I have written this for the benefit of my customers as a guide to this new operating system which I am currently evaluating. The news filtering down the pike is rather mixed with some people loving it, while others hate it. This is basically a brief guide to how it will affect your business.

#1 Installation

This can be done as a clean install on a new computer or as an upgrade to XP/2000 or as a clean install on a machine that already has an older operating system. In this instance all of the old Windows files including the contents of the “My Documents” folder will be in a new root folder called “Windows Old”. You can copy over whatever you want then delete “Windows Old” to free disk space.

As you will be aware, there are many different versions of Vista, however whichever you obtain, the actual disk WILL BE THE SAME. The version that is installed is set by the key code that you enter. If you bypass entering a key code, which you are allowed to do, you will get a list of all of the different versions, including the 32 and 64 bit options with instructions to “Select which version of Vista that you purchased”. Obviously, if you purchased Home Basic and select Ultimate, you will have a problem when you come to enter the key code later; however Ultimate will continue to run for the 30 day period that you are allowed.

Obviously I can’t condone piracy, but there is a crack now available that enables a user to pirate the software. If you have a disk that was sold as Home Basic, there is nothing to prevent you installing Windows as the Ultimate, and then afterwards using the crack to activate it as Ultimate.

There is a legitimate money saving workaround for anyone who wants to save money whereby you can purchase an upgrade version, install without the key, and then enter the key after the installation has been completed. Microsoft knows about this but seem unconcerned!

The actual installation process is different to previous versions in two ways. Firstly it is from a DVD rather than a CD, so you would need a DVD drive. Secondly, the files on the disk are *.wim files which stand for “Windows Image Files” and basically they are an image of what is going to be on your hard drive.

All computers now are built with 64 bit processors so you are free to install the 64 bit version of Vista, but beware driver incompatibility problems. It’s best to stick with the 32 bit at the moment.

#2 Older machines

I have successfully installed Vista Ultimate on a machine that I built some years ago and later upgraded with an AS Rock K7S41 main board in 2005. The processor is an AMD 2.2 gigahertz. These are a stable board that were in production from late 2004 until late 2006, to install Vista all I had to do was increase the memory to 512 megs. Now these used a shared memory, whereby 64 Megs is taken from the 512 and used for the monitor display, but Vista accepted this. I did not have any trouble with drivers as most were provided on the Microsoft installation disk, however there is a device shown in Device Manager that is not working and I have been unable to obtain a driver. I suspect that its a sound device or similar unimportant issue, the sound card does work ok.

Be advised that the latest main boards I use will not run satisfactorily on older CRT monitors.

#3 What’s it like?

There is a saying that “There is never a second chance to make a first impression”, this is very true and my first impression of XP when it first came out was far from favourable. The vivid bright blue and beige (sunglasses required) colour system, the babyish “My Places” crap, and the endless stream of pointless pop up messages from the lower right hand corner. I soon leaned how to stop this nonsense and set a display that was kinder on the eyes, but the poor impression stayed with me.

My first impression of Vista is totally different. A new clean sober colour scheme, gone are the “My Places” crap, and only the occasional pop up message which soon disappears of its own account. Everything is neatly sorted; it nice to work with, and basically I like it.

Be warned that that the root file system is different in as much as “Documents and Settings” has been replaced by “Users”, and “My Documents” has been replaced by simply “Documents” although I suspect that the folder “Documents” is aliased to the old name “My Documents” for the benefit of your programs that need a default ‘save to’ folder.

Regardless of this there will be some problems here. I will need to re-code my software to encompass the new root folder structure because of my software’s ability to output reports in Excel and Word format. Obviously the “Documents” or “My Documents” are the target folder for my “Output To” method.

Summary

Vista is nice software to use and great improvement on the old XP. I strongly suspect that a lot of the criticisms are simply sour grapes or anti Microsoft political correctness. Obviously, as I continue to work with the new system more issues will come to light, and I suspect that there are quite a few issues that affect the larger networks, Dell are now offering XP as an alternative to Vista and it must be for a reason, I suspect that the reason is something to do with resources.