Vista - first thoughts/experiences

I received the MS Vista Business edition (upgrade) from Amazon.com on 31 Jan. and started getting ready for the install. I wanted to install it to a new blank hard disk and keep XP on a second hard disk in my computer. First obstacle - not sure if Vista (upgrade versions) will let me do this. It requires an existing copy of a prior version of Windows installed on the hard disk. You can not just show it a CD of a prior version. Fortunately I had just read about a work around that that lets you install the Vista upgrade to blank hard disk. Of course this means you don't have to pay for a full version - something I think Microsoft will be fixing in the near future.

So I installed a new 70GB Western Digital Raptor SATA 10,000 rpm disk drive to put Vista on. My copy of XP resides on an older 30GB SATA Raptor drive. This was pretty easy.

I had earlier upgraded my video adapter to be able to display the Aero components of Vista.

I had also ran the Vista Upgrade Advisor program that warned me about hardware and software incompatibilities.

Then a little hitch. Vista comes on a DVD and my DVD drive is an external USB drive. Translation - Vista would not boot off the external drive. A quick trip to CompUSA to purchase a Sony internal DVD RW drive (these drives are getting cheap), some cussing trying to figure out how to remove the old drive and then the new drive is in and working.

Put the Vista disk in and boot off of it. Go thru the work around of doing the first install as a trial version and then re-installing Vista as an upgrade to the trial version. A slight hiccup due to my not reading the instructions close enough and then it worked. A legal full version of Vista Business on a separate hard drive and XP on the other drive. Vista even automatically installed a dual boot screen that displays at startup so I can switch between Vista and XP. This is a good thing as I have a lot of applications to install and I expect it to be at least a week before I get everything switched over to Vista.

Vista found and installed drivers for all of my hardware except the Epson scanner. I downloaded and installed Epson's XP driver for the scanner and it worked.

First impressions. It's just XP in fancier clothes. Looks nice, things are in different places but it's XP. I haven't seen any compelling reason to upgrade from XP.

I had previously signed-up for Microsoft's Live OneCare package (because I was curious and they were offering a nice discount). This is Microsoft's answer to a lot of the add-on packages from 3rd party vendors. It includes tuneup tools, Windows Defender and firewall, an anti-virus program, a disk de-fragmenter, a backup program and probably the kitchen sink. I am trying it out but doubt that I will keep it past the one year subscription I have paid for. It seems to work ok but everything is dumbed down. You have very little control over how it works and there is no way for you to see what is happening

And this reminds me of the Update feature in Vista. Vista has a different way of handling updates; you cannot access the MS updates web site. Again it is dumbed down and you just get what it thinks you should get. I installed Office 2000 and it will not let me update it. I had to manually find and download/install Office 2000 service pack 1 and 3. Speaking of Office - Office 2007 uses new file formats which means that Office 2007 files are not compatible with older versions of Office. There are some work arounds. 2007 is supposed to be able to save files in the old format or if you have Office 2002/XP or Office 2003, you can download a free converter program that lets you use the Office 2007 files. It unclear how the converter works with Office 2000 and it does not work with older versions of Office.

Stay tuned for further adventures in Vista land.

http://www.howtogeek.com/tag/windows-vista/ Nice collection of tips
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx Upgrade Advisor
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b6f1631-973a-45c7-a4ec-4928fa173266&DisplayLang=en Transfer files from XP to Vista
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/default.htm Microsoft Live OneCare
http://www.radarsync.com/vista/ Large collection of Vista drivers