One of the reason’s I waited so long to get a new computer was in order to get Vista bundled free. Now that I’ve been playing around and setting things up, here are some observations and thoughts on Vista and my new computer:
- Vista has this nice ability where you can shrink and create new partitions, however it doesn’t know to move system files around and so you can’t really shrink partitions much. Also it can’t move partitions which is irritating.
- The Aero theme looks better than Luna, the XP theme (although I wouldn’t go to say it’s better than OS X). However, there are too many borders and toolbars on the windows so I need a larger monitor (or dual) to have enough real estate.
- UAE (i.e., cancel or allow?) is just as annoying as the Apple commercials make it, but the only time it rears its ugly head too often is when you’re in the Control Panel.
- Don’t try to install an old version of Alcohol 120%. It’s not Vista compatible and will blue screen Vista every time immediately after you log in.
- Java doesn’t work with Firefox at all, and hangs Firefox every time it runs. You have to use IE7 if you need Java applet support (i.e., Facebook photo uploader). Basically Java always causes UAE to activate.
- Some programs have random hangs or just don’t work. Usually the culprit is that UAE is acting like the Gestapo and silences the offending program when it tries to do something.
- I have 8 USB ports, and they’re all used up for: mouse, keyboard, scanner, HD enclosure, media card reader (doesn’t even work in Vista…), cell phone cable, printer, iPod dock.
- The uptime on my laptop is over 500 days, I’ve rebooted Vista some 50ish times in 5 days.
- I can finally run banlist properly (with UAE disabled) and I installed Warcraft on emulated drives so I don’t have to swap disks or find no-cd cracks
- Why aren’t there ANY good RSS readers for Windows? Is this why web-based readers are so popular? The best I’ve found is RSSOwl, but even that is sorely lacking. After some more searching, I’m using Feedreader (great name…).
- A lot of the old hacks still work, I edited my registry to launch a text editor on any file using the context menu. Same thing that I did in XP and before.
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