Mircosoft’s Vista, are you going to upgrade?

Just recently I put together a PC costing around $5,000.00. It’s a DreamMachine. Considering there’s going to be a technological shift appearing with the way how we’re going to be using our PC’s, I decided why not and get ready for the Windows Vista Candidate Release 1 and the beta 2 technical refresh of Mircosoft’s Office 2007. These are versions that thought they aren’t quite ready to be dispatched for shipment, are good enough however to get in the grasps of heaps of keen testers. In fact Mircosoft expects to send out over 6,000,000 copies of Vista RC1 Candidate in the next few months or so, leading upto the final shipping of the final version to large companies in November 2006 and to the rest of us in late January 2007.

Lots of questions still remain for Bill Gates Multi-trillion dollar company - Windows Mircosoft, for system makers and for those of us who have to make a choice whether or not to upgrade or keep with our 32bit Windows XP operating system.

How stable and compatible will Vista be?
I feel that one of many people’s concerns, yours too if you’ve tried it is with your current software applications and drivers that communicate with your hardware just will not work - some message will appear asking you to contact the manufactures for a solution. Boy that’s going to keep them busy for the next few years.

Some programs like communications and security packs will definitely need brand new versions. Seems like Bill Gates is trying to Monopolize the World Market again. That’s not going to go down too well with the French after they slamed that half of a billion dollar fine on his forehead. Knowing the French Government they’ll find some way to suck more money out of the Founder and Chairman of Mircosoft.

Though Vista seems to come across as a more secure operating system I’ve still ran into a few issues and feel is a little too early to make a full judgement on the current release of Mircosoft’s Vista.

How well will Vista and Office Perform?
It’s hard to say completely, but from a quick glance it’s a lot faster and Mircosoft continues to make more improvements as each day goes by. On an operating system that has 1GB of RAM (Random Access Memory), the combination seems to work pretty well. But I’m not convinced of the performance of Vista and Mircosoft Office 2007 on machines particularly using 512MB or less.

The Manufacturers of computer operating systems also face some other unknown issues at this point as well - what’s new.

Which version of Vista will the consumer buy?
Retail computer vendors have to decide which version to preinstall. Although Mircosoft say users can upgrade and most people will not do that. The low end version of Vista which is referred to as Home Basic, will be in the least expensive models.

I presume the most average user will most likely decide for the Home Premium which has the new graphics, Media Center, and Tablet PC functions. Small businesses however will most likely choose Vista Business and bigger companies may opt for the Vista Enterprise.

Most consumers will not have a choice between Vista and Windows XP; Vista will be on all retail computers the day it’s ready to be shipped out. Direct customers will be able to choose between Vista and XP though. I would expect that small businesses to choose Vista, however big businesses to buy Win XP since it more or less does the same thing. Such businesses typciallly wait for the first service pack to upgrade.

32 Bit, or 64 bit?
For the next year or so I would imagine that every system maker to choose the 32 bit version simply because it provides better support for legacy devices. Only those systems with very large memory requirements will need the 64bit right now.

Anyone going to upgrade to the Ultimate?
This is a special upgrade that not only combines the features of the business and Home Premium versions, but you’ll also be able to upgrade with out installing a new OS (operating system). So far it’s unclear what you may get from such an upgrade.

Peripheral support is also an interesting question as the OS will come with a variety of features that are enabled only as you add special hardware.

Tuner or no Tuner?
The Home Premimum still has all the features of the Home Media Center, though with all the bugs the current version of XP’s Media Center Edition clearly ironed out. Most machines or boxes if you will, will be shipped without a TV Tuner, but adding one and getting the TV features will be easier.

Tablet or no Tablet?
With Vista’s Premium or any versions above you can plug in a Tablet PC to get all the features of the tablet, including improved handwriting regconition and gesture support too. Some questions wont be answered until after the OS is out and people are starting to get used to it.

How secure will Vista be?
Mircosoft is addressing the security in quite a few ways, including forcing people to accept system changes. But no OS that allows users to install applications can be totally secure.

