Windows Vista Beta 2 CD just arrived
Previously new Microsoft operating systems have always excited me, and I seem to always be the first person I know to use them, often before the software is even commercially available to the public. Windows 95 was pretty exciting, but I’m more of an NT type so Windows XP was the most excited I ever got about an OS since Windows 2000 had the same look and feel as Windows 95.
Fortunately, I’ve got an extra 100 GB laptop hard drive I can put Vista on and I don’t have to risk upgrading my current XP Pro installation.
The text machine is a Dell XPS with 2 gigs of RAM, a 256 MB graphics card, a 100 gig hdd at 7200 RPM, and a 2 Ghz Centrino processor.
The installation took 50 minutes from initial boot from CD to having a taskbar. This is a fresh install and not an upgrade from XP Pro.
There is a cool but cheap looking northern lights simulation that plays during boot up. Â
I immediately set about customizing the system to my necessary settings such as max mouse speed and reversing the mouse buttons as I use a mouse left-handed even though I’m right handed. (This is a throw back to when I first started learning CAD. I read that lefties were 10% to 15% faster than righties as using a mouse left handed gave a person two control hands as most keyboard controls are on the right side, such as Enter, Backspace and Delete.)
I had to bring up a Help & Support window and I’ve used it so far to figure out how to activate this installation (it provided me with an “activate now” link) and how to change my workgroup name as it did not ask for such on initial setup.Â
The change of workgroup name works just like it did in XP, but the Systems Properties box is different, it’s more like an Explorer box, with a menu instead of tabs, and a link to change settings. It is quite intuitive, and not expecting it to be so I overlooked the link.
The most noticable thing is User Account Control (UAC), which is a pesky small window that keeps popping up telling me that I need to authorize something such as a program installation. I have only been using Vista Beta 2 for just over an hour and this UAC is a pain in the ass.
I used the Windows Help & Support window to see how to turn this off, or at least make it less obnoxious and haven’t found a way, yet. The UAC:
“is a new set of infrastructure technologies in this version of Windows that helps organizations prevent malware from damaging a system, while also helping them to deploy a better-managed desktop.
With UAC, applications and tasks always run in the security context of a standard user account. Only specifically authorized applications or processes are given administrator-level access to the system. UAC provides new ways to lock down desktops, stop unauthorized applications from installing and prevent users from making inadvertent changes to system settings.”
The hard drive swap on this machine is a bit tedious, with two screws needing to be removed from the bottom of the laptop. The drive carriage does snap into place and will stay there without the screws, but would be easy to jar loose in extreme mobile environments, so I need to buy a new hard drive carriage if I am going to swap out drives between XP Pro and Vista Beta 2.
One of my first program installations was Trillian, which I have been using for years now, but which has some incompatibility with some of the graphic enhancements in Vista such as the fading, the increasing tranluscence of windows over time. So, after installing Trillian, I got an error message telling me the program was incompatible and that as long as that program ran I would not be able to see some of the visualization enhancements. Time to try GAIM again methinks.
MS Encarta will not install, telling me that
This version of Windows Media Technologies is incompatible with or has been superseded by this version of Windows.Â
bummer.