Should I Upgrade My Computer to Vista?

I get this question all the time from people who want to know my opinion of Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system. Some of these people have one- or two-year-old computers on which they want to upgrade to Vista. For almost all of these people, the answer is "No," but it depends on their hardware, software, willingness and time to tinker, and ability to withstand downtime. For people looking for a project on a spare computer, this could be a fun project. In order to help my clients who may purchase Vista computers, I installed Vista Business in a second partition on a one-year-old Dell Latitude D610 notebook computer. Windows XP Professional is on the other partition, and this is where I boot the computer when I need everything to work.

My Linksys wireless PC Card caused Vista to display its blue screen of death (BSOD). After doing quite bit of research, I discovered that Vista did not like my computer's PC Card chipset, even though it is listed on Microsoft's web site as being compatible. Every PC Card I connected to my computer caused Vista to crash with the BSOD. With some very delicate surgery, I installed an internal wireless card, which performed flawlessly with its Vista drivers. My nine-month-old HP Color LaserJet 2600n network laser printer did not have Vista drivers or installation software, but I was able to make it work with about an hour of tinkering. Since my favorite security suite, ZoneAlarm Security Suite, was not compatible with Vista, I installed Norton Internet Secuity 2007. This works fine. ZoneAlarm is still in beta testing for Vista. Although I have to boot to XP to use my data recovery software, Firefox works well for me on Vista. Norton Ghost 10, which has no Vista support, was recently replaced by Ghost 12, which does work with Vista. Ka-ching!

Did I mention that I recommend at least 2GB of RAM and an advanced video card (not integrated video, as present on many computers) to take advantage of Vista's advanced video features?

Thoughts on Unwanted Email

On average, about 70% of the email I receive is spam or otherwise unwanted. Most of it is caught by my web host or the Outlook junk mail filter. As would be expected, many of the most pernicious offenders are involved, including phishing scams, re-fi, hot stocks, pharma, pirated software, and porn. These are being actively combatted on many fronts. Hopefully DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and/or other technologies will be effective in making spam economically non-viable. There are a couple other forms of unwanted email may be a little trickier to deal with. Most people will recognize the chain letter, which frequently begins with, "This is true. I checked it on Snopes.com." Then the writer goes on about something that is nearly invariably totally false, and concludes with something like, "Forward this to everyone you know." Trying to convince people to just delete these rather than continue the chain is akin to herding cats. Lastly, there is the weekly or monthly newsletter that comes unsolicited from people who I meet at a networking mixer. As an independent computer consultant who performs on site computer services, a lot of people end up with my business card. A few people I meet ask if it's ok to send me their newsletter, and I'm absolutely ok with that. Unsolicited newsletters from people I don't know are another story. Although I'm not inclined to tell these people to take me off their list, I'm not likely to recommend their services to clients, a colleague or friend. In conclusion, I offer this advice -- "Be considerate of the person at the other end of your email."

Craig Herberg