Well as my previous blog item indicated I’ve gotten Vista installed on VMWare. I’m still debating about actually using a PC to do a full install as I feel I may wipe this and start fresh again.
It’s a good thing I’m not a rush out and upgrade everything person such as I was in the past. Yes, I used to be terrible at getting the latest code/beta’s and hardware and throwing it together and hoping it works. With tear apart PC’s this is ok, but for production work or serious gaming boxes one needs stability. Rushing the latest OS or patch just to eliminate a bug or add a feature are nice reasons one needs to ensure that everything that was, still is, and everything we expect to be, will be. Today I’ve been burned by so many upgrades that either broke itself or something else that I’ve gotten very particular about what I install and what I don’t. On my companies web page we review many software and seldom does a package achieve better than a 70%. It’s just very hard to find a good documented piece of software that acutally does what it states without issues. Even some old favorites don’t score as high as would be expected.
This is something that seems lost with many IT professionals, but moreso with Marketing folks than the technical folks. Yes rush out and get that new update, you’ll appreciate it. Really? Thank god for Virtual Machines. When it comes down to Vista patching during the beta is something that will just have to be done, but at what point does it lose focus with my needs?
Why you don’t need every upgrade or patch.
My main gaming PC is currently running XP SP1 as I also use this as my main chat and torrent machine. SP2 showed that it put ‘Microsoft’s idea of security’ ahead of the user, and did things that simply are not required for experienced PC users. I saw more problems that I decided not to upgrade this machine. It has caused a lot of problems and as a result to changes to the way Microsoft allows access to it’s updates I no longer get automatic updates on this box. I can still get them manually and download them, but I hesitate to say that for the most part I don’t even worry about it. I checked and with the exception of two critical patches in the last year that had to be installed, I haven’t installed any patches or updates on this machine in 18 months. It’s quite unlikely that for the life of this box (another two years max) I will probably never upgrade this again. Will Windows stop working or break? Unlikely it’s working fine now, and since I’m not changing any componants or core kernals functions or adding new unwanted functionality it will remain that way until it dies of a natural death. This box has been well protected for it’s entire life and the last thing I needed was Microsoft adding features that dumbed down my protection since most users are not aware. The key is not to allow malware to get on this machine. To date we’ve been very successful and only now are we seeing others adopt my solutions that have been used since 1996.
Vista – Latest dummy-proof OS
When it comes to dumbed down, it seems that Vista is king at this. If my experience with Vista doesn’t improve from newbie-land soon I shall say that I’ll never adopt Vista as too immature of an OS. I realize how that sounds given all the really cool features implemented but really, many of these cool features can be had elsewhere, other linux distro’s, third party tools to add to XP. Where I could really use some dummying down is with the error messages and the parlance of the ‘event viewer’.
When you have a problem do you think you get a sensible error message? No. It seems the ‘operation’ is dummy-proof, but ‘configuration’ is left cryptic. Why can’t I have better control of my PC out of the box? It seems this type of internal schism to the operation of the desktop is tantamount when dealing with any Microsoft product or tool. When Microsoft cannot adopt their own ideas fully, I should not either. Neither should you. Of course this is a beta product so final remarks will wait until it\’s release.
I have Vista installed and running at this point from fresh install. The security center is complaining bitterly about not having an AV installed on it. I really don’t need one but to get rid of this annoying red X in my systray I’ve been attempting to install something.
Bitdefender v10 beta. First choice, says it runs on all Windows OS. Does not install, unknown error.
Kapersky v6 beta. Second choice, does not claim to run on Vista. Does not install, incompatible OS.
PC-Cillan – The Microsoft recommended Vista Beta Product. Does not install, incompatible OS.
OF course every single tool used MSI to install, so my guess is it never got past unpacking it then it checked.
Why don’t they check before you download and waste all that bandwidth? I guess they’d rather waste the bandwidth. I don’t.
So, I’m not impressed with Vista’s installation ability, since there does seem to be a disconnect between what works and what doesn’t with both Vista as an OS and the vendors supplying their tools.
And I still have that red X in my systray…..
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