Vista

Vista Everywhere!

David Crowell — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:59:52 GMT

I've read a lot of bad reviews of Vista. When I first got my Thinkpad 11 months ago, I understood. Vista was different. It seemed half-baked. It's startup time was horrendous.

Various patches and updates have since been released, and I don't see a real reason for complaint anymore. Well, other than the "It's different" complaint. My Thinkpad now has a startup time comparable with an XP machine. Copying files works well now. I really like Vista.

I've been using 32-bit Vista Business for 11 months, and I love it. I had never used Media Center until recently though. I subscribed to MSDN, and now have access to a lot of Microsoft software. I set up some spare hardware I had as a Media Center, running Vista Ultimate. The machine does not have a TV tuner, but for browsing video on the machine, it's great. I'm using a wireless keyboard with trackball, and it's connected to my HDTV.

I actually use iTunes more on the machine, but that's just because I have an easy way to rent movies.

I bought my daughter a Dell laptop that came with Vista Home Basic, which I later upgraded to Vista Home Premium. It's a low-end machine, but works well, and supports Aero.

I started a new job last month. I was given the opportunity to run 64-bit Vista Business. I was a bit worried about compatibility, but I've had zero problems.

I now use three machines with Vista on a regular basis, and support a fourth. It's gotten to where I can't stand XP anymore.

I plan on building myself a new desktop machine for at home. It will run 64-bit Vista Ultimate. I can then be sure all of my freeware plays nice in a 64-bit environment. I have a feeling it will, with no modifications.

So, please, if you're happy with XP, then don't worry about it. However, when you get a new machine, have an open mind about Vista.

A Week With Vista

David Crowell — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 14:07:13 GMT

I've now been using Vista for one week. I've endured a few bugs, but overall the experience has been good.

Most irritating bug: mailto links broken.
I'm not sure if some software I installed broke this, but it took me a while fix this. Whenever I clicked on a mailto: link, 50 or 60 web browsers would open, but Windows Mail wouldn't. It turns out that the registry value "URL Protocol" was missing from "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\mailto". From what I've read this can affect other Windows versions, but I never saw it before Vista.

Slightly annoying bug: beep on listview selection change.
Whenever running older software with a listview, Windows would beep when clicking an a listview item. This also turned out to be a registry issue. It turns out that "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\AppEvents\Schemes\Apps\.Default\CCSelect\.current" value looks empty, but isn't. Simply clearing the value out fixes it. That one keeps re-appearing, so I made a .reg file I can import now and again to fix the issue.

Minor bug: smooth scrolling cannot be disabled in Windows Mail.
Apparently Windows Mail does not honor the system-wide setting, or the IE specific setting for smooth scrolling. I really dislike smooth scrolling, and would like to turn it off.

Overall
I have my memory upgraded to 2GB, and I'm quite happy with Vista. I leave UAC turned on, and it's really never an issue. The machine seems quite snappy, and handles everything I throw at it with ease. Even OpenOffice.org starts up quickly. I don't know how much of that is Vista's "superfetch", or how much the hardware, but either way I like it.

New Laptop With Vista

David Crowell — Tue, 29 May 2007 15:54:09 GMT

I bought a new laptop over the weekend. My primary machine has always been a desktop, but I've decided to switch to a laptop.

I bought a lower-end Thinkpad Z61m. It has the integrated Intel video, 1GB of RAM (soon to get an upgrade), and an 80GB 5400 RPM hard drive. I'll need a sizeable external hard drive before ditching my desktop.

This machine came with Vista Business. I can now get busy making sure my software works with Vista. I have already tested jStrip, and it works.

My experience with Vista is mixed. After I uninstalled all of the crapware, The machine spent two days with constant hard disk activity. I guess Vista was indexing and optimizing. It has stopped doing that now, and it running quite well.

The search functionality in Vista is incredible. I'm using Windows Mail and an IMAP account, and I can easily search my mail, documents, programs, favorites, source code, and whatever else from the start menu. I really don't want to give that up.

I'll post more about it later, as I use Vista more.