[SPasse]

Hi All,

As a developer with a MSDN license, I have been playing with Windows Vista since it was “Longhorn” and not available to the general public.

It has kind of “Grown” on me and I was curious what others thought.

Regards,

Scott

[schrocat]

Running Vista Ultimate...Office 07 at home.

I think it's the bomb.

Not importing any apps but Itunes helped out considerably...no driver issues or need for a virtual PC (yet). We'll see when I gotta fire up all this RDP crud to get some remote work done.

Media Center wireless communication to the XBox360 has proven to be a pain to setup, I don't want to buy another router or AP to expand from (b&g) capability to (a)...and the network lag is a deal breaker. (It stinks!! I need one more bar of "connectivity" to make it fly) I'll have to fish out some Cat5 cable buried in the wall behind the XBox eventually.

BTW...Messing with my router over the last few days has really opened my eyes to the amount of unsecured linksys networks out there. Worse still, unsecured with the admin password still set to factory default.
Could you imagine coming home and finding yourself locked out of your own router?
That would be like... very annoying.

[SPasse]

Schrocat,

I am also running ultimate. I have Office 2007, but I haven’t upgraded from 2003, yet. 2003 runs great with it.

Some observations:

1 The “look and feel” is definitely OSX like. AERO is cool, inc. the fades and transparency effects.

2 The Graphics card people are loving this. If you want to run AERO, (And of course you do )people with graphics cards older than ATI 9500 series or NVIDIA FX5200 are out of luck. Running older cards. Non-aero in with the generic Vista VGA driver slows you video down to a crawl.

At my company, I am one of the MSDN librarians and I get to bless any OS that gets deployed company wide. I can’t bless Vista (over XP) yet, because of the driver/app/teething issues and the hardware upgrade requirements. But so far, I like Vista more and more.

Any things that you like about Office 2007 over 2003?

Regards,

Scott

[schrocat]

Office 07 is pretty slick.
The layout takes a few minutes to get the hang of.

I like "the ribbon", and the fact they pack a lot of tools in just a few views.

One Note looks like a nifty tool as well.

[inuyasha_lover_21]

What is vista? I have a PC and a mac. Is it a new software program?

[Ninong]

It's Microsoft's new operating system. It replaces XP.

[inuyasha_lover_21]

I will try it out and see if I like it

[SPasse]

Schrocat,


I installed Office 2007 PRP Plus yesterday.
The Layout is def different.
The installation assumed that you wanted to replace Microsoft Mail (Vista) with Outlook.
That’s OK (For Me) but I wish they would ask.


Regards,


Scott

[schrocat]

Yeah.
I actually like the Microsoft mail better than Outlook for home usage.
It's clean and it runs rules.
I need nothing more.

Thanks for the heads up man!
I might see that unfortunate situation in future upgrades for clients.

I'm still getting acclimated to this new layout.
This might take awhile.

[wozza]

i had a go on a mates PC with Vista on, man its confuising but it sure does look cool.

[SPasse]

Schrocat,

The other issue with it replacing Microsoft mail is that the Outlook import utility was able to import the Microsoft mail address book and the other folders, but did not import the actual e-mails that were in the folders. I am still trying to figure out how to import the actual e-mails themselves. I also have a backup copy of the old Outlook Express *.dbx files so I am sure that I will eventually figure it out.

I had such a painless Vista upgrade on my home PC that I got brave and upgraded my work PC (From XP) as well. Well, that upgrade left me with a Visa install that was unstable. I ended up saving my data files on one of my file servers and flattening my work PC and doing a ground up install. Compared to the upgrade, a ground up install goes really fast. It also seems to have resulted in a stable (at least so far) Vista platform. That sort of ground up “house cleaning” is good for the stability of a Windows system anyhow.

Oh well, I actually enjoy being the OS and New Application “crash test dummy” at my company.

Regards,

Scott

[SPasse]

Schrocat,

It turns out that Outlook did not actually replace Microsoft Mail; it just replaced the Microsoft Mail shortcut on the desktop with an Outlook shortcut.

When I went into the “programs directory” the Microsoft Mail executable worked.

I just trashed the Outlook shortcut so I won’t accidentally launch Outlook by mistake.

Scott

[Poseidon]

From what I have seen of Vista, (which is not that much really) I prefer the OS X, that my Mac Pro runs!

[zhenya]

Scott,

Other than the cool visuals.., what else does Vista have that XP doesn't and why did you decide to upgrade it? I'm looking to buy a new PC and have an option to go with either OS. I'm used to XP ( hate Outlook, by the way) and except Internet Exploder it performed flawlessly for me. I since killed IE and went with Firefox and T-bird for email and have no problem at all.

[SPasse]

Poseidon,

Well my first (of many) Macs was a Lisa, so I certainly have a soft spot for Macs.

Vista/Aero def looks a lot like an OSX based Mac.

Regards,

Scott

[SPasse]

Zhenya,

“Other than the cool visuals.., what else does Vista have that XP doesn't and why did you decide to upgrade it?”

I am one of the “crash test dummies” at my company that get to play with the new OS and application SW. Basically, I am one of the people that has to bless any new software before we “mass deploy” it across the company.

If you are familiar with XP and keep it up to date with all of the security patches, I can’t give you a compelling argument to go with Vista.

They did move a lot of the functions around.

I am also playing with Office 2007 and they completely re-worked the user interface on this SW suite.

XP is mature and (if history is any indication) Vista will take some time to get as stable.

Make sure you check out your (Non MS Office) program compatibility. Some of my important SW (Like AutoCAD 2006 and Inventor 10) will not run under Vista.

I am also not sure that machines that have been upgraded from XP to the current revision of Vista are entirely stable. I upgraded one of my office PCs and had to end up flattening it and reinstalling Vista. Windows explorer was not stable and elements of my desktop started to “disappear”. I will find out next week if this particular Vista PC “behaves”

So I guess that I just like to play with new SW…

Regards,

Scott

[zhenya]

If you are familiar with XP and keep it up to date with all of the security patches, I can’t give you a compelling argument to go with Vista.

I had a feeling you might say that. And yes, I usually stay on top with all the updates and security patches for my XP. I will probably stick with my gut feeling and go with the XP Pro. I was contemplating Mac's but too lazy to learn new OS.

[schrocat]

If you are buying a new machine anyway, and all the productivity software suites provided by the vendor are Vista compliant and met your needs.
I'd lean towards going for Vista.

However...

If you have any critical software (i.e home medical databases) and are unable to see recent updates, patches, or information regarding upgrading to Vista on the software companies websites...well...I wouldn't do it unless I could keep the other machine going for a bit just in case this option\resolution flaked out. (Virtual PC works for my needs so far...)


...the old XP box, you could just leave it on your network with no keyboard, mouse or monitor and just remote to its desktop to run your legacy app if you don't like VPC...and\or you could use it for file storage.

[Poseidon]

Originally Posted by zhenya

I was contemplating Mac's but too lazy to learn new OS.

It is not that hard Gene, Stacey even picked it up in a week or so....

[zhenya]

Thank you all for the input, I will make my choice soon.

Mike, I'm not sure I'm ready to give up the windows yet.