A
Arfur Million
Hello,
I upgraded from XP to Vista recently, and thought I'd put in writing some
observations and problems, in no particular order:
- it took 3 hours on a 3.2 Ghz machine with 4 Gb of memory. I don't have
that many apps installed either. It was mostly unattended, but still seems a
bit excessive, or is this normal?
- it changed a number of settings that I feel it should really have left
alone. It set the "Wakeup on LAN" setting to true in the BIOS (possibly via
the Network settings, as I saw later), meaning that whenever I sutdown the
PC, it started right up again. It changed a couple of similar wakeup
settings, and I suspect that it's done something to the power management
settings, since sometimes when I shutdown, the OS shuts down, but the power
(fan) remains on.
- it changed my Outlook email account setting to require TLS for the "send"
server, which was a bit unnecessary, IMO.
- it did not handle my monitor very well, setting it to 1024x768 and
refusing to set it higher, until I re-installed the driver several times and
rebooted in some order until I could get it to its former glory (a modest
1200x1024, in fact). It's a Samsung Syncmaster 171P, if anyone's interested.
- Some of the desktop icons, which formerly diplayed nicely in XP, look
distinctly VGA in Vista. Others are OK.
- it replaced my cursor scheme with some default (but did not lose my custom
scheme). I assume this happened somehow when it migrated the user accounts.
- with one particular web-based application, on accessing some option it
said that it couldn't display the screen normally (sorry, I can't remember
the exact wording) and gave me an option to display it in a new window which
took over the screen display ( a bit like some games do). This screen was
1024x768 again (this was after I'd reset the setting back to 1200x1024).
Furthermore, the screen was in right-hand mouse mode, ignoring my user
settings and when it returned control back to normal Vista the resolution
remained at the lower level.
- a couple of applications (Symantec antivirus and a VPN) did not work in
Vista. Not surprising, really, and not much of a problem (a later version of
the VPN supports Vista and works fine, I just downloaded AVG for the
antivirus). But, I was hoping/expecting Vista to tell me the apps that
weren't going to work properly.
- my scanner is now intrusive, whereas under XP it didn't do anything until
it was told to (except load an icon in the botton RH part of the taskbar).
Now it either comes up with its own config problem, which can be OK'd or
Cancelled without any apparent ill effect, or sometime during the session I
will get the Windows Fax and Scan application come up with an error message
box saying "Automatic Scanning could not be completed". This can also be
closed without any ill effect. It's a Microtexk ScanMaker 3800, if that
makes any difference.
Well, that was a pretty good whinge, wasn't it? In fact, I got about the
same level of trouble as I expected, but in different areas. Overall,
despite all the above, I'm quite happy with Vista - my favourite
applications all run fine and startup/shutdown times are significantly
faster. If anyone does have feedback (especially on the shutdown lack of
power off) I'd be grateful.
Regards,
Arfur
I upgraded from XP to Vista recently, and thought I'd put in writing some
observations and problems, in no particular order:
- it took 3 hours on a 3.2 Ghz machine with 4 Gb of memory. I don't have
that many apps installed either. It was mostly unattended, but still seems a
bit excessive, or is this normal?
- it changed a number of settings that I feel it should really have left
alone. It set the "Wakeup on LAN" setting to true in the BIOS (possibly via
the Network settings, as I saw later), meaning that whenever I sutdown the
PC, it started right up again. It changed a couple of similar wakeup
settings, and I suspect that it's done something to the power management
settings, since sometimes when I shutdown, the OS shuts down, but the power
(fan) remains on.
- it changed my Outlook email account setting to require TLS for the "send"
server, which was a bit unnecessary, IMO.
- it did not handle my monitor very well, setting it to 1024x768 and
refusing to set it higher, until I re-installed the driver several times and
rebooted in some order until I could get it to its former glory (a modest
1200x1024, in fact). It's a Samsung Syncmaster 171P, if anyone's interested.
- Some of the desktop icons, which formerly diplayed nicely in XP, look
distinctly VGA in Vista. Others are OK.
- it replaced my cursor scheme with some default (but did not lose my custom
scheme). I assume this happened somehow when it migrated the user accounts.
- with one particular web-based application, on accessing some option it
said that it couldn't display the screen normally (sorry, I can't remember
the exact wording) and gave me an option to display it in a new window which
took over the screen display ( a bit like some games do). This screen was
1024x768 again (this was after I'd reset the setting back to 1200x1024).
Furthermore, the screen was in right-hand mouse mode, ignoring my user
settings and when it returned control back to normal Vista the resolution
remained at the lower level.
- a couple of applications (Symantec antivirus and a VPN) did not work in
Vista. Not surprising, really, and not much of a problem (a later version of
the VPN supports Vista and works fine, I just downloaded AVG for the
antivirus). But, I was hoping/expecting Vista to tell me the apps that
weren't going to work properly.
- my scanner is now intrusive, whereas under XP it didn't do anything until
it was told to (except load an icon in the botton RH part of the taskbar).
Now it either comes up with its own config problem, which can be OK'd or
Cancelled without any apparent ill effect, or sometime during the session I
will get the Windows Fax and Scan application come up with an error message
box saying "Automatic Scanning could not be completed". This can also be
closed without any ill effect. It's a Microtexk ScanMaker 3800, if that
makes any difference.
Well, that was a pretty good whinge, wasn't it? In fact, I got about the
same level of trouble as I expected, but in different areas. Overall,
despite all the above, I'm quite happy with Vista - my favourite
applications all run fine and startup/shutdown times are significantly
faster. If anyone does have feedback (especially on the shutdown lack of
power off) I'd be grateful.
Regards,
Arfur
