Vista Rocks!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

My new PC has a free subscription copy of McCaffee. If anything its worse than Norton - not only a resource hog but the menu structure makes no sense. I'm only keeping it so I don't have to fork out for something else.

I get all that extra Dell ####### with Vista too - I wouldn't mind except that some of it doesn't seem to work properly, including a rather annoying System Notification that seems to serve no useful purpose at all.

I like Acrobat too - I just can't afford the bloody thing and my hooky copy of version 5 no longer works. This is pretty much the same (though without some of the advanced tools) - for no cost.

Open Office has some compatibility issues with MS Office, or at least it did when I was using it. Still you can't sniff at an office suit that is completely free. Hmmm free... or $400.... Of course MS office has compatibility issues with itself - the default save format is Office 2003, because as I discovered, if you save it in 2007 format - you have to download a patch that allows other users to open it on previous versions.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I haven't used Vista yet. To many people have warned me off of it. But I assume at some point I will have to unless I go to a non-microsoft OS. What is this "permission" thing your talking about? Does this mean my collection of less than legal software will no longer work?

A lot of the old software I had on my (now dead) laptop doesn't work on Vista. I don't know whether that's compatibility or something else - it doesn't seem to like the setup batch files.

I know all the major manufacturers are going over to this "use it once and its dead thing". You have to register software online, and once you've done it you can't reassign it to a different user and you can't load it onto more than one PC (unless you have a multi-user) - because the software connects to the internet after installation and can tell that its already being used.

They're doing it with games too - Half Life 2 is a one-use only product, and in the user agreement it says that you're not allow to 'sell' your license. Basically, its yours for life - whether you want it or not.

Edited April 7, 2008 by Number 6

[*julez* 124]

I am a Vista user now for 14 miserable months. I can't believe how slow my new computer is! I have more RAM than ever before yet my computer is slow. I can't play certain games online anymore and I can't even download songs from iTunes FFS, so my gift cards are goung to waste. Eff Vista and Bill Gates.

[Jenn! 918]

If you think Vista has a learning curve - try working with MS Office 2007

The interface and menu structure which has remained more or less static since Windows 3.1 versions of Office is now completely, completely different.

We switched over to 2007 at work about 6 months ago. I hated it at first, but now that I'm used to it, I like the new capabilities. I work mostly in Excel.

[ready4ONE 5,400]

My new PC has a free subscription copy of McCaffee. If anything its worse than Norton - not only a resource hog but the menu structure makes no sense. I'm only keeping it so I don't have to fork out for something else.

Try Avast! a free anti-virus program that works better than any pay as you go program I have ever used.

A very long time ago I had McCaffee and it was the absolute worst. I had a long string of luck with Norton, but have now ditched them as well.

The only caveat for Avast! is you need to sign up for an eighteen month subscription. No big deal in my book for a vastly superior and free AV program.

[Fandango 1,440]

I use office 07 as well and I actually like it. Didn't at first, but now I do.

[Ban Hammer 13,656]

i had to get office 2007 when my office 2003 decided it was no longer a valid version fortunately i was able to get it at the px for something like $75.

[Sinergy 3]

I hate VISTA, i hated most the windows OS's. I use dule-boot at home with Linux as my personal choice.

I have "plenty" of burnt XP's at home

[Marilyn. 340]

I have Vista on this laptop which speed wise isn't so bad unless I have a lot of stuff running. Sending stuff back and forth on the network on the other hand is a pain. It's also a pain trying to find things in sensible places as I think someone else has mentioned. I can't STAND the asking permission for things, when it came out I heard that was eventually going to decrease as it gets used to your habits. I'm still waiting. I miss XP, hell I'll even deal with 2000 which is still a very good OS but not every program, driver etc will have a 2k version.

So I'm dealing with Vista at the moment, not happy about it but what can I do? (other than breaking down and buying XP, no thank you.) I have an XP disk somewhere but I don't think it works anymore, and I'm sure some of you will figure out why Arrrrrrrr!

I do like that it finds drivers for devices online a lot better (I've yet had to use a disk or look for one online myself.) But that could have just been my XP machine being a bit funny.

you can turn this feature off.... go to Windows Security Center in the control Panel... then click on other security settings and there should be an option there to turn off user account control...

