Technology In Check

I’m still surprised that many people continue to disparage Vista mercilessly. Having just installed Vista SP1 yesterday, I’m now onto my 12th month of running Vista with comparatively few problems. The biggest difficulty I’ve faced in my own experience comes from attaching external hard drives; if I plug in a USB hard drive, and try to use it too quickly, my PC will sometimes blue-screen. Sometimes.

And after I spoke with a friend this last weekend, I heard more about how Vista is “a bad thing”. Continue Reading »

Many people have slagged Windows Vista for a variety of reasons. New PC’s that normally would have Vista installed can be bought with a Windows XP “downgrade”. And now that Vista Service Pack 1 is out the playing field will once again be covered in a foggy glow, and we can expect a rash of fresh calls to continue buying XP in favour of Vista (more about the Vista service pack next week).

However Vista has been available for over a year, and XP sales are due to stop soon. So what happens when you simply can’t buy XP any more? What are you supposed to to do then? Here’s the breakdown, and why business managers should care. Continue Reading »

A while back I commented on how Microsoft had an article dedicated to teaching IT bosses how to convince business managers that Vista is practically a required upgrade. Well it gets better. Witness the true power of the Internet.

The Microsoft Australia site is running a contest called Fact or Fiction. And you, the intrepid in-house tech types, get to show off how much you know about the different versions of Vista. The whole thing takes about 20 to 30 minutes or so, and as one punter wrote:

“The whole thing is a massive exercise in how well you can regurgitate Microsoft marketing hype. If there’s a question which might put Vista in a bad light, it’s clearly Fiction, but if the question is happy and fluffy and might make people rush out into the streets in droves, driven by the whole heady thrill that is Windows Vista, it must be Fact.”

As a professional geek, I found this one to be too funny. The fact that it’s true (the site can be found here) makes me laugh that much harder. Granted that the prizes are very good - first prize is a $15,000 AUD entertainment bundle - but what was MS thinking when they came up with this? Is the public perception of Vista so bad that they feel they need to resort to this?

In this last of a series of articles on XP vs. Vista, we’re going to discuss the idea of new software features and who they’re really aimed at.

While much maligned, Vista does have some features that can be a benefit to many people and organizations. But knowing who’s being targeted by those features will help you decide if it’s really worth buying into the marketing hyperbole.

Continue Reading »

In our last article, we looked at some of the points on both sides of the debate regarding whether or not to upgrade to Vista. Today, we’re going to work with the idea that you’ve already adopted Vista for one reason or another, and you want to make the best out of the situation you’re in. What do you do? How can you make Vista more stable?

Let’s take a look under the hood, shall we?

Continue Reading »