Well lets see how the Vista install went.
First, I backed up all my data and saved my configuration files. I then did a “Fresh†install of Vista Home Premium.
The install went great. I can’t think of an install that was so easy. When I first logged in, I loved the look and feel and it kind of reminded me of Mandrake.
The first thing that I noticed was the directory structure had changed and my old Doc’s and Settings folder with all my original data was still there! Ya hooo! It was neat moving all my data to the new location and Vista actually knew what was video, music and what were photo’s and then asked me if I wanted them automatically moved to their new Vista location.
I use a Sprint mobile modem for my internet and though the drivers installed without a hitch, the Sprint interface froze on me and I ended up rebooting. Suprisingly, when I rebooted the pc, everything Sprint worked great and I was up and running on the web.
Device Manager showed three unknown devices, so I did a driver update and allowed it to search the web for the correct driver and to my surprise, installed the devices without a hitch.
My wife uses IncriediMail so before I rebuilt the pc, I exported all her e-mail and contacts to a .cab file which was moved to the new Vista “My Documents†folder.
When I first opened IncriediMail for the first time, I was prompted to download Java, so I went to the site and downloaded Java. Except my mail client froze up… So I rebooted and tried again and it opened without any problems.
When I went to import the cab file, I got a message, “Please select *.cabâ€Â. It was frustrating because I was! And man, would my wife be MAD if I lost all her mail or her contacts! (I would have had to roll back to XP). So… knowing that Vista has a higher standard of security, I moved the cab file to the IncriediMail directory (c:\program files\ Incriedimail) and everything imported correctly except none of my wife’s mail or contacts were there! So, I closed it, opened it again and nothing… So I re-import the file again… Still nothing. So I close the mail client, go into task manager and close it there too and then re-open the mail client and I get a very friendly message that says that there was a problem opening the client and that Vista was going to open it in Compatibility mode. I clicked ok, and life was good.
Installing my printer was flawless and browsing something that didn’t even look close to network neighborhood was cool as it even showed me my switch. I’m excited about the security on the pc, though it’s a bit annoying, but I think once I get the pc up and fully functional with all my applications, it will be worth it. Now that being said, out of user friendliness in regard to configuration, I’d give it a 6 out of 10 where XP was a 9 out of 10. I have a feeling that the average user is going to get frustrated.
Ohh, and my antivirus isn’t compatible with Vista…
. Figure I'll load it at home when I'm done posting this and have some real fun :-D (I've got Home premium and a guy from work who hates MS, especially Vista was actually Wow'ed when he plugged his high tech cell phone in and Vista did the rest) It actually ran really well on an Intel 1.8, 512 mb ram, integrated Video cookie cutter and everything else HP D530 :bday: