Windows Vista

In one word: CRAP.

It is a good thing there is a forum at http://thevistaforums.com/index.php?act=idx where you can get help.

In March 2007, I bought a new computer with Vista Home Premium pre-installed. This was to replace my aging desktop unit which is running XP. I had high hopes for Vista but it did not take very long for my hopes to be dashed.

It seems clear to me that they made a lot of changes for the sake of making changes; not to make windows BETTER.

Sure, they made it NICER, and PRETTIER but that does not cut it with me; I want RELIABILITY and FUNCTIONALITY and CONVENIENCE.

Note all the complaints at: http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/15/lenovo-says-no-thanks-to-vista-for-2008-olympics/.
and at http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/005512.html?tk=nl_wvxblg.

AND, if that's not enough, when I open an HTML file in Notepad, make a minor change and try to save it, it won't save it. NO way. SOMEtimes it works, sometimes not.

The list of programs (Start | All Programs) is miserable to use. The only good thing there is that you CAN change it back to the way it was in previous versions of Windows. And so I did.

The much touted "User Access Control" is garbage. I had to disable it permanently right away. Clicking a URL in an email would not immediately open my default browser, FIREFOX. Instead, I had to work around the stupid control. So much for that safeguard and so much for productivity.

Setting up the new Windows Media Player was a job I don't want to have to do again. Looks to me like somebody is out to sabbotage Microsoft. Not only that, but the new interface is AWFUL. Looks to me like they had some monkeys design that horrible mess.

I believe the idea "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Unfortunately, the people at Microshaft must not be familiar with that. Even typing a note in Notepad and saving it in a particular folder was a daunting task. WHY!!?!

My beautiful, hardly-used HP Scanner won't work with it.

Audacity, my favorite audio tool from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/, won't work with Vista either. BUT NOTE the fix I found, see below.

Fred C took his laptop back to the dealer to have them REMOVE VISTA and reinstall Windows XP.

Apparently Chris Pirillo of internet FAME "upgraded from Vista to XP."

While that "Switch between Windows" feature (pic at top of this page) is very pretty, David L. was quick to point out "This feature (one very similar) has been in the MacOs for years. And there are clones of it for xp."

And you know those little + and - signs in front of folders in Windows Explorer? Well, they had to mess that up too. Now they are stupid little triangles. Not exactly an improvement.

Yet one more problem Vista gave me was to do with the Language settings. I use English and I am in Canada. Sometimes, when typing an email, the question mark shows up as an upper case "E" with an accent mark over it. Here is how I fixed it; the problem for no reason that I can see, came back and I had to do it again: Start | Settings | Control Panel On the "Regional and Language Option" dialog box, take the "Formats" tab and set it at "English (United States)." Then in the "Keyboards and Languages" tab, click "change keyboards." I changed the "English (Canada)-US" to "English (United States"-US" and clicked "Apply," "OK" and "OK" again. Clearly there is a bug here in Vista.

Kim Komando indicated in her newsletter of May May 5, 2007; see Kim at http://www.komando.com/newsletters/, that Vista cannot handle more than 2Mb of RAM but this is not correct.

If you Google the term "Vista sucks" you get 184,000 hits; does that tell you something?

In the "WindowsSecrets.com" newsletter of May 10, 2007, I read things like:
"Forget Vista, make your XP system faster"
and
"Driver signing is a failure for Vista" By Scott Dunn

"D.L." wrote to tell me after buying a new computer: "It comes with vista premium which I will instantly wipe out. I�ll format the drive and install xp. Then I�ll install a few virtual PC�s on it, leaving the OS itself as barebones as I can. I figure I should be able to run 2 or 3 virtual pc�s on it and get pretty decent performance from each one."

Crashes

Unfortunately, these are not a thing of the past. I get them, and when I do, I lose all my work. I have to unplug the AC power cord, hold down the on/off button until the machine is completely OFF, wait 15 seconds and then plug in the machine and start all over, with my work LOST.

Defrag

With Vista, when you do a Defrag, you don't get a window that shows you the progress; a very poor "improvement" in my opion. You have no idea whether it is almost finished or has hours yet to go. To get around this I downloaded the FREE "Auslogics Disk Defrag 1.3.7.235" from http://www.download.com/Auslogics-Disk-Defrag/3000-2094_4-10730418.html?tag=lst-0-1

Windows Mail

(Used to be called "Outlook Express" in previous versions of Windows)

Windows Mail loads FAR SLOWER than it did in XP and even the address list loads much slower. Again; so much for productivity improvement.

