As promised I was going to do a re-install of Vista Build 5472. Whatever the reason it crashed last time straight after I installed it: this time I have to report a flawless install. Not only that: it was – hands down – the fastest install I ever had done of a new OS. I booted from the DVD and decided to clock it with my stopwatch. Not only did I get to the install screen in less than 60(!!) seconds, the install it self was also blazing fast! Check this out: after less than 15 minutes I already was at the “add a user screen”. At 20 minutes Vista rebooted and at 25 minutes it was analyzing my systems “performance”. And low and behold: exactly at 29 minutes (!!!) I was presented with the log-in screen and at 30 minutes I had logged into Vista. I’m very very impressed! In fact I never ever installed *any* OS that uses a GUI in less than 45-50 minutes. Not even Linux – Ubuntu, SUSE, Red Hat: I tried them all – manages that! Now, I suspect that the final version will take longer. Quite simply because there will be more drivers on the DVD. Right now Vista doesn’t even recognize my soundcard after a default install, so in all reality I think the hardware recognition and everything that comes with it will take the extra time. But nevertheless, I’m impressed. In fact: I’m writing this blog using Vista and IE 7.0.5472.5.
What did I do different this time? Well for starters I haven’t configured Media Center. And I suspect that the culprit lies there: Media Center tries to configure my TV-card and doesn’t succeed in that. It says it recognized the hardware and even identifies it, but other than that it will not function. Previously I had to disable the hardware otherwise the sound of my TV-card would just make it impossible for me to work. And I am not able to turn the sound of by lack of a decent driver. My guess is that the overall buginess of Media Center makes Vista unstable.
After installing Vista a made a restore point (last time I tried to repair Vista in vain because of lack of restore point) and then did the drivers (sound, modem etc.). One thing I noticed: previously after installing or updating a driver, Windows always wants you te reboot. Vista is different in that it did not needed to reboot. I did that anyway: just to be on the safe side.
So what else did I do so far? Well I installed Office 2007 beta: last time this killed Vista, but for whatever reason it just worked this time; I haven’t played around with it that much, other than using Outlook for my mail. I will get back on Office 2007 in more detail in a later blog. Also I installed Trend Micro PC-cilling beta which gives Vista a viruscanner and firewall. Then I installed Windows Messenger Live (replacing MSN messenger). I still need to install Skype and some other goodies, but so far it al seems pretty stable: I didn’t even have any blue screens shutting down or rebooting! This only re-affirms my belief that my TV-card is the piece of hardware that really makes everything go bad.
So all in all my previous – totally – bad experiences seem redeemded! What a revelation! Off course I’ll have to put more hours into Vista and Office but this sounds more like positive experiences that other users reported. And yeah: based on this I must say that Microsoft actually *IS* making progress.
Having said that, I can’t resist posting this video that my friend Vincent brought to my attention. It’s live demo featuring the Windows Vista voice recognition. And, as you guessed, it’s another one of the famous Microsoft demo’s where they screw up big time (I don’t remember if Apple – or more specific: Steve Jobs – ever had anything like this. I can only comment on the video by saying that it made me LMFAO 🙂 (especially the lame excuse afterwards)…
Vista Speech recognition demo