. The upshot of it is when you go shopping for games and other applications, now you just look for ones that your PC is capable of playing. Supposedly so Microsoft and others don’t get whinged at when your Celeron 433 with 256Mb of RAM doesn’t run Doom 3 that well. If Doom 3 is rated "3" and your cruddy PC is only a 1 or 2, forget it. Incidentally, my specs (in case you want to compare your setup to my score):
Mobo: Asus K8N4-E | Sound: Builtin Realtek ALC850 | Mouse: Logitech MX510| Kbd: MS Natural Pro
1Gb RAM | NIC: Netgear WG311v3 (working) | Video: Xpertvision nVidia 6600GT PCIe w/ 128Mb RAM
CPU: AMD64 Athlon 3000+
Not set up yet (so may or may not work): Logitech Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000, iPod Shuffle (detected but haven’t installed iTunes yet), Motorola Bluetooth adapter. My WG311 didn’t work for ages then today I turned the PC on and it was working. In fact, the Netcomm modem I had in there the other day started causing reboots and bluescreens (even in Vista). I finally figured out the reason was the Modem and the WiFi card were conflicting. I moved the modem to a new PCI slot (er.. right next to the PCIe graphics card which I didn’t want to put it near due to the heat) and it all works well. I can map to the server via WiFi and all! I wonder if it had anything to do with Vista updates from the Microsoft website?
I’m becoming more and more attached to Vista each day and actually hate going back to XP Pro. Interestingly enough, Vista had my Canon Pixma iP6210D printer listed under Storage Devices hehehe.
I love the way Vista automatically detects my hp iPAQ 4150 Pocket PC and the new Mobile Device application rocks!
The visual effects .. normally you would think ‘oh..er yeh.. eye candy .. big woop’ but I think it actually makes the interface look VERY nice.
I’m still in two minds about the "Consent" application. You see, whenever you do anything which Microsoft decided could be destructive (change network configuration, delete folders, etc) the whole screen darkens and a bright box pops up asking if you want to go ahead or cancel the operation. It’s handy but a pain to hit OK all the time. Of course, you can turn this option off, but it then allows viruses to do stuff they shouldn’t do. I am an Administrator of the PC but still could not edit the "hosts" file until I took ownership myself.
WMP 11 is very nice as is the way Windows Explorer works.
Unfortunately, IE now seems to render my blog page properly (as Firefox always did) so I have to fix the CSS code which was set up for IE but not Firefox.
July 18th, 2006 at 12:19 pm - Edit
Problems: I put my server’s IP and hostname into the ‘hosts’ file. I could map drive letters to samba share directories fine, then dialup to the internet and use both. At some stage, the WiFi disconnected by itself. I reconnected it and no matter what I did it would not resolve the IP address of the server with the ‘hosts’ file again. I had to use the server’s IP address to view any shared directories. Somehow Vista forgot to check the hosts file. Perhaps this happens once you connect to the internet. Maybe then Vista only uses the ISP’s DNS server to resolve names from then on and won’t check the local ‘hosts’ file until you disconnnect? Weird. If so, that would be a major pain.
It also would have been nice for Vista to tell me when the modem connection dropped and I was no longer connected to the ISP. Suddenly, I could not get to any webpages while browsing and I had to look at the Network connections to find I was no longer connected to the ISP and had to dial in again.
I got iTunes installed okay but didn’t try putting music onto my iPod yet. Vista detects Quicktime being installed and pops up warnings all over the place that certain visual effects are being disabled due to an incompatible application being installed. It happened about 3 times during the iTunes/Quicktime install. Dunno what it disables as the messages don’t say much and disappear before you can read it properly.
July 18th, 2006 at 4:15 pm - Edit
Waulie, does the QuickCam Pro 5000 have the *thinks* … the… face recognition so you can send yourself as a gorilla, shark, stick figure? I can’t think of the name, video effects?
July 18th, 2006 at 10:05 pm - Edit
Yus! It roxxx! Sienna loves it. “Daddy! Put on shark! Put on pussy cat! LOOK! I’m a pussy cat! MEOW!”
lol!
July 19th, 2006 at 2:25 pm - Edit
Oh man, I want one!