In Part I, I had just taken delivery of my new desktop loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Patch 1 (SP1).  Once I got all the cabling done, it was time to turn the power on and let Vista do its thing.  Vista Home Premium ran through its initial setup and did a reboot with no problems incurred along the way.  I then installed the upgrade to Vista Ultimate, connected to the Internet and downloaded and installed the latest updates from the Microsoft.  Now it was time to find out just how many of my "legacy" applications would indeed run in a Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit environment.

My first "legacy" install was an HTML editor program (HomeSite 5.5) from Macromedia, which is now part of Adobe.  I have been using Homesite for years now.  Although Adobe has not provided any new releases of Homesite since they acquired Macromedia, they still offer it as a product and maintain a HomeSite Forum which is still quite active.  Vista installed HomeSite 5.5 without complaining, so the next step was to see if the program would actually load and run under Vista.  Much to my surprise, it did, even without setting it to run in Win XP compatibility mode.  I have been using it ever since and have had no problems to date.  As a matter of fact, I'm using HomeSite 5.5 to compose this article.  

Next I tried some of my "mission-critical" open source applications.  I downloaded and installed the latest versions of FileZilla (both client and server), 7-Zip, PuTTY and Wampserver.  All are functioning as advertised and again, none of the programs had to be set to run in Win XP compatibility mode.  Sol far, so good!

I also installed the latest version of a couple of freeware networking tools I use quite frequently (TJPing and Win32WhoIs).  And same for both of them.

There were, as expected, some applications I use regularly that were not Vista compatible.  The most notable of these were:

• Winzip - I had to upgrade to the latest release to get Vista compatibility.  Yes I know I have 7_Zip installed and that Vista also has built-in zip/unzip functionality, but I like WinZip.
• Microsoft Money - same here, but I got a $20.00 rebate, so that easewd the pain a bit.
• CuteFTP Professional - again I had to upgrade to the latest release.  I could have just used FileZilla client on a regular basis, but I prefer CuteFTP as I think its user interface and navigation is much better.

I'm sure that some of the complaints about Vista are well founded, but my personal opinion is that it is not nearly as bad as some would lead you to believe.  Stay tuned for Part III...

I was planning on buying a new PC for a while now.  As I thought about just what hardware and software configuration I wanted, it occurred to me that there was one important decision that I had to make.  The decision wasn't about the PC hardware as this stuff is pretty much commoditized these days.  Rather it was regarding the operating system.  I'm well-versed in both Windows and Linux, but truth be told, most of the applications and tools I use on a day-to-day basis are Windows-centric.  I'm still not convinced that Linux is ready for prime time as my desktop operating environment.

That left me with the choice of continuing on with Win XP or finally dealing with Win Vista.  In the past I had been an "early adopter" of the various incarnations of Windows through the years, starting with the first semi-decent release (Win 95) way back when.  But I was really hesitant to migrate to Vista.  It wasn't due to all the negative press and Vista bashing on forums and blogs.  Those of us who have been around for a while heard many of the same complaints about Win XP.

What was really making me take it slow on Vista was all the things I had been hearing about the lack of and/or support for hardware drivers.  I wanted to continue to use my existing printers, scanner and numerous other peripherals that were in perfectly good working condition (and of course, the financial impact of replacing them all at the same time wa also a consideration!).  A secondary concern was just how well Vista would support some of my older application software packages, some of which had been around since the Win 98 days.

As I was having this great "XP versus Vista" debate with myself, I happened upon a deal being advertised on the Internet site of one of the "Big-Box" stores.  For a reasonable price, I could get an HP Pavilion equipped with an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, 6GB of RAM, a 750GB Hard Drive, and a bunch of additional bells and whistles.  And a 22-inch Flat Panel Monitor and all-in-one printer/scanner/copier were also included in the bundle.  The operating system was Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit with an upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit with a mail-in rebate.

I took the hook, ordered the system over the Internet and picked it up at the store a day later.  Stay tuned for the next chapter in this saga...

For the last month or so, I've been working at home for a change.  So my laptop has been on vacation for a while.  I decided today that I had better fire it up and get it online before the queue of pending updates from Microsoft became any longer.  I booted to the Win XP partition and as expected there were about 12 or so critical updates from Microsoft's latest monthly "Patch Tuesday" waiting to have their way with my laptop.  So, I once again let the Microsoft updater run amok and fix all those things it thought was broken.  Once the "Patch-O-Rama" completed, I figured I had better boot up the laptop's alter ego (Ubuntu) to make sure the Linux partition was not too upset from the lack of attention I had been giving it these past few weeks...

Unbuntu loaded and all was well.  I checked a couple of web sites I had recently made some cosmetic changes to in order to make sure they displayed as expected with Linux and Firefox.  And I noticed the "updates available" icon was trying to get my attention.  I checked the updates and to my surprise there were 44 updates available, 22 of which were security updates!

Is this an anomaly or is Ubuntu on a mission to take the world record for patches per month away from Microsoft? ;-)