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Despite the long title, I’ll try to keep this post short. I had two completely opposite experiences with Windows Vista today.

First, I don’t think people realize how handy Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is. And now that Microsoft made it officially free, there is absolutely no reason not to install it on your Vista!

So here is what I wanted to post, I ran into two distinct aspects with Vista today. On one end, I was able to run 2 Virtual PCs, one running Windows XP SP2, the other running Ubuntu Linux. And in addition, I ran some video playback full screen on the Vista host operating system, PLUS there was CD ripping running at the time, creating some 192 kbps MP3’s from my audio CD! And the two virtual PCs weren’t idle either, Windows XP was converting some of my video files to MP4, for my iPhone. Ubuntu was also running full speed, still installing, in fact.

So, with all that action, all activities were running quickly and without a hitch!

On the flip side, a laptop with Vista Home Basic, gone completely nuts during a simple operation of Logout. Granted, it was a bit overdue for some patches probably. Anyhow, without any special messages, all it said was "Logging Out", and that is it! It sat there on that screen, flashing Hard-Drive a lot, for a long long time. I even gave up, hard-booted it, logged back in (working ok), and then Logged out again. Same thing! Hanging and Hanging and Hanging. After about 20 minutes I gave up and left it running overnight. In the morning, it was fine, logs in fast, logs out fast, weird!!!

So, there you have it! Vista, in all it’s glory! You decide!

PS: For all the people that complained about compatibility of software with Vista, I find Windows XP inside Virtual PC to be perfect compromise. In fact, you can even run Windows 95 or Windows 98, if you so desire, in your Virtual PC. That would help those very old educational games I still have somewhere, but kids outgrew them already anyway…

PPS: I am thinking of going to DragonCon this year for the first time, any suggestions what is a must-see?

UPDATE: I was going to mention a nice Tweaks Guide on Vista, which is more of an overview of Vista annoyances and what to do with them. In retrospect, this post seems like as good time as any, plus Windows Vista blog reminded me about it today…

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An important announcement from Microsoft, something called Mesh, is happening tonight at Midnight eastern time.

I am into guessing game, again, mostly because it is fun, but also because in a funny coincidence, I left a rather long rant at Yahoo’s own Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. What started as a short comment, turned into longer and I think worthy read about future of operating environments for us all. Jeremy doesn’t post too much, which is exactly how I prefer it and thus he is on my ‘read-first’ list. Check out my comment right here.

Back to the issue, I really think this one will be about cloud computing and web services, or cloud services, or whatever we want to call them services. And of course, their integration into applications and the OS, finally. Some applications already integrate nicely, such as Windows Vista Photo Gallery. And I hope they will finally take it to the next level.

Speaking of Vista, and of Windows 7. I hear people continue to trash it, but seriously, why?! Yes, it is bloated. Yes, it is incompatible with a lot of old software and drivers. But, that was obvious (just to me?!) going into it! Only install Vista on newer core 2 duo and faster PCs with 2GB ram. That’s obvious! Next, do NOT install older software on it, wait for lazy/suicidal/incompetent 3rd party companies come out with updated software specifically targeted at Vista! Or, use Microsoft’s new built-in software. Yes, be like the rest of us and use the primitive Windows Movie Maker for your HD editing… What? Microsoft were nice and anti-trust friendly by not killing Adobe and Sony and others in this market, and coming out with their own Killer Video Editing program. And how do Adobe/Sony/etc repay them?! Where is Vista optimized version of our favorite video editing tools, a year and a half later? Almost here, I bet…

Probably by the time your read this, the announcement will be out. For some reason official Mesh site is acting up (stress-testing was skipped, I bet). So instead, check out Scobleizer commentary on this "breakthrough" technology.

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Yesterday Scobleizer reminded me about the whole Mac versus Vista debate, with his post about Vista on Dell’s Tablet. It seems not only Robert is having that issue, here is an Attorney with similar complaint:

… another reason why I prefer Apple computers. Mac laptops sleep when you close the lid and wake up instantly when you open the lid. You can do this over and over again, for months, and never have to reboot. Very few, if any, people have this experience with Windows computers.

First, directly to the point being discussed. There are excellent controls provided by Windows Vista to make this happen on PC laptop! In fact, this was one of the first things I adjusted when our new Dell laptop arrived. Yes, I had to dig deep inside myriad of Power Management settings in Control Panel. The question, of course, is what was Dell and Microsoft thinking!? Why isn’t this CONFIGURED PROPERLY out of the gate?

Mac has really come of age, and with Firefox running well on Mac, it finally is a leading second choice for desktop. But, here’s my message to Steve - we are not imbeciles! We can figure out how to use 2 Button Mouse! And it isn’t just me, I hear from a friend who otherwise loves his Mac Laptop, that his biggest complaint is that there is no second button on the mouse!

I have been running Vista on my primary PC for over half a year now. It is a monster machine, with 4gb ram and 4 cores processor, so I really don’t feel any sluggishness or anything. Quite the opposite, in fact, but would it be even faster with Windows XP? I never did run XP on this PC, so we may never know. And even if a single process would be faster on XP, I am not sure it would be as fast/efficient in utilizing 4 cores with as many processes as I run…

PS: If you want to know what exact settings I put on Vista on our Laptop, just ask in comments, and I’ll promptly put up a detailed write-up there.

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