MORE grief with Mail. One message got STUCK in my "Outbox" and there is NO WAY to get it out of there. I did some digging and found an answer which sent me to this site: http://www.oehelp.com/WMUtil/ to download a utility to clear my outbox. It worked very well. Simply download the tiny ZIP file, put it into a new folder and unzip it. To run it, double-click the exe file. I clicked the button to "Clear Outbox" and the stuck message was gone.

Another thing I found rather disappointing was that with the new Windows Mail, I am no longer able to get my email from Hotmail or from Yahoo. Now I have to use my browser to get those two mails. Not only that but when I use my browser (Firefox) to go to Hotmail and a message has a link in it, I cannot click the link to go to that website; I have to copy and paste the URL into the Address line.

AND one more; suddenly one of my email accounts would no longer SEND mail. It would just sit in my Outbox and would not send. I found the solution to that problem: In Windows Mail, Tools, Accounts, select the address that would not send, Properties and then the Advanced tab, and change the Outgoing Mail (SMTP) from 25 to 587.

AND if all that is not enough to turn you off, try Newsgroups in the Mail part. In Outlook Express, you simply clicked "Tools" and then "Newsgroups" and you were on your way. Not so in Vista; that was too easy. NOW, in Windows Mail, you have to set up your account first: Tools, Accounts, Add, Newsgroup Account, next, (your name), next, (your e-mail addy), next, and then, for "News (NNTP) server" you enter your server, e.g. "msnews.microsoft.com" (I used "news.telus.net"), finish, close and then it asks if you want to subscribe to any of them and carry on from there. Yes, I had tried "Help" but it told me to go to "Tools" and then "Newsgroups" but if you do that, you will not even see "Newsgroups" there.

Bill Gates........... Microsoft.........

I've been a vocal supporter of yours for many years. Now, with one OS you have destroyed that. I'm truly SICK OF VISTA. My daughter was shopping for a new computer in August 2007 and she told me, in part about the chat with the computer salesperson: "He also said that when he gets this machine in from HP now, they all have Vista on them. He only had 5 XP machines left. And quite a few customers asking that their Vista machines be switched back to XP. At least I bought a system that has the capability of upgrading to Vista when or if I want to."

The famous Kim Komando wrote: "We all know that we should be backing up our computers. But the backup utilities included in Windows don't always do a good job. The version in Vista is especially inflexible."

Messages like this one don't do much to give me confidence in Vista:

Nor this, which happens a lot:

I've had this one hundreds of times but it never yet has come up with any solutions.

Pray for LINUX! I can't wait for it and get away from Windoze.*

Some tips to make your Vista experience less confusing:

1. By default, the desktop icons are very large. You can easily make them smaller:
Clear the desktop, click in an empty area, hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard, roll the wheel on your mouse and watch the icons change in size. When you are happy with their size, release the Ctrl key.

2. You can, if you feel confident about your ability to protect yourself, disable the User Account Control:
- Click Start and enter regedit in the Search box to launch the Registry Editor.
- Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Policies \ System
- Double-click the ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin item.
- Change the value to 00000000.
- Close the dialog and exit the Registry Editor.

3. You'll note that the "Run" option in the Start list is gone. You can bring it back though:
- right-click the Start button
- Properties
- Customize
- Enable the Run option

4. You can "Personalize" many aspects of Vista; simply right-click an empty space on the desktop and choose "Personalize."

5. The "Gadgets" are nice and you can find more at http://gallery.live.com/default.aspx?l=1 and more at http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,124805/article.html

6. Audacity; the best free audio recording and editing tool in the world: On April 29, 2007 I got the solution; here is all the detail:

PROBLEM SOLVED!!

The problem was that in XP, the "Record Master" dropdown box worked and you could choose your input source from a list of 9 possible inputs BUT in Vista the box would not drop down anything. The result was that it recorded only the top track, and at such low volume as to be useless.

I asked the wonderful people at Sourceforge and got this reply:

"Under Vista, you need to choose your input source in the Audio I/O tab. Please see:

http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Windows_Vista_OS

Gale Andrews"

So, to record a CD playing in the same computer, I did this in Audacity 1.2.6:

Edit
Preferences
Audio I/O (tab)
under "Recording" and "Device" there are 4 options; I used "Stereo Mix (Realtek High Defini"
I left the "Channels" at "2 (Stereo)"
I put no checkmarks in the two boxes below that
Click OK

record to your heart's content!