How good will vista play Video Games?
The best games I’ve seen so far are simulated demos that use Vista’s Direct X10 graphics, but unfortunatly there’s no hardware support for that just yet. The G-force 7950G 1GB graphics card I bought, well two actually with SLI technology are about 4-6 months away from being upgraded.

For the first year or so Computer games will continue to be made for the older typed PC’s and XP operating systems. It will take a while to se if Windows games can make a difference in a world dominated by the Xbox and Playstation.

The big question is will Vista really matter now that more applications are appearing on the Internet? Vista may herald the development of more applications that have both online and offline modes. The next few months however promise to be intertesting indeed as Vista is finally moving toward completion.

I bet many of us have reformatted our hard drives, reinstalled Mircosoft Windows, reinstalled all of our software applications, and reset all of the Windows settings, etc, you know what a time-consuming and generally a heinous task it can be. But sometimes, after a nasty spyware attack or when Windows has accumulated too much sludge, that kind of radical reconstruction is absolutely necessary. And Vista will only amplify the problem. before you move to Vista, make sure you back up your system.

Many PCs come with recovery CDs that will restore your system to factory-new conditions, but you can get the job done a whole lot faster and add all your favorite programs and system settings to the restoration point by creating a recovery partition. A partition of course, is a cordoned-off section of your hard drive that gets its own drive letter. All you need is the right software and enough available space to hold your information and its applications.

The “right software”, in this case, is a partition utility and a backup program that can create a compressed “image” of your newly reformatted and reloaded hard drive.

I’ve used Symantec’s Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 and Norton’s Ghost 10.0 which allows you to mirror copy your information over to the partitioned drive. However you can use any nondestructive partitioning utlity and back up applications of your choice. And all you need to do is create a partition that’s large enough to hold your infomration; then backup your primary drive to the newly made partition. If and when the time comes to restore your system, run Norton’s Ghost or any other kind of mirror imaging transfer software and expand the backup image to your primary drive. Bingo: You’re back in business before you know it.

1 Get started
For the best results, start with a fresh install of Windows, then load your software applications that you use regularly, utilities, drives. Make sure to install all of the latest updates for Mircrosoft Windows and your Security Software; firewall and anti-virus, etc. Finally tweak your system so it’s exactly the way you like it: video resolution, wallpaper, and all that kind of stuff.

2 Create the partition
Start up PartitionMagic (or a similar utility) and create a partition with enough available space to hold Windows and your apps. Ten Gigabytes should be ample for most users (remember, the backup imiage will be compressed), but consider making it larger if you have a lot of installed programs or storage space to burn.

3 Options Options
Unless you’re going to dual-boot with Windows 9x, which can’t read NTFS, NTFS is the right file system. As for the partition type, the active partition is the one that boots the system. You need to create a logical drive (that is, one you can assign a drive letter to), which will live in an extended partition, the application takes care of that part.

4 Set up Ghost
Run Ghost (or a similar utilty) to create a new backup. Don’t bother with scheduling, as this particular back up is a one-time-only affair. Disabling your anti-virus and firewall prior to starting the backup is a good idea as these can tend to get in the way and ruin a perfect backup.

5 Scheduling backups
Incidentally, take advantage of Ghost’s backup schedules to update your backup incrementally every week or so. That way you’ll always be sure that your information is constantly being backed-up when it comes to restore. If you’re using an external hard drive, make sure to leave it on and plugged in. For the record, this really isn’t a subsitute for off-site or off-PC backups, especially if the partition is on the same hard drive as your data and programs. If the drive goes belly uyp, you’re out of luck.

6 Recover
To use the recovery partition, make sure you’ve backed up all your vital data to another drive or removabe media, then boot your PC with the Ghost CD loaded in the optical drive. You’ll then be able to restore from the partition to your primary drive resulting in a ready-to-roll PC wtih all your applications, dirvers and settings loaded.

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