Why I am afraid of Windows Vista

Ok, afraid is a heavy word. But it’s somewhat appropriate. First let me lay down the landscape of Dawn and my little geeklab. We have a nice little room that we work in upstairs and if you count the Media Center PC in the bedroom and both of our work issue laptops, a pretty standard night upstairs includes (In order panning the room):

• G4 Powermac Quicksilver
• 2.66Ghz P4 (Windows XP SP2) My main everyday use PC
• 2.4Ghz P4 (Windows XP SP2) *Vista would not install, see previous article for hard disk issues)
• 1.7Ghz Athlon XP (Fedora Core 6 Linux)
• 1.86Ghz Core Duo Laptop (Windows XP SP2)
• 1.8Ghz Turion 64 X2 Laptop (Windows XP SP2) *Work Owned
• 2.0Ghz Core Duo (Windows XP SP2) *Dawn’s work laptop
• 1.7Ghz Pentium M (Windows XP SP2) *Dawn’s Personal Laptop
• 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 (Fedora Core 6 Linux) * Dawn’s Linux Box
• 2.5Ghz Pentium 4 (Windows Vista Enterprise) *Our Media Center PC

So there is the rundown, at any one time, there are 10 PCs up here. One finally has Vista running decently, got everything working on it. Now we had a serious discussion about upgrading another PC or two to Vista for some real world testing.

We downloaded the Windows Vista compatibility tool last night and ran it on my desktop PC and both of our laptops. The detailed results are listed below.

Desktop PC (2.66Ghz Pentium 4, 2GB Ram, All-In-Wonder 2006 256MB AGP Video Card, LG DVDRW, Netgear FA310 Ethernet, Soundmax Integrated Sound, Seagate 40GB Barracuda 7200.7 ATA/100 Hard Disk)

• Hard Disk Capacity Issue: Vista Requires 15GB Free space to install. Since I store everything on network or external, I never thought to add more hard disk space. I guess I will have to delete stuff to move on to Vista.
• Netgear FA310TX Fast Ethernet Adapter. Vista says it has no compatibility information for this device.
• Vista says it will choke on the following applications: Nero, McAfee Security Center, PowerProducer, ATI Catalyst Control Center, Diskeeper Professional, J2SE Runtime Environment 5 Update 9, Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Messenger, HP Photo & Imaging, Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer & Hewlett Packard Utilities.

Those are it’s pains with my desktop PC. I can run Aero, and I am sure most things will hunky dory, but it’s a little un-nerving that my RAW thumbnail viewer will die and I possibly won’t have network access.

Personal Laptop (HP 1.86Ghz Core Duo, 1GB Ram, dual 100GB Hard Disks, GeForce Mobile 128MB Graphics, 17″ Widescreen LCD, DVDRW, Built in 802.11G Wireless and 10/100 Ethernet)

• No System Issues, but I expected that because the laptop has a nice Vista Ready sticker on it.
• Vista didn’t like the following applications: McAfee Security Center, Diskeeper Professional, Sonic Express Labeler, J2SEE Runtime Environment 5 Update 9, VZAccess Manager, Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer, Windows Messenger, Hewlett Packard Utilities

I have pretty much decided to try Vista on this. I am really worried about the VZAccess Manager because that’s my Verizon Cell Model, huge priority for me. But it says it’s not happy with that. We will see. I will blog my post install impressions on it later this afternoon.

Dawn’s Laptop (1.86Ghz Pentium M, 2GB Ram, ATI Mobility Radeon X300, 80GB HD, DVDRW, 802.11b Wireless and 10/100 Ethernet)

• Video Card, the Radeon X300 won’t run Aero, so it’s basic graphics for her if she decides to run it. I think this one is funny, her laptop runs World of Warcraft just fine, why should your OS be more graphic intensive than World of Warcraft?
• Intel Pro Wireless Network, Vista tells us you can update this to work AFTER Vista installs, but you would need to plug in so you better have a switch and cable handy.
• Thinkpad Ultranav Pointing device. Ok, I would call this a gotcha. Vista says this will no longer work after it is installed. Great if your a keyboard only user!
• McAfee Security Center, HP Image Zone, Thinkvantage, ATI Catalyst Control Center, ATI Desktop Component, Thinkvantage Fingerprint Software, Thinkpad Ultranav Driver, Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer, Thinkpad Power Management Service, Windows Messenger, Microsoft SQL Installer and IBM utilities ring warning bells.

Dawn decided that Vista wasn’t worth the upgrade if she didn’t even get the pretty bells and whistles, besides, using a computer without your mouse might be pretty annoying!

So there it is, Vista’s upgrade manager on 3 different PCs. Vista is installing on the Core Duo as we speak, I will give you my impressions when it finishes.

Editor’s Note: I posted a follow up to this story, view it here.

JB

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