The Casual Tech

Good Evening to you all! I finally sat down and installed the RC2 version of Vista this evening. I had an HP 9600US Laptop with a 3.06 Intel processor with 2 gigs of RAM and 128 Video RAM. The hard drive was an 80 gig HD. I started by formating the HD with Vista. WOW, what an improvement from the old DOS looking GUI from the past versions. This was quick too. I was able to delete and create a new partition in less then a minute. What a nice change. I then formatted the HD. I then hit a few buttons and we were off installing Vista. This is by far the easiest installation you can possibly do.

Within 45 minutes I had a complete OS, personal setting as completed and then installed Windows Office 2007 beta.

If you have enough memory and video memory you will see that the Aero “3D Glass” theme for your windows is very cool looking. I do not beleive Microsoft has any leg up on Apple, but I do believe it is much more advanced then it has been in the past with it’s bland colors and boring visual effects.

Another cool visual app that Microsoft has now included with Vista is the Windows switcher. If you click on the switcher ICON in your Quick launch, it then sets all your windows in a 3d looking organized pile and you can select the primary window to work on. It is quite neat.

If you are a corporate company user, this new OS is not exactly going to make your life any easier at all. According to Gartner, only 5% of corporate users will have Vista on their PC’s by the end of 2007. Vista will not surpass XP as the primary OS on PC’s until 2010. This is not something Microsoft likes to hear. The OS is a great improvement, but XP has been so stable for so long, many are still recovering from 98/2000 and they challenges that presented itself then. Why mess with a good thing. Microsoft will more then likely force you to Vista by stopping support for XP in the near future.

If you are going to use Vista, do me a favor! Format C and start fresh! If you do an upgrade, expect to take about 3 hours for the complete process to complete and risk a possibility of problems. A good clean install will give you a better chance of a good expeirience with Vista!