Last week we got our licenses for Windows Vista and Office 2007 at work.  I installed them on my laptop and have been trying it for a couple of days.  I’ve never been a fan of OS upgrades, so before installing it, I backed up my files and then did a complete wipe and clean install of Vista onto the hard drive.

So far so good.  There is nothing that blows me away in the new operating system, but there are a lot of little subtleties that are welcome improvements.  I like how the file copy dialog now shows what I liken to a speedometer – a speed of the copy in MB (or KB) per second.  I love the new sound engine and the fact that I can now mute individual apps in the mixer.  No more myspace songs blasting my ears when I’m trying to enjoy my iTunes.   I also like how the start menu has a search field right at the bottom of it.  This operates in much the same way as Spotlight does in Apple’s Mac OS Tiger.  I’m pretty good at placing my files in an easy to navigate hierarchy, but this feature gets me to them quicker, and  also comes in handy as a quick launcher.  It may soon replace my old habit of hitting the Win key + R shortcut to bring up a run dialogue, though that still works as well.

I promptly disabled UAC but that was mainly because I am still reinstalling apps and was too lazy for the extra clicks, though I admit it’s really not as intrusive as some people have previously reported.  I will probably turn it back on in a week or two after I’m settled in to my new computing environment.

I’ll post again in a week or two with more impressions and perhaps some thoughts on the new Office 2007 suite.

I’ll admit I’m not too keen on the name.  But what’s in a name, right?

Today I installed Windows Vista RC1 on my laptop as part of their customer preview program.  I’ve been very happy with XP, but I like to keep up with technology so I thought it would be fun to give it a whirl, and I have other computers (and operating systems) to turn to if I run into problems.

The install went very smoothly.  It feels very responsive on my laptop, which is a paltry 1.5 Ghz machine.  I do however, have 1.5 GB RAM, which by my standards is still pretty generous for a laptop.

A couple problems I ran into with previous builds seem to have been fixed, though my particular problems were with third party products:  my Cisco VPN client didn’t work before but I found a beta version that works with Vista.  Also, at home, my WPA secured wifi would connect but not assign my laptop an ip address.  This seemed to be unresolved with RC1 but then I checked my router’s website (d-link) and they released a firmware update 2 days ago that resolved that very issue for me.

So far, smooth sailing, though I’d hardly say I’ve put it to the test yet.  It didn’t recognize my Kensington Bluetooth dongle, but then I had a hard time getting XP to recognize that one too.  Everything else worked right away without the need for further driver installation.  I played around with the windows “Sidebar” but i don’t like it much… I don’t have the desktop real estate to devote to it, or at least not in my mind.  If I had a widescreen, I might be more willing to give up some pixels.  I tried floating a few gadgets on the desktop but I found nothing so useful that I wanted it there at all times.  I’ve heard the sidebar criticised as a poor imitation of Apple’s dashboard… but personally I think it’s more like a reincarnation of Windows 98′s Active Desktop… a feature that was despised by many as a resource hog – it was probably just ahead of its time.  In the days of Windows 98, most people wanted every cpu cycle they could spare.  Nowadays, that brand new 3 Ghz machine is overkill for most everyday desktop computing… we’ll gladly give it some “gadgets” to chew on.  I may warm up to the sidebar as it matures and better applets become available.

I’ve decided to save some time and effort here. No matter what technology becomes the current mainstream buzzword, I seem to always find myself on the trailing edge to keep up. It’s not for any lack of effort on my part, it’s simply the fact that advances are made far too quickly. I’m hearing about Web 2.0 left and right and at least according to wikipedia, Web 3.0 is coming. So I’ve decided no more playing catch up for me. I hereby declare my site, my self, my very consciousness to be Web 4.0 . You can’t have it. I called dibbs.