The XP to Vista switch requires patience
Posted By RichC on March 21, 2007
There have been many moments in the last few days that I’ve wondered why I purchase a computer with Windows Vista installed as the operating system last week; it has not been easy nor will be for sometime I fear. From the simple task of getting programs and files transferred over from and XP machine, to getting simple things like USB flash drives or public WiFi locations to operate painlessly, its a challenge. Vista does its best to keep its guard up and prevent easy access. (for good and bad) I’m spending my lunch sharing a few thoughts below.
A few ‘first days’ with Vista post:
I do enjoy the Apple Macintosh like look and feel, and the cute little pop-ups showing the tiny window in the task bar (even flash video plays in miniature) or Win-Tab combination in bring a window/program to the front. Speed seems fine on my Gateway notebook with 2 GBs of RAM and most of the programs I need daily do seem to run well. I’ve installed the MS Office 2003 Office suite as well as Adobe CS 2 of which I use Photoshop and InDesign regularly. IE7 as expected seems clean and fast and has minimal issues with pages or plug-ins like Shockwave or Flash. I prefer Mozilla Firefox2 for browsing and with that I’ve seen a few glitches. The initial hassle was how to port over my existing backup from XP:
C:\Documents and Settings\’NAME’\Application Data\Mozilla …
Send these files to your new Vista computer using network, USB flash drive of CD and they go in a similar directory here:
C:\Users\’NAME’\AppData\Roaming …
It took me a little looking to figure this out even though I probably could have found something online? (I’ve got that ‘male’ problem when it comes to reading or asking for directions)
Anyway since I used Thunderbird, the transfer of info is about the same … directories that is. Even then, it seems that Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (20070221) still has a time out problem which has been noted on Dual Core processors. I’ve increased the ‘connection timeout’ setting to 120 although it still doesn’t seem to help. There must be a problem using the second Core? Anyway it only happens occasionally.
The Palm Desktop up and running although from what I’ve found, the desktop will no longer hotsync and install files? All else is working and I finally have my USB connection back. Yippee. PDAnet is also working with my Palm Treo 700p to connect to the internet. I’ve not tried the Bluetooth sync yet but then that’s been another questionable issue? My new computer has built in bluetooth (old one used a PC card) an I’ve appreciated having a wireless bluetooth Kensington mouse to use instead of the touch pad (occasionally) and to be able to use a Jabra JX10 bluetooth earpiece. Unfortunately using the two together is questionable as I get the feared ‘blue screen then die’ window when both are on and a Skype call is made. So much for using the two together?
As for a couple non-essential luxuries, my Slingplayer runs flawlessly and take full advantage of a good network connection and Ultrabright widescreen. (one beautiful improvement over my old notebook) The Capture Express product sadly doesn’t work well with Vista although Stan at Insight Software Solutions tells me an upgrade is being worked on. That said, I’ve found the Snipping Tool packaged with Vista is an acceptable substitute … I might even grow to like it?
Well enough for now, I’ve burned my lunch hour rattling with my first thought at a McDonald’s hotspot … and still have 50% battery life left! (although I did go with the optional oversized battery pack and have my ‘power plan’ set to ‘balanced.’) Sorry … no time to proofread.
😀
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