As of July 14th my thoughts about Vista could be summarized by saying " Stick a fork in me, I am done". I decided that I wanted a fully functional laptop back under my control and having Vista installed at this point was not going to allow that to happen. For whatever reasons Microsoft has decided to over complicate the user interface to the point of frustration. Just because I uninstalled it on the laptop does not mean that there is no hope for the OS. I just decided that I need to install this under VMWARE or on a spare PC.
Originally I had intended to install Vista under Vmware and when I did not do this a friend of mine asked me what my thought process was making this decision. I guess that my first thought was " what the heck, go for it" because the laptop is considered a secondary computing device next to our main home pc and I feel as if I am a disaster recovery expert (has been drip under pressure) and I knew I had two critical pieces in place in case a disaster did happen. The first thing I had was a good , current backup of all my data. The second most important tool at my disposal was the Toshiba recovery cd which would allow me to recover the laptop back to factory specifications with all the drivers needed. So, with those thought drifting through the fog banks of my mind I went forward to where no man (in this houshold) has gone before and installed Vista. The following list are points of interest as I look back on my Vista BETA install experience.
A. the install (upgrade) took almost four hours
B. Wireless does not support wireless security (wep)
C. Networking configuration options are a nightmare
D. The user interface is just different enough to make you stumble around looking for the usual things we are used to in XP
E. I could not find Start RUN anywhere
F. Since I could not find START RUN I could not run MSCONFIG to edit the start up applications and get rid of the ones I did not want starting at boot
G. Vista BETA does not provide you with Anti Virus software even though CA does provide Ez Anti Virus for free for one year to Vista Beta users.
H. Windows Defender is not supported in Vista
I. Internet Explorer 7 SUCKS.... The application refused to shut down properly when it was running in "protected" mode.
J. Even though the upgrade recognized my Administrator status on XP Professional it does not give you FULL administrative rights to Vista Beta. Several times I was greeted with a nag screen that said something to the affect that "you are not a system adminstrator and therefore dont have the ability to do this function at this time. Please notify your system administrator"
K. Several of my applications just did not work after the upgrade which required my reinstalling them.
To see all the gory details on the install process and my thoughts AFTER the install go to http://jcmoffitt.googlepages.com and view my technology pages and read the Vista Beta review.
Thanks
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