. . . . And - worse of all - there are extremely limited options to change the appearance colours of the screens - I am stuck with Blues and I want greens and golds! (hehehehe)

you can change it if you right click on your desktop and then click on personalize and then click on window color and appearance.. you can almost get any colour you want....

it even lets you access the classic options...

I tried that - couldn't get the colour choice panel to come up - could only get a handful of pre-loaded options, none of which I liked. Hmm, back to trying to find out more about Vista that doesn't make sense . . .

hmmm, strange... it worked on mine ... if you click on those colours you can use the slider thing to change the the tone of the colour...

or you can open the colour mixer... or the "open classic appearance properties for more color options"

[Marilyn. 340]

I haven't used Vista yet. To many people have warned me off of it. But I assume at some point I will have to unless I go to a non-microsoft OS. What is this "permission" thing your talking about? Does this mean my collection of less than legal software will no longer work?

no, it is just this thing that pops up that asks if you have to permission to make the changes you want to make... I guess to try and prevent other people from putting stuff on your computer but it is kind of silly because you just click ok it doesn't ask for any kind of password or anything but anyways you can turn this feature off, as I explained above....

Edited April 7, 2008 by MarilynP

[EstebanTrabajos 7]

MAC RULES! and I'm just taking about Tiger, cannot wait to get my hands over Leopard. (I guess if you didnt understand what I just wrote...you must love "Vista"

Edited April 7, 2008 by GueraYTavo

[Marilyn. 340]

I never said I love Vista I just said I don't seem to have the problems people seem to be having with it... it just took some getting use to.. trying to find where everything is etc.. but i had that same problem when I went from Windows 95 to XP...

[almaty 19]

have XP..and use, i am a first class IT chopf##k idiot..... I do not plan on getting vista..the xp doe the job..

on the stephen king .....i meet him in maine, when i worked in eastport..the social worker there was 70 years old and a retired navy..she was crusty..anyway, she knew his wife and family....and he came there to do some type of quick research on the Indian custom there..anyway, i gave him my mother's address and name..and 3 weeks later..she got an autograph photo of him..adddressed to her with some comments....

it was nice of him and she has it it a place of honor...

[DeadPoolX 9]

If you think Vista has a learning curve - try working with MS Office 2007

The interface and menu structure which has remained more or less static since Windows 3.1 versions of Office is now completely, completely different.

I've used Office 2007 and I really like it. Compared to previous versions of Office, I think it's much more user-friendly. It took me all of five minutes to completely figure out the interface, so I really don't see what the problem is here. Honestly, I'm glad Microsoft changed the look -- as you said, they've been using the same menu structure since version 3.1, so it's definitely time for a change.

The only thing that seems to mess a lot of people up is that you need to save files in backwards compatibility mode so they'll work in older versions of MS utilities. For instance, up until Word 2007, a Word file had the extension of DOC whereas in Word 2007 it has DOCX. A DOCX file can only be opened with Word 2007 (and possibly a new edition of OpenOffice, although I'm uncertain of that), so if you want Word 2000 or Word 2003 to read a document you wrote on Word 2007, you'll need to save it as a backwards compatible file.

None of that is difficult to do, however. In fact, it's extremely easy and the people who screw this up generally fail to take some time out to learn the new interface and experiment a bit.

If you think Vista has a learning curve - try working with MS Office 2007

The interface and menu structure which has remained more or less static since Windows 3.1 versions of Office is now completely, completely different.

I'll continue with Office 2003 Enterprise; thanks. lol

I think I'm going to buy about 1000 copies of XP... when they stop selling XP in a few months or a year, I'll start listing them on eBay. I should get very, very rich.

That sounds like a good idea (and in some ways, it probably is), but what happens when Microsoft eventually discontinues support for XP? It will do that at some point, especially if it wants to force Vista on PC users. When that happens, hardware and software will cease being made for XP and anyone who has that OS will have to make a choice -- move to Vista, try a different company's OS or keep an outdated system.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

On Office 2007 - it depends how complex your formatting is. The majority of users don't use the advanced functions of most of the Office programs. Its always been easy to put together relatively simple documents - but when you get into say, complex document formatting and setting up document style sheet templates in Word it can get a bit tricky when you have to learn where all those functions have been moved to.

Edited April 7, 2008 by Number 6