Smoke286 said:
My God some of you people are conceited. Sure you've been at this longer
then some of the rest of us, sure some of those who downloaded Vista as part
of the CPP program are not technically proficient enough to handle the
learning curve. But trust me on this, very few of you are rocket scientists
either. You have one advantage, you have been at this longer. Get over your
condescending attitudes. If you have nothing constructive to add to the
conversation then keep your snide remarks to yourself.
If you have a test machine with no data on it that you care about, then none
of this applies to you.
If you are going to install Vista on a production machine, or your main home
machine, then you need to know how to do these things, and you also need to
do at least a data backup and better yet a drive image before you install
Vista.
We have seen enough reports from people who have upgraded their Windows XP
operating systems on a production machine, or their main home machine to
Windows Vista, and then want to go back to Windows XP, to be able to say
that you shouldn't do it.
In order not to do it, you need to create a new partition, and install Vista
as a dual boot.
You need to be aware that some people have partitioned their hard drives,
and then formatted their old operating system partitions, and installed
their Windows Vista there. I was spooked enough by this possibility that I
disconnected my Windows 2000 drive from the system while installing Vista on
a different drive.
If you order the DVDs from Microsoft, you don't have to figure out how to
burn the DVDs, but if you download the iso file, you must not only know how
to burn it to a DVD, but also how to check the downloaded file to make sure
that it is not corrupt as many of the downloads are.
If your BIOS is not set to boot from CD, you really do need to figure out
how to set that in your BIOS before you can install Vista that way.
Starting the Vista installation from Windows XP is another option. Since my
operating system is Windows 2000 I didn't have that option, but I didn't
want it.
Vista Beta 2 is a Beta. It is buggy and unstable. It is not as buggy or as
unstable as earlier versions, and we all hope that RC1 will be less buggy
and less unstable than Beta 2, but you should not look on this as a free
operating system. It is test software for an operating system that is still
being developed.
If you want to install any Beta operating system, not just Vista, you better
learn these things plus a lot more before you screw up your system and lose
your data.
I agree with what Steve said, I don't consider it to be unconstructive,
although it may be a little condecending, and if you want to compare
attitudes, I don't think you are going to come out too well.
Todd
