Coping With Vista x32
I recently went through a job change and in the process my new employer set me up with a new laptop. The new laptop is loaded: Intel Core Duo, 2GB Ram, 120GB Hard drive, ATI 128MB Graphics, pretty much enough “umph” to run Vista, it is a Lenovo T60. I have noticed that Microsoft’s Vista actually runs really well, unless
…you try to run software that was written before Vista was in the Betas or CTP editions.
First Issue:
My laptop came with MS Office 2007 installed as a 60 day trial, well I wanted to install MS Office 2003, it all worked fine with the exception of Vista throwing a fit, when the driver versions for Outlook were older than what was pre-loaded. I think this was more of a Lenovo issue opposed to Vista, considering it was pre-loaded.
Second Issue:
Visual Studio 2003 will not work, and to get Visual Studio 2005 to work it takes nearly a 400mb download.
Third Issue:
MS SQL Server 2005 must have up Service Pack 2 installed. About another 400mb download.
Fourth Issue:
VMware Workstation takes about 20 min. to start up the first VM after a reboot. When I start the initial virtual machine, my computer starts processing the hard drive, and will continue to do this for the full 20 min. I have the virtual machines installed on an external drive; the drive that gets the workout is the laptop drive, not the USB drive.
Fifth Issue:
I am going to stop at 5 for now, but this is also one of the most ridiculous problems so far…trying to transfer files using file sharing on a local network (if the file is > 100 MB) then plan on waiting forever if one of the machines in the files hare is not a vista machine. Win2k3 Server along with XP Pro, transfers at a creeping slow transfer rate. You will see a dialog stating that “Vista is calculating transfer time”, and it continues to say this for hours, if you don’t cancel it. There is a knowledge base article on Microsoft’s Website, it is worth a read, because until I found this article I was going to wipe Vista off the laptop and re-install XP.
The good side of Vista so far, it doesn’t seem to crash J you just can’t install anything.
