Laptop Upgrade to Vista

Now that things have smoothed out on my Vista upgrade, I decided to try my own advice in regards to my laptop. Recall, I recommended to forgoe the upgrade and perform a fresh install. So about an hour an a half later, not only was Vista installed, but on a laptop that is officially not supported by HP for Vista. All the major components worked: video, sound, & wireless. I just had to adjust to the correct resolution and ask Vista to find a driver for my memory card slots (yes I just to told it to find one on the internet and it automatically downloaded what it needed). This install was quite easy and for a laptop with only 512MB of RAM I am impressed. I am still planning on a memory upgrade since I have not given it a real workout yet. Still I have so many questions to answer: How well does Vista play in a network environment? What security features are going to conflict with daly business tasks? How many components of the existing networks will need to be upgraded before Vista can take advantage of shared printers from XP, or network aware anti-virus? Boy did I open a can of worms!

Windows Vista Upgrade - Part 2

Still troubleshooting. I get a buzz every time sounds are played through the speakers. I also get an error about a failure to load some DLL file. Apparently it is a creative labs application, so I am uninstalling all the Creative labs apps. Bottom line: Don't upgrade to save time. You will spend less time with a fresh install of Vista, reinstalling your apps than you will if you upgrade and have to troubleshoot each new problem that comes up, and the peace of mind of a fresh install is totally worth it!

Windows Vista Upgrade

So I decided to upgrade my PC this morning to Windows Vista. I started the upgrade at 7AM, having a little bit of foresight, I decided to unintall Anti-Virus and the disk defragging software. As of 10AM Windows Vista is running, but my Mobile PC synchronization & PDF printing (cute PDF) are not. We have been playing around with Vista for around 6 months since RC1. I even used Vista RC2 for some manager seminars we hosted back in January. So the interface is familiar, but I have not tried some of the device applications. An upgrade/reinstall of Cute PDF 2.7 fixed PDF printing. But I am spinning my wheels on ActiveSync & Chapura PocketMirror. In addition I plan to install Office 2007 Enterprise. I will keep you all posted.