Before you write me off as a complete moron, here were my justifications/explanations at the time:
- I took a backup image of my hard drive, so I can always go back.
- I am the Systems Administrator, and I need to do some beta testing.
- I am a complete sucker for eye candy and novelty.
What I forgot to account for was the fact that I am an inexorable force once I get my mind stuck on something. I have pounded away since Tuesday at this, and "going back" is not an option. Out of fear that my struggles might be in vain, I have decided to share my victories (few though they be) so that should any of you brave souls endeavor to follow suit, you will be armed with the wisdom gleaned from my mistakes.
Victory #1
I have gained this glowing pearl of wisdom: DO NOT UPGRADE FROM XP. The trouble of hunting down all those CDs and setup files is NOTHING compared to the hell of wrestling your computer into a state of functionality. If you do decide to upgrade for some ungodly reason, BE SURE TO TAKE A FULL BACKUP OF YOUR HARDDRIVE. I fully recommend Acronis True Image 10 for this task.
Victory #2
The first thing I noticed when I booted up was that Internet Explorer 7 hangs and then crashes. To fix this, hit escape when you open IE7 to stop it from loading. Go to Tools->Internet Options, go to the Security tab and uncheck "Enable Protected Mode." Not sure what protected mode buys you. It bought me a pile of doo doo.
Victory #3
Every bloody time I tried to move or delete a file, or even run a program, I got an incredibly annoying series of warnings. Save yourself precious time and click on the Control Panel->User Accounts. Click on "Turn User Account Control on or off," and uncheck "Use User Account Control." TRUST ME.
Victory #4
For some unholy reason my sound card started getting all crackly and staticy whenever Windows tried to play a sound. WARNING: this is a symptom of the fact that you are not running the correct sound card driver, and this will result in the Blue Screen of Death. To fix this you need to download and install a Vista friendly driver. At work I'm running a Dell, so I typed in my service tag and downloaded all the drivers off their site for Vista.
Some random observations:
The sidebar is a mockery of something useful. I mean COME ON! How hard is it to have a Quick Launch toolbar on your sidebar? Apparently it is impossible. There is an "App Launcher" gadget, but if you keep a collection of shortcuts in a folder which you then drag and drop onto the App Launcher, they look like trash and the stupid shortcut arrow takes up half of the icon space. Ugly and useless.
Aero is pretty nice. It can almost be too kitschy(sp?) at times, but it's definitely a huge improvement over XP's interface.
ReadyBoost is really sweet (it allows you to stick a USB drive into your computer and use it as extra RAM), but don't think that just because you have a USB 2.0 drive that it is qualified to be used for ReadyBoost. I have a Cruzer Mini 1GB and it works great. I have a Memorex TravelDrive 1GB and it does not pass the test to be used for RAM.
Overall
Once the turbulence of upgrading has been passed over, I feel like Vista will be a significant improvement over XP. The problem is I felt like I was relying on my Tech Bench skillz to even get the thing to work. If you are not tech savvy, DO NOT ATTEMPT to upgrade. You might can get away with a clean format/install, but remember to download Vista friendly drivers as soon as you can or else you'll be in a BSD inferno.
12 Comments:
And before you Mac users get on, let me preemptively acknowledge that yes, OSX is easy to install/upgrade, and that if you are happy with the software available to Mac users and have the money to throw at one, you are better off with a Mac.
Oh, so you acknowledge all of this. And that most things (ReadyBoost is a nice feature) Vista has done are old hat (check OSX or Linux out). Oh and you can get a decent Macbook for $1199 (with your student discount). A better hardware/software package you will not find.
On a humorous note, Vista came out on Tuesday. I had a Vista computer in my store to get fixed Wednesday morning.
yeah. you're gonna see PLENTY of those suckers rolling in... especially if they belong to users who have tried the upgrade.
Ha! Before I even finished reading this I had thought of my comment - "Every day is a victory day with a Mac." - but it looks like you were a step ahead of me.
But seriously, this is the upgrade that the biggest software company in the world is offering to 95% of computer users and you, as a computer major of some sort (I think), had this much trouble with it?
Don't forget, it took them 5+ years to get this project finished. Though they did scrap it and start over completely once.
Bryan, only one question remains: Did you name a beneficiary for your peripherals?
yeah. my laptop gets the ipod.
Sorry dude, but you lost me at "hello."
Bryan,
Come to the dark side. As a recent switcher, I find the longer I am here the better it is.
tim,
trust me, if my work did not involve programming and administrating several websites built on ASP.NET technology (which requires a Microsoft IDE), i would be on a mac faster than you can say Steve Jobs.
Truly, thou doeth almost convince me to become a Mac user.
Michael Hood
hmmm... which michael hood are you? if you're the top hit on google, then what on earth drove you to my lowly blog? regardless, verily i say unto you, my mother has had the same mac powerbook for 7 years, and she recently upgraded to the latest osx without a hitch. if you tried to upgrade a 7 year old pc, it would chortle at you a few times and then unceremoniously explode.
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