Between digging out of email, catching up with companies and doing a bunch of no-harm/no-foul meetings, I've been futzing around with Vista on various machines from Lenovo, Toshiba, Motion and HP. I have some VC stuff like the events posting but thought I'd add my Vista observations to the pile. I'd like to tell you there are some great start up lessons in all of this but the only one that comes through is that in the world of trying to keep up, I feel your pain.
Observation one - Hmmm.
To start the festivities, I put Vista on a Toshiba Satellite Tablet and the first thing it did was alert me to the debut update of the Vista world. That update being the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - November 2006. When you look at this update (which comes out every month, by the way), you see that it "may need a restart" and that it is going after "prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom)". Uhhh. I thought Vista was designed to prevent that old stuff from hurting my machine. If so, why do I need this download. And, still crazy after all these years, we're doing restarts. Fair is fair, I had to restart the Mac Mini on Sunday with some updates she installed. But still, this doesn't give me the all new -n- improved feeling I was expecting.
Sorry, maybe I'm being harsh here but the first update is about virus problems with a reboot included free?
(One Care is now asking for a restart as well, sigh...)
Observation two - Nobody is really ready.
I ran the Vista Upgrade Advisor on nine different machines from the vendors above, Fujitsu, and Dell. To Microsoft's credit the upgrade advisor is a good attempt to try and help. The problem is syncing up with the Vendors. Two glaring examples for you. When run on the Toshiba, there were several cases where the advisor said go to the vendor's website for updates and provided a direct link. Well done. Well, not quite. Toshiba's page was a empty link. It is a landing page with nothing to say. Blank. Motion's pages didn't work either and the Lenovo Tablet Advisor told me the track point wouldn't work. Motion's website, same thing, no clear list of files I need in order to upgrade/use the internal apps which are critical to the smooth use of the device. The advisor sends you to the Motion Computing Website only to be greeting with sorry, Microsoft hasn't released the drivers.
In the case of Lenovo they talked about the express upgrade option for people but I can't find anyplace on the website where there is a package of drivers for Vista. In short, the track point is said to die and I can't find an update which means I'm not moving.
What nonsense. This is a real failing on the part of the Computer Vendors and not Microsoft. Microsoft offered the PC vendors very early integration into the advisor with landing pages, links, etc and the vendors have not done a good job (to date) in exploiting this. In Feb 07, it will be interesting to see if these landing pages, updates, etc, are improved.
Observation three - Printers, I've seen this movie.
We all remember the "certified" drivers and the warning, warning, danger Will Robinson, nonsense about drivers being signed and not signed. Well, good news, this process actually is well done for most mainstream stuff. First, I connected laptops to a number of printers local, networked, shared, etc. I tried an HP color printer, an older HP 4050, and a brand new Cannon Imagerunner to name just three. With the HP printers, it was as simple as putting in the IP address and that was it. All the various HP printers were found, drivers installed, test pages successful, nothing to it. Just like it should work. With the Cannon Imagerunner, it found the device but didn't have the 5070 driver ready to install. So, what the heck, just like the last "major" Windows upgrade, I used the last known good driver and, just like last time, it worked, no problemo.
The bad news is many photo printers don't print correctly so if you are hooked to an Epson or HP Photosmart Printer doing your Photoshop work, not good. And again, spotty results on the websites for these updates. HP said buzz off until late January. Not exactly said like that but close enough.
Observation four - Capable, what's in a word.
I could be wrong on this but I have this hunch that there will be a fair amount of people heading to the pissed off crowd when they find out that "capable" logo means, yeah it will boot and kinda, sortta work but for all the gee whiz stuff, wellll, gimmie an up, gimmie a grade, etc, etc. I owned fairly new stuff and everything needs a new video card. This was pretty funny when the laptops were scanned by the advisor. (Sounds like a line from a bad Sci-fi movie, eh?) Last I checked, most people don't crack em open for field upgrades. As I said, I could be wrong. Maybe nobody will notice or care, but this seems like a complaint storm ready to form.
I have not spent enough time with Vista to tell you great, wow, couldn't live without it, etc. It is a change and after tweaks, pulls, plugs, patches, pain, and some occasional love, my core Thinkpad X41 works fine. Will I upgrade? I suspect the answer is yes (when I get some drivers) but for all the weird reasons, which include generally being a beta slut and one that just loves the pain.
I keep thinking that my Mac Mini is snickering at me. Naaaaahh...
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