Here we go.... I went ahead and bit the bullet and am gradually switching our systems over to Windows Vista. I started slow with my laptop, then over the weekend to Amber's laptop and now to my main system (don't worry, I made it dual booting with both Vista and XP Pro, I have not gone all the way off of the deep end quite yet).
I have been forced in to learning all of the ins and outs of the operating system because I am going to have to support it, and I also have to have a couple users close by that I need to support and see what kind of troubles they run in to. I have also installed 6 new machines at a client's office using Vista at their request so I can start learning the quirks of supporting this OS there as well. Fortunately, most of the work that this client does is interne and MS Office 2003 based so we don't have any major application compatibilities to overcome there.
Thus far here is what I am finding in Vista.... More about Office 2007 below.
I am finding Windows Vista to be much less cumbersome than I originally thought it was from the betas that I looked at. There are a number of quirky things in the OS that are frustrating, yet easy to deal with.
First and formost is user account control, this is, to me, Microsoft's way of trying to protect the users from themselves (see this funny Mac Ad and believe it or not, it is VERY accurate http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfetbidVUYw. ) You can turn it off, but in order to not get annoying warnings, you have to turn off all of the windows security alerts. In my case, that is not a big deal, I turned off User Account Control and the security alerts, but for the average user, this is a dangerous proposition... I would hope to see a fix for this in the future, but I think this is a way for MS programmers to thumb their nose at everyone who grunts about MS Security. Something else that I ran in to on my desktop system is an issue with multiple monitor support. With Windows XP, it was not particular about my video cards. I use 3 monitors, I had an ATI PCI Express dual output video card in my main slot and an Nvidia dual output card in a PCI slot. Vista does NOT like this.. XP was fine, but Vista would only allow one or the other to function. You have to have MATCHING manufacturer chipsets in your multiple video cards so off I went to pick up an Nvidia PCI-e card for my pc to match the cards and the multiple monitor support works fine now with up to 4 monitors avalible.
One thing that Apple has been saying is a drawback of Vista is all of the hardware upgrades that you have to do to make it work. This was not the case for me. I have only had one hardware compatibility issue (other than the video card thing which really does not count) so far on my 1 year old custom PC and that is with a cheap and old multi card reader so no biggie there. If you are trying to install a brand new upgraded operating system on a PC that is more than a couple years old and want it to perform at optimum capacity, you, in my eyes, are fooling youself. As cheap as systems are these days it makes more sense to upgrade your WHOLE machine than to just upgrade your current computer. Heck, for what you can buy a Vista Upgrade for, along with memory, video and any other stuff you need, you could have already bought a new machine. You can get a Vista machine from Dell witha 19" monitor for $600 so why bother with upgrading?? You do not want to run Vista as an upgrade anyway, you need to do a clean install, upgrading only brings the problems that you HAD on your computer to your upgraded system.
From an application standpoint here are the issues that I have and how I will work around them...
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX - Some functions don't work properly - Solution: It is time for me to upgrade
Adobe Acrobat 6 - Does not work properly in Vista - Solution: Adobe 7 and 8 work fine time to upgrade.
Those are the ONLY applications that I use that have issues. I really can't complain if I am using software that is 3 versions old if it is not supported in a new OS. There are, however, a number of current applications that my clients use that are not supported in Vista, these are mostly smaller software companies who waited too long to develop for Vista...Shame on them for being so far behind. Shame on MS and Retailers for not making XP systems readily avalible, maybe these companies will learn in the future before the next OS release to be more prepared.
The long and the short of it.... So far, I really like the operating system, there are some really cool things, a neat new look and some fun tools. Is switching to Vista going to increase your productivity, probably not... but it will give you a new outlook on your computer, just like XP did when it came out with the new look in 2002. I look forward to some of the software companies getting on the stick and making the products that my clients use function in Vista.
Now.... On to Office 2007. I will only say a couple things at this point....
Cool new look
Tough to find formatting and tools menus but once you find them, easy to use
Lots of cool new productivity functions
BAD BAD - New file formats for .doc etc files that are not backwards compatible without a conversion tool. Need to save files that you will be emailing or sharing in old format so everyone with office 2003 back can read them.
Get your prices down Microsoft, your products, though good, are WAY too expensive when there are other MAC and Open source options for people to utilize out there.
No comments:
Post a Comment