Re: Microsoft Vista
Update 2:
I got the network working later yesterday. Turns out the wifi implementation isn't 'quite' right yet so you have to specify whether its an ad-hoc or infrastructure network. It can't work it out for itself.
Anyway, network up, Internet available, browsing the net with the bundled IE7. I've used IE7 in Beta under XP and its pretty much the same here. A 'new' interface' with buttons moved from their traditional places. I think this may confuse quite a lot of users as you have to relearn where everything is. Newbies coming straight to it will be fine but I see a lot of old hands getting rather annoyed with it. Rendering seems OK for the sites I've visited although I'm not keen on Cleartype and its enabled by default.(Cleartype tries to smooth fonts on LCD panels, I find it just makes them blurry). Oh, then you find out that it has to be disabled in two places for it to take effect. Downloads are blocked by default so you have to enable them either globally or for each and every thing you try and get.
I installed Firefox and it looks fine, works as expected etc.
Intresteingly, no MSN Messenger was installed (or bundled) so its off to download it. 7.5 installed and it works OK. One other bit that keeps popping up is the new Windows Defender. This will not allow any Admin type program to run till you give it explicit permission. So everytime you go into control Panel or try to install something it pops up. I can see what they are trying to do but its the sort of thing that will annoy most users within a day and get switched off. I think thats the key difference from what I'm used to. I would never run Linux as a Admin user in day to day use. I switch to admin only to perform specific tasks. Here I'm still admin and can turn off all this security quite easily. I think they have gone half way to what they should have. Make users unpriviliged so that to install or admin the PC you need to switch to a power user.
No crashes up to now but it is a very hungry beast. Just running Vista, one copy of IE and Mahjong is using 810 Meg of Memory. Now thats a LOT. Expect to need 1 Gig of RAM in your PC for this baest to run properly.
Disk space BTW uses just short of 6 GIG for a standard install. Not a lot in todays 300Gig Hard disks but you do have to ask what the heck they've got in there. There aren't that many programs installed by default.
That will do for now, More later
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