Vista 30 Days After Install
Posted by {fatgadget}
Below is an article I published on my own blog (www.gadgettastic.com) about a week ago, with my experience in updgrading to Vista.Its exactly 30 days since I installed Vista on my PC, I have to say I was a little nervous about doing it at first. I downloaded the Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor and ran it, everything seemed to go ok and the report showed only a few minor software issues, so I decided to go for it.I scoured the web for information on Vista after reading many articles and tips I decided to buy Vista Home Premium 32 Bit edition, I managed to get myself an OEM copy from Microdirect for about £74 including the VAT & Delivery.It arrived the next day, I had already backed up all my data, so I decided to do a clean install, I booted my PC, ran the interactive setup, formatted the PC’s hard drive and began the install. It took about 30 minutes, I rebooted and was ready for the usual problems that you get with a fresh install of XP, I have to say I was more than a little surprised, all my hardware was there and everything seemed ok. Here’s the spec of my PC, nothing spectacular:-Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3700+ 2.20 GHzMotherboard: Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9-RH Socket 939Memory: Corsair Value Select 3GB DDR PC3200 (3 x 1GB)Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon X1650 Pro 265MB DDR3Hard Drive: 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 Sata 2 Hard DriveDVD Drive: Lite-on DRW-6S160P-05C DVD RW DriveWhat’s the catch I thought to myself; it can’t be this easy can it? I was expecting some error messages to pop up on my desktop, after about 5 minutes of playing around with Vista I realised this wasn’t going to happen.Surely it’s bound to go wrong when I install all my software, I thought to myself, so I went about installing my programs. After about an hour and a half I pretty much had everything I use installed, my email was working, I was able to browse the web, my antivirus was installed, so was my firewall, and the few games I play seemed to be working fine, and all the Vista updates (there weren’t many) were downloaded and installed.I have to say I was impressed, normally a complete clean install of XP takes a good 3+ hours to get everything setup just how I like it, for a complete clean install Vista is great. its simple, its quick, its painless, as long as you use the Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor first to make sure you have no major hardware compatibility issues.I have now got used to the new look and features of Vista, I love the Aero interface, and the glass effects, it looks and feels great to use, my favourite bit has to be the new Windows Sidebar, there are some great gadgets on the web to download to it from rss readers to media gadgets.Another cool feature is the Instant Search, this allows you to search your PC for files, and other items, it’s so much better than the search function in XP, easier to use, and fast very fast, it also provides some nice advanced features.There is a bunch of new security features as well, from the new User Account Control (which can be a little annoying from time to time but you learn to live with it), to the updated Windows Security Centre, to the Windows Defender. It a pretty comprehensive package and a huge improvement over XP. Combine this with a few decent free security programs from around the web ( I will talk about these later on in more detail) and you have a pretty secure PC, now I am not saying its 100% secure, but it is a serious improvement over XP.In conclusion, I am glad I made the move to Vista, it was a pretty painless process, I have now got used to all its features, its fun and simple to use, very user friendly and has a bunch of cool stuff that make my computing experience better.If I had to go back to using XP on my main machine I don’t think I could, there are too many new things that I would miss.Read my other articles at www.gadgettastic.com
add by admin of www.dollarsforum.com