Tag: dogfood

As I noted previously, I moved our home desktop PCs to Vista. More accurately, to dual boot on two of three PCs – I am still holding off the migration of the kid’s PC (lots of legacy games installed there), family laptops and Media Center (due to a known driver imcompatibility).

I found that my experience with Vista RC1 over the last week at home and at the office has mirrored a number of reviews I read last week, including…

• Paul Thurrott’s review of Windows Vista_RC1


• CNET’s review of Windows Vista RC1


• InformationWeek, which said that “RC1 is solid, fast, and much improved over Beta 2. It’s still too early to tell whether Microsoft will meet its goal of a January 30, 2007, consumer launch of Vista. But for those, including myself, who were skeptical that Redmond would meet that date, this new release may put those fears to rest.”


• Computerworld has put together a pretty good visual tour. in their Inside Windows Vista RC1: Initial Test Drive, as I found via Steve Clayton’s blog.

Overall, I have found that many problems I ran into in builds at the office are gone, and stability is up dramatically. Seems that all of my peripherals work — scanner, MFC printer, cameras. So far so good with the software I’ve installed, including Nero 7 Ultra Edition when installed from the CD.

One change I really like: User Account Control (UAC) is far less annoying and much more user friendly. In the past, it seemed that I had to deal with UAC and approve every move I made, and even worried me the first time I encountered it: I thought something had gone wrong with my power or that my video card wasn’t Vista compatible. This is no longer the case. I can even turn off UAC when on the system as an administrator. Now, this will have to be documented clearly for consumer users (perhaps even set as a default). In a home setting with Vista Home Basic and perhaps even Premium (more details on the Windows Vista site), this would be more appropriate default, IMHO.

Next, I’ll work more with Movie Maker (and authoring a DVD) and Media Center. So far my experience has been positive with MM, as covered on the Windows Vista team blog posting on Movie Maker and in Paul Thurrott’s review of MM where he concluded that MM on Vista “is certainly a capable enough solution that can handle any home user’s needs. This is an excellent tool that many Windows users should enjoy using.”

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows, Vista, Vista upgrade, Movie Maker.  

One small step… deep breath.

This weekend I’m reimaging a couple of Windows XP-based OEM machines with the latest Windows Vista software, and I’m following the details on setting up a dual-boot system with Windows Vista., as outlined on the Windows Vista team blog. This is the same scenario as I have on a dogfood machine at the office, the different is that I’ll be moving my remaining desktops at home to Windows Vista RC1.

“[Dual booting] is a very common scenario at Microsoft and as such, I figured I’d walk you through our typical dual-boot installation procedure via the corporate network.  Many of my colleagues choose to run both operating systems simultaneously (not me — I’m all Windows Vista, all the time) by partitioning their hard drives and running a separate OS on each partition.  They do this for a variety of reasons, but in many cases it’s so they can test new builds of Windows Vista while retaining Windows XP (or another OS) on another partition.  This will allows them the flexibility to perform build-to-build upgrades more easily while retaining the original OS as an alternative should there be a blocking bug in the Windows Vista build.”

Before I do this, I’m backing up everything with OneCare as well as a drag-copy to an external drive.

Given my interest in using audio at home, I was glad to see the details from Amir on the audio subsystem advances in this new whitepaper, and this info on the improved Movie Maker and DVD Maker. 

Although I’m running Office 2007 beta on a Vista PC at the office, we’ll see how the move goes before I take the plungs at home.

Tags: Microsoft, Windows, Vista, Movie Maker.