Windows Vista

I just downloaded the latest Joost beta and it works perfectly on Windows Vista. I can browser channels and play videos without problems. I haven't had a long time to play with it, but I will report problems as I find them.

For those that don't know what Joost is, it is basically TV over IP. They provide channels that you can watch, this is probably the best IP over TV solution that is well... legit. [cough] torrents... [cough] newzbin... Unfortunately you do need an invite to get in on the beta.

Congrats to the Joost team!

Today I installed Windows Vista on my new T60, when I entered our corporate key for Vista the installer just died and the machine needed to be rebooted. This is a pretty embarrassing bug for the Microsoft folks given that a valid license key causes the installation to fail. My work-around was to redo the install but skip the key step so that I could enter it later.

During the installation it prompted me for the version of windows that was being installed. The CD is from the MSDN and it just says vista on it and I remember hearing that all version of Vista are the same, that the license used determines which features are enabled. So I chose Ultimate assuming that it would downgrade to business if necessary.

After I get the machine installed I enter the key and, low and behold, it won't accept it as an Ultimate key. But it also won't downgrade to Vista Business automatically either. So here I am reinstalling Vista again.

One fine day I found myself staring at the Windows XP search animation, waiting patiently when the irony struck. The Windows XP search animation is a picture of a dog that is flipping through a book page by page searching for something. The irony here is how clear that animation depicts the actual search process in Windows XP. You give it a file name and it starts searching the hard drive file by file looking for matches.

Lucky for us Windows Vista's search is a significant improvement over XP; in fact it is very competitive with Mac OS X's spotlight service that has garnered so much attention. The search in Vista is a huge leap forward, in fact I would go so far as to say that is the single greatest reason to upgrade from XP. Vista is not only a spectacular search system, but it also excels in the usability category. This search is so good it will change the way you work with your computer. Read on to find out more tips, tricks and features of Vista's new search.

With the release of Windows Vista there has been a departure from traditional menus. Office 2007 provides the ribbon and both IE7 and windows explorer have ribbon like menu interfaces.

In IE7 or windows explorer you can temporarily show the menu by pressing F10 (or crtl-F10 if you already have F10 bound). This trick does not work in word 2007 so I suspect the ribbon is immune to our antics and backward ways.

I have now been using vista for about two months and I have come to like many of the subtler changes in Windows Vista. Originally I posted a scathing first impression criticizing it, but I have come to use it and come to appreciate many of the changes that were made between XP and Vista. I am going to post a short series of articles focusing on what I like about vista; improvements and features that are important to users when making the buy/upgrade decision. Here is the itinerary:

I recently tried out windows Vista and I was sadly disappointed. I use windows XP at work (programming), and I use mac at home. So I am familiar with both but tend to think OS X is a better more stable OS.