John's Tech Tips

John Seyfarth- Sump Memorial Library, Papillion

Microsoft Windows Vista®

Last issue I promised that I would have some stuff on the new Windows Vista® Operating System. Since the last issue, I have built some more machines that I thought would meet the recommended requirements of the new operating system. I have installed it on two machines here in the Library, including my own. My machine has an Asus® motherboard, an Intel Pentium D® 3.4GHz dual core processor and 2GB of memory.

I had started with another machine (Intel® Motherboard, Intel Pentium D® 2.8GHz dual core processor and 1 GB of memory) with the final pre-release version of, and when the actual first release became available in mid December, I got a downloaded version installed on that machine. On that machine, I cleaned off the drive completely, and started from scratch. For a while, it ran just fine, but in January, the machine started to restart about every fifteen minutes, so I have temporarily reinstalled XP on the machine for a class I needed to accommodate in the lab. During the time it was in the lab, and before the restarting problem started, several users had used it without a problem. At that time, there was no valid anti-virus available, but I now have Symantec Corporate Edition version 10.2 which works just fine. Applications seemed to work on that machine before the problem without a hitch. I still haven't figured out why the restarting problem occurred, because the XP installation has worked just fine without a hitch. I kind of suspect that there may have been a driver issue, but it was not obvious from the troubleshooting and web research I did.

On my own machine, I have worked with it since late December (Today, as I write this it is Jan 31). I installed it as an upgrade to XP Pro®. Applications have had no problems, and one thing I really wanted to see was how our Follett® Library System would work. It has worked just fine, including the backup. All my applications run just fine, but there has been one bug. When I am in a position where I have to browse for something, (save, download and save, pick a folder for backup, or any similar task), I frequently get the all too familiar, “computer not responding.” That is the bad news. The good news is that Vista® does a very good job of recovering on its own, and I can go about my business, but it usually takes a minute or two.

One of the things I have been very pleased about has been that Vista 's® drivers seem to work very well (with the exception of perhaps a driver for an unknown device on the computer in the lab). I have a lot of stuff on my machine, and all the items, including several different flash drives, external hard drives, and printers work great.

I will say this. Vista has tried very hard to look like Macintosh System 10 with its “liquid” interface. In addition, some of the things that you are used to working with in XP and knowing where they are located, are in different places. Run for example has to be accessed in Accessories. So, if you want to do a chkdsk /f (it's still there), you have to click Start, All Programs, Accessories, and then Run.

Vista® is OK, but if you have XP running well, I am not sure that I would be in a huge hurry to upgrade. Software Plus®, our statewide contractor for Microsoft® Software has the licenses and disk kits available, and prices are very similar for Vista Business® to those for the Windows XP®. There aren't any applications that I know about that require Vista® to run. Vista does have Internet Explorer 7, and Media Player 11 built in. IE7 doesn't run as well as its predecessor, and I run Firefox® 2.0 as my default browser.

Vista® needs to mature. However, if you are buying a new machine from now on, more than likely, Vista Basic® or Vista Premium® will come on the machine. Be aware that you need to have Vista Business® or Vista Ultimate® (an extra expense) to enable your computer to log onto a domain network, very common in Libraries. Software Plus® sells Vista Business®. The upgrade price is roughly $53.00 plus your disk kit (DVDs). If you are going to install Vista®, you must have a DVD drive on your machine.

Further, be aware that Vista® will have a much larger hard disk drive footprint (15GB) than XP had. Many of my XP machines with lots of applications occupy less than 10GB total, with the XP operating system taking between 1.5 and 2.25 GB.

Up to this time, I have only worked with the 32 bit version of the Vista® operating system. My next task is to try the 64 bit flavor, since I have a number of machines with dual core processors. I will have some results from that experiment in the next issue.

If you have any questions, you can E-mail me at jseyfarth@sumplibrary.info or call ( 402-597-2050 )