Upgrading to Windows Vista
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This may be the first of several posts on my upgrade to Windows Vista. If memory and the internet serve me correctly, Vista shipped in January of 2007 and for various reasons I have not upgraded my home or work machine. However, one thing is for certain, the endless complaining I have heard about Windows Vista didn’t stop me from upgrading. While I don’t intend to take us down memory lane of all the complaints I have heard over the past year, I do have to point out that many people I have spoken to voiced concern over Vista. In fact, they spoke about the OS as if it were a dark plague covering the land. Ironically, none of them owned a machine with Vista nor had they upgraded their machine. Funny how perception can become reality. I am not new to upgrading the OS on my computers. As a rookie computer teacher 15 years ago, the first task I took on in my lab was to update the OS on my Macintosh Classic II lab to OS 7.1. Acting on the advice of a veteran teacher, I chose to do a clean install of the OS rather than upgrading the older version. This began my long relationship with formatting hard drives and installing Operating Systems. Years later, my job sent me back to the PC. Rather than upgrading my 386 Windows 3.1 machine, I bought a new Pentium with Windows 95. When Windows 98 made it to the market, I booted to DOS formatted the C drive and installed Windows 98. Next, as you may recall, Window Me hit the market and this is where I become a minority. I loved Window Me. I would rave about how well it worked for me while others endlessly complained about trouble they had with their computer after the upgrade. Of course, I would always ask the same question, did you do a clean install? Of course, they would always said the same thing… Nope, we upgraded from Windows 98 and have had nothing but trouble. Are you seeing a pattern here? Let’s fast forward to late June 2008. I came back from vacation and put a new hard drive in my laptop and started to install Vista. Now, to be honest, I had a moment of weakness when I considered upgrading the factory HP install of Windows XP. I even ran the upgrade to the point it told me I need to remove a few drivers and locate the Vista version. It was about that time the RED flag shot up the pole and I remembered the value of a clean install. With that in mind, I booted back to XP and began downloading all the required drivers and some of the cool tools for my laptop from HP. Once I had these downloaded and safely placed on an external hard drive, the upgrade began. It is now July 3 and I have ALL the software loaded on this machine required to do the job. Let the testing begin. Over the next several weeks I will be using this machine with Vista on a day-to-day basis. I really have no intention of going back to XP and during this same timeframe. I will share my likes and dislike of Vista. I can say so far, I can’t figure out what people have been complaining about. More to come… Stay tuned.
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