Windows Vista Enterprise – 6 months later

I have been running Windows Vista Enterprise on my main desktop for 6 months and have been loving it. I’ll break down what I like and dislike, but it is mostly likes. Please keep in mind that this is on my work computer, which is a newer model (about a year old or so). Since this is my work computer I have no idea about the Media Center functionality or what gaming is like. Also, since this is a desktop I can’t comment on the tablet functionality (but I would love to try it on my tablet, but I’ll have to wait until I get a new one). Being in an office I am not hooking up every piece of legacy consumer-grade craphardware either, so that may be why my experience has been so positive.

Vista is the first Windows OS I have been able to run as a user instead of as an administrator. This is amazingly fabulous, if only because this has been the recommended practice since I started using Windows 2000.  I haven’t had any problems running as a user with one exception, and this is my one dislike: I run my administrative console, which includes Active Directory Users and Computers, with Administrative credentials. However when I use ADUC to remotely manage a computer it passes my user credentials instead of my admin credentials. So if I want to remotely manage a computer I have to do so logged on as an admin. This is pretty annoying, but certainly not a deal breaker. I am optimistic that this will be fixed in an ADUC upgrade, since it seems silly to have to log into an admin account when RunAs exists.

User Access Control, the dreaded UAC that everyone wants to disable, is another great feature. When something needs to be installed or otherwise needs elevated privileges the UAC prompts for admin credentials. If you are logged in as an admin (why are you logged in as an admin?) it gives you an alert message but doesn’t make you re-enter your credentials. I can see how this may get annoying when you are first setting up a system, doing a lot of installs all at once, but after that it is great. This is what makes running as a user even easier.

The Sidebar, just because I like having a few utilities, or gadgets, available and visible all the time.

The Snipping Tool is very handy. I find myself wanting to take targeted scree shots and the snipping tool lets me do it without capturing an entire window and then cropping.

I also like the new design of the Start Menu. It is very easy to work with.

Putting user profiles in a Users directory instead of Documents and Settings directory is also a good move, just because it is less keystrokes if you are at a command prompt a lot.

So, all in all, I would have to say I am a huge fan of Vista. Honestly I have trouble understanding why people hate it so much. I certainly wouldn’t put it on an old computer, nor would I expect it to be exactly like XP. I think part of the blame goes to computer manufacturers labeling computers as Vista capable. While a computer may be ‘capable’ it certainly is not ‘recommended’. I wouldn’t want to see Vista on anything with less than 2 GB of RAM and at least a P4 1.6 GHz CPU. I think people need to be more open minded and give things a chance instead of looking at it and running away because it is different.

Windows Vista Enterprise – First Thoughts

The following is a piece I published elsewhere back in February. Since that site it defunct I wanted to move my article over to this blog. I’ll post some more updated thoughts on Vista soon (unlike some people I still have a very positive opinion of Vista), but for now here are my thoughts from after running the final release for a month:

I had been running the Vista beta (which, in case you did not know, was the Ultimate edition) since the summer and was very happy with it. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to install the actual release of Vista, the Enterprise edition. Since it’s been up and running for me I wanted to relay my thoughts on it.

First of all, the setup is very easy and surprisingly fast. I was up and running in Windows in just under a half an hour (27 minutes if you want the exact figure).  A few things that caught my eye that were different from the beta. First off, the final release actually has more drivers. I didn’t have to spend another hour making my video card work with 2 monitors, one widescreen, like I did in the beta. Also my sound card worked right away, instead of having to fiddle with drivers for that.

On the security front, there were two things I noticed immediately. First, the local administrator account is disabled by default. Finally. Second, thanks to the User Access Control (UAC) I can finally run in Windows with a regular user account and actually be able to do things. Since I did the install on January 23rd I have only had to log on to an administrative account once, and that was to set up my backup schedule using Windows Backup. Everything else I have been able to provide appropriate credentials through the UAC while I am logged on as a user. Very cool. The only program I have had a problem with so far is Active Directory Users and Computers (ADUC). While I can run it with elevated privileges, I can not manage remote computers since it seems to pass my user account that I am logged on with as opposed to my admin account that I ran the program with. A small detail, but annoying for me since I find myself remotely managing computers from within ADUC fairly frequently.

Thanks to the Aero interface and the fact that I have a decent video card to utilize it, Vista is very visually stunning. It is just nice to look at and work in. It’s hard to explain, but I find that I have grown accustomed to the Vista interface and find it preferable than earlier versions of Windows and even OS X. Vista has changed the layout of everything from the start menu to the control panel, and although it took a little bit to get used to, the new start menu is excellent. The new Sidebar with Gadgets is great, especially if you have dual monitors or a large monitor so it doesn’t get in the way. That is both the advantage and disadvantage of the sidebar over OS X’s dashboard. The sidebar is always there, ready to be looked at. That was what I hated about the OS X Dashboard, having to switch to it. I always thought, “Why couldn’t these always be available on my desktop?” Well, with the Vista sidebar they can be. However, I have a dual monitor setup with lots of screen real estate. I can understand how it can get in the way if you are working off of a single 17″ monitor. But if you have the room, it is great.

Overall I am so far very happy with my Vista experience. It has been very stable and functional. Combined with the new Office 2007, Microsoft is making some very good changes.

Open Command Window Here on Vista

I really liked the XP tweak that added ‘Open Command Window Here’ to a folder’s context menu. I was pleasantly surprised today to find that if you do a shift right-click in Vista it gives you that option too.

If you don’t know what it is the Open Command Window Here will open a command prompt at the directory location of the folder you execute it on. So if you often need to run items from a command line but hate having to manually change directories, this works pretty nicely.

Office 2007

I am on the Office 2007 project team at work, where we are looking at what it will take to migrate our users over to the new system. I’ve been using it since the beta last summer so I’ve become fairly comfortable with it. However, it is so visually different from what we are used to I can see how it can be intimidating. My initial reaction was one of distaste. It was different and I didn’t like it because it was different. Then I used it, and after a few hours not only did I like the interface but I appreciated the intuitiveness of the ribbon. I understand that I may be in the minority when it comes to sticking it out and learning the new system, but my advice would be to use the new interface for at least a week before giving up. Microsoft also provides some fabulous interactive guides for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, so if you know how to do something in the 2003 version it will show you how to do it in the 2007 version. Very, very handy.

Another useful add-on to Office 2007 is the ability to save your documents as a PDF. This was initially built into the Office suite but Adobe forced Microsoft to remove it and make it a separate download. You can get it from Microsoft’s site here.

If you are unable to get Office 2007 but want to be able to open the new file format you can download the Compatibility Pack which will allow you to open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 files.

Summer crunch time

So one of the hardest things about blogging about what I do is that by the time I have a chance to sit down and type it, it is old news. Since I work at a college everyone assumes that over the summer I have a lot of free time. In actuality the summer is my busiest time of the year. I have a limited amount of time to prepare and deploy images to all of the labs that I maintain, which there are an additional 2 this summer. Somewhere in that time there are all of the little things that always crop up, plus meetings, trainings, and other things that just eat up time. So as the summer is halfway over it is nice to pause to reflect.

One of my labs received new computers this year, which are now installed. The secondary moves will happen in the next few weeks. Of course as software requests come in more attention will need to be given to this “completed” lab.  However, these next few weeks will be painfully busy. Everything always gets done, but it gets stressful while the actual doing is being done. ^_^ Sorry, I couldn’t resist that. It would just be nice for people to realize that working at a school does not mean that summer is a vacation.