THANKS to Gale Andrews

* Speaking of Linux..........

Being curious and wondering if it was ready for those of us who are not 100% Geeks, I took a look.

Yes, eventually I'll make the following links clickable; just a little too busy right now and I use Notepad for my coding.

After studying it some time, online, I found that Linux Ubuntu was probably the version most suitable to my needs. I found that it is possible to download it and burn it to a CD from which you can run it, without touching your Hard Disk. Just insert the CD and run Linux.

That sounded safe and easy so I did that and am glad I did. I now have a "Live CD" which I can insert and run Linux. Here are the somewhat messy steps I took:

Using a live CD means that Linux will be running on your computer without installing anything. It's a riskless way to try and see what Linux is.

The fastest way for most people to get Ubuntu is by downloading the CD Installer. The CD Installer is nearly 700MB. If you don't have a fast internet connection you may want to consider requesting a FREE CD. http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

So I went to http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download and downloaded "ubuntu-6.10-desktop-i386.iso" a file of 698.4Mb; with DSL it took me 1 hour and 27 minutes. I saved that to my laptop's desktop. The laptop runs WinXP. Next was to visit https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto and learn how to burn it to an 80-minute, 700Mb CD. Then the download needed to be checked for validity.

That took me to http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/winmd5sum where I downloaded the file and installed it. Then I checked the downloaded iso file as indicated, that is, I right-clicked the ISO file and chose winMD5Sum. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then a window popped up showing a check-sum. I went to the page at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes and found the one for the iso file which I had downloaded, copied that into my clipboard, pasted that into the dialog box and clicked "compare." They agreed:

The number in the "Compare" line is the one I pasted in there from that "Hashes" website.

Then back to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto to burn the CD. First, this meant going to http://infrarecorder.sourceforge.net/ to download and install the burner for this. I downloaded the zip file for XP and unzipped it on my desktop but there were a LOT of files and folders so then I made a new folder on the desktop and dragged them all into it. Then back to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto and I inserted the blank CD.

In my new folder I ran the file "InfraRecorder.exe" and that brought up this:

Under "Actions" I chose "Burn Image" and browsed to and clicked the iso file:

and chose a slower burning speed:

and burned the CD:

and when that was burned, closed the InfraRecorder and the CD ejected.

I turned the computer off and put the CD back in.

I turned the computer on as usual, and, as usual, WindowsXP booted up with no sign of the Ubuntu CD.

I opened the CD drive and closed it. That started Ubuntu:

The bottom of that window looked like this:

Clicking on the icons opened a page about each of those applications with Screenshots. On the right-hand-side are icons which, if clicked, install those programs.

I clicked "Exit" and removed the CD and put it into an OLD computer running Win98, with only about 3Gb of free hd space (on two HDs) and only 64Mb of RAM. The CD opened fine and from it I installed the word processor, "Abiword." That opened but so slowly that it was almost impossible to use. No surprise; "they" say you need at least 256Mb of RAM. Plus, I'm running it off a CD; not off my HD.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SOME RELEVANT LINUX NOTES:

Switching to Linux would mean buying computers, in future, WITHOUT any OS. That might be difficult. Bill Gates does not like that. In the forum at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2483579#post2483579. I asked about that and read these replies:

"I bought a corporate lease return laptop on eBAY two weeks ago, and am very happy with it. Many of these have the HDD wiped - so no OS. I installed KUBUNTU yesterday on a DELL C640 and it looks good, though I really gotta fix the wireless internet connection - as I get time... The laptop cost me $275.00 40GB HDD, 2.0 Mhz centrino P4 cpu, 1GB RAM, no DVD but does have a CD-ROM... HiJolly"

"Try this list: Companies selling preinstalled Linux and no-OS"

"get one from System76. All their builds come with Ubuntu installed. http://system76.com/"

"If you buy from Dell you can get a refund for windows if you do not accept the EULA. I imagine if you called and talked to a rep and said that was your plan and you could save everyone time and money by just getting the refund then and having a blank HD, they might do it."

http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html

http://www.retrobox.com/

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MORE RELEVANT LINUX NOTES:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

http://ubuntuforums.org/

Notes from Clive Cooper in England: http://www.clivecooper.co.uk/

tutorial@winpe.com

April 19th, 2007 Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn was released." In October 2007, the new version "Gutsy Gibbon" came out.

software that runs under Linux:

http://www.redwingsat.com/6-ubuntu-apps.htm

http://darxr.net/articles/2006/10/16/five-great-linux-desktop-applications/