Vista

A Windows I am looking forward to

November 8, 2008

I confess, I am actually looking forward to Windows 7. When Vista came out, I jumped ship to Ubuntu. I was tired of boring, clumsy old XP, and Vista’s system requirements were ridiculous. But Microsoft has apparently dialed back the system requirements, so that most circa-2007 computers should have no problem running it.
That alone makes [...]

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Windows will not actually speed up if you do the following . . .

August 6, 2008

From Lifehacker, nine things that will not actually speed up Windows. Among them, disabling Microsoft processes, clearing out your registry, and memory “optimizer” programs.
What will work: running SpyBot every now and then to clear out resource-hogging spyware, and using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer so you get less spyware in the first place.
Debunking Common Windows [...]

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Intel won’t use Vista—so neither should you

June 26, 2008

This summary pretty much says it all:
“When a company as tech savvy as Intel, with full source code access and having written several large chunks of the OS, says get stuffed, you know you have a problem. Well, everyone knows MS has a problem, but it is nice to see it codified in such a [...]

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One year with Linux in a Windows world

June 4, 2008

Mike Kavis switched to Linux to prove that people can be productive at work without using Microsoft products. One year later, he has proved the point.
I have been Microsoft free* for a couple of months now, as well, using Ubuntu GNU/Linux as my primary operating system, with OpenOffice.org as my office suite. I have not [...]

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I finally got to try Windows Vista

April 4, 2008

I scored a refurbished Gateway computer from Woot last week, which I intend to use as a server. I was kind of excited, because although I intended to wipe the drive and install Ubuntu (Windows Vista is nowhere near stable enough to be a good server), it came with Windows Vista Home Premium. Since I [...]

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Oh, you thought you owned your copy of Windows Vista?

December 9, 2007

The Windows Vista end-user license agreement (EULA) is a 14-page PDF document. (The EULA for Windows XP Pro SP2, by contrast, looks to be only a couple of pages.)
This is probably the most concerning part of the EULA:

The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software.

Oh, you [...]

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Will Windows lose market share due to Vista?

October 4, 2007

Vista has not been the roaring success Microsoft intended. This is common knowledge. Why? It is a system hog, requiring nearly anyone who wants Vista to upgrade their computer. So upgrading to Vista requires upgrading hardware. This is not 1998 any more. Hardware stays relevant longer and users do not want to have to upgrade [...]

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Get Windows Defender for Windows XP

July 21, 2007

One of Vista’s big security features is the Windows Defender anti-spyware utility. However, you can also get it if you are (wisely) staying with Windows XP. This is a pretty hefty service, though, taking up about 16 MB of memory on my computer.
If you are worried about spyware, this is a great addition. If you [...]

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“Vista capable” means you can boot Vista and stare at it

April 2, 2007

Mouse Print dug up this gem from Dell’s website, claiming that the baseline system requirements for a “Vista capable” computer means you can boot the operating system, but not run applications or games. Vista isn’t that pretty.

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Vista is a hefty, hefty beast

March 2, 2007

A friend called me this morning because he was going computer shopping, so I was looking up the minimum system requirements for Vista. And quite frankly, they are pretty hefty. My laptop is two years old (I’m big on efficiency, not the cutting edge), and I felt like I was going overboard getting 1 GB [...]

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