Upgrading to Vista?
 

Is anyone here thinking of upgrading to Vista in the near future (for business or home)?

I'm thinking I will replace my windows servers and computers in late 2008, at which time I will switch to Vista/ Office 2007.

Does vista have any specifically travel friendly features? I need some new laptops this fall, and am trying to determine between XP/Vista/Leopard

I will ask the IT department to investigate, but I'm asking for a travel based opinion only (not integrability, use with existing software, etc.)

Thanks

I never upgrade operating systems. Most older computers can only run Vista Basic because either memory or graphics card are inadequate to do more.

If I had a Vista ready computer and no issues, I'd stay with XP. Otherwise I might try to reformat and start over if Vista allows that. pgrading seems to be asking for trouble.

In any event, I'd wait at least 30 days and see what happens to people who try. It is going to be interesting.

I have an almost 4 year old computer. I will likely replace it in a month or or two assuming early Vista users are on the whole happy.

If it's implemented well, Sideshow should be very travel friendly. Also, they've apparently very much improved the ACPI implementation. This means Vista should improve battery life by using smarter CPU throttling, and sleep should actually work correctly. In XP it's fundamentally broken.

On the other hand, the new interface is going to require some serious horsepower to run. That's going to hurt battery life. Overall, I'd guess that Vista with the downgraded interface will be a very good mobile OS. By fall, SP1 should be out. Assuming we don't run into any showstoppers, I don't see any reason to buy an XP notebook in the fall.

As far as Leopard goes, who knows? Apple is playing their cards very close to the vest. It certainly won't be any worse than Vista - outside sideshow, there's not much on Vista that isn't already on Tiger. In my opinion, Vista closes the enormous gap between Tiger and XP. Whether Apple leaps ahead again with Leopard remains to be seen. The only introduction, at last year's dev conference, was rather underwhelming. I'd be shocked if they didn't have some cool stuff up their sleeves, though.

It may be too early to ask, but - do those "in the know" feel that the advanced security features that are supposed to be part of Vista will mean that users can dispense with third-party software like Norton Anti-Virus/Internet Security (firewall) and similar products?

Also, do I correctly understand that Vista Home Basic and Home Premier are equal to the old XP Home, and that Vista Ultimate is the equivalent of XP Professional?

I am waiting until I absolutely have to upgrade. For example, my Quicken program will not work with Vista unless I pay for an upgrade to their 2007 version.

Depends who you ask. Microsoft says yes, the av firms say you will NEED their products to stay safe.

I'm going to trust MS on this one, firms like Symantec and Mcafee haven't made a decent product in years. Their bloatware is worse than Vista could ever be.

I thought the anti-virus side of thing you have to buy a subscription for OneCare, which is a separate product outside Vista. As for the firewall, I'm sure Vista will have one, but a 'better' one is also available under OneCare. As to scanning for spyware, I think Windows Defender can do that, and it's free. If you've OneCare, Defender is incorporated.

I'm not entirely sure about what I wrote above, but I don't think you can totally get rid of third-party anti-virus software and totally rely on Vista.

I've been using Symantec for almost 10 years. This year, I've finally left it and switched to OneCare. While OneCare doesn't do everything Symantec can (I loved its ad blocking), OneCare has a much smaller footprint.

Does Microsoft really say that? If so, that's really stupid. Normally they're smarter than that.

Edit: It appears Allchin either misspoke or was misinterpreted.

Now, the comments have unfortunately been cited out of context implying that I said Windows Vista users shouldn’t use antivirus. I want to be clear, most users will use some form of antivirus software, and that will be appropriate for their scenarios. In fact, Windows Security Center, a great feature in Windows Vista, specifically encourages the use of antivirus software.

I really don't like Symantic (norton) very much, but I think they have the best enterprise client (and server client), so its what I use. I don't use the ad blocking etc, only virus protection. I use windows defender. Does onecare provide antivirus protection>

Yes, it claims it does. I don't know how effective it is, from what I've read, it's not any better or any worse than most of the big players out there.

Been running a clean install of Vista and OFfice 2007 for months on a machine that previously was running XP Pro. Battery life is significantly extended, sleep mode does actually work. I am very pleased

I did a clean install of Vista Ultimate about a month ago on a Dell Latitude D620 I own.

I noticed one annoying thing -- CPU utilization after a short amount of time would be stuck between 40% and 50%. Task manager showed the high CPU utilization and none of it was associated with a process. In fact, System Idle Processes were normally between 90 and 100%.

After thinking about quick fixes, I decided to reset the BIOS. Since I was resetting it, I figured I'd check the support pages to see if there was a newer one. Turns out I had the A04 revision and Vista "certification" wasn't done until A05, even though the laptop says it's Vista Capable. In fact, the latest release for my system is A07. Download, install, no problems since.

So "check and update BIOS" to your preinstallation tasks.

Do you like Office 2007?

I have the Software Assurance program, but I've been warned that there are significant differences (i.e. it is not a seamless upgrade).

why upgrade
 

until your are not happy with windows xp i would wait at least 1 year until you upgrade.

normally i a product life circle you will run into vista anyway.
for example you are using your computer for 3 years and after that you buy a new one. the chance that you are planning to buy a computer next year might be high. in this case just buy it with pre-installed vista.

never change a runnin system. its 50/50 that you might get in trouble if you install vista, wait for service pack 1-2 .

and i think xp is runnin quite good .

dp

Were you running the RTM?