I’ve seen a disturbing trend in the tech world recently which is kind of disturbing.  Hate Microsoft(Vista) and love Mac.  I don’t mind the fact that people love Mac(even though after the recent bricking of the IPhones, Apple keeps loosing more and more ground for various reasons) and can even see the merit of them when used in the context which the Macs are good for.  But this recent trend in the tech industry to completely shun Vista shows not only the lack of knowledge of the population as a whole, but when they advocate others to do the same and switch back to XP or Mac, they tend to do so on misinformation and personal bias.  Now, that is not to say that this is not written out of a personal bias either, but I am far from a Microsoft fanboy.  True I enjoy Microsoft products, but I am not a die hard evangelist for Microsoft in any sense of the word.  I have my criticisms of Microsoft(Windows Genuine Advantage anyone?) but realize good products and good software when I see one.  Like all software, there are pros and cons to everything.  So for those of you not sure if Vista is the right one for you, consider the information below.  And make your own judgment, don’t let others make it for you!(a.k.a.  use your brain that God gave you)

The Pros of Vista

1. UAC(user account control):  Hate it or love it, this is one of the best features of Vista.  At first, UAC seems to be one of the most annoying features installed in the new operating system.  The constant asking of questions tends to get old at first, but after the first time UAC prevents something from installing on your system that you never asked for, you learn that no matter the number of questions, its always worth it to ensure the integrity of your system.  Due to this setting, it is extremely hard for spyware/viruses to install itself using drive by attacks from web pages as well as unintentionally clicking on a link or ad that contains the malicious code.  Between UAC and a new feature in IE7 for Vista, IE has come a long way in becoming more secure(not to the level of Firefox for sure…but a lot better for the average home user who doesn’t know about firefox).
2. IE7 protected mode:  This is one of those cursed blessings.  Like UAC, IE7 protected mode tries to protect your computer from drive by malicious installs as well as from any software which might try to directly access your hard drive(outside of downloading a file and cookies).  In essence, this feature prevents IE7 from accessing your hard drive unless you are downloading a file.  This is nice in that spyware can not(if it somehow is able to bypass UAC or you have it disabled) copy itself to anywhere other than your cookies directory or temporary internet files directory which in turn helps keep spyware from installing itself on your system(it loves to attach itself to c:\windows\system32 or c:\windows)
3. Start Search:  One of those useful features that you look at and wonder how such a simple thing could be so awesome.  Basically a replacement for the run box, Start Search makes it easy to find and/or run a program or to quickly and easily run a "dos" command  or open a command prompt.  In the same way, typing in the Start Search also searches all your documents and emails(outlook) for the phrase you typed and displays all your results inline as you type more and/or less.  Pretty handy feature when you are trying to find a paper that you wrote long ago that had an obscure phrase like "eatering of odors" in it….of course…if you had a paper with that phrase in it……..
4. Sticky Alt+Delete: Anyone whose used windows is used to the Alt+Delete shortcut and is used to changing windows that way.  Well Vista takes it a step further.  If you add a CTRL key to the combination you get the traditional Alt+Delete dialog, but it stays active until you click a mouse button or choose a window.  This trick is nice if you want to switch to a window, but are not exactly sure which one at this time.  This also works for Windows Key + Tab.  Not as useful there, but still nice.
5. Virtualization of Processes:  Vista has a handy little ability to virtualize any process which is running.  This is handy on all processes, but even more so when running IE7, the office suit, or any product which tends to crash often(due to compatibility issues) then this feature is right for you.  You sick of having a program crash unexpectedly and then have that take down the entire windows system with it.  Your entire system slows down to a snails pace, and your unable to open the task manager?  Well if the process is virtualized and it does happen to crash, guess what goes down?  Just that process.  The rest of your system is up and running fine(of course, this doesn’t always work as intended, but most of the time it does)
6. Drivers run in usermode:  Remember the good old days of windows xp and below?  Remember that lovely thing called the blue screen of death?  Well most of the blue screen of deaths were caused by drivers that for one reason or another bombed out and caused the kernel of windows to take a nose dive.  Yeah!  What fun that was for the user. The reason the entire system took a nose dive was that the drivers were hooking directrly into the kernel itself(much like antivirus software will do with Vista SP1(which is a bad idea(sorry for the nested parens))) and caused the system to be unstable at times.  (or is if your still running XP SP1 or lower—SP2 has done a lot better in this—but not as well as Vista)  Well now in Vista all drivers try to run in user mode, unhooked from the kernel and not running as admin(again, as user level).  So lets say your video driver decides to stop and crash.  Well, instead of a nice blue screen and you loosing your work, you background turns to black and you get a warning message from your system tray indicating that the video drivers failed and have been restarted.  No crash, just a nice message to tell you the driver restarted itself after it failed. How refreshing.
7. Windows Mail:  Ah windows mail.  A glorified Outlook Express.  And glorified it is.  In fact, its a lot more handy and useful than outlook express ever was.  For starters, Windows Mail can now connect to IMAP making it a whole lot more useful.  Its not as good as thunderbird or full blown outlook, but is better.
8. Shadow Copy:  Shadow copy is another one of those blessed curse things.  It makes a backup of your file every once in a while so you can restore a previous version of it in case something happens to the file.  Its nice in that you can get to the older versions, its bad in that it takes up more disk space for system restore.  Think of it as the mother that never forgets the older stuff…..no matter how hard you want it not to.
9. System Restore:  Its so nice to have a system restore that actually works.  System restore has been around since the days of Windows ME(which I did have—that was before my days of enlightenment).  It stuck around in Windows XP, but really didn’t work.  Well in Vista, it finally works.  And works well it does. System restore in Vista is able to take a system that barely functions and bring it back to life.  For example, my Vista install took a nose drive and when I clicked on anything, it said that it couldn’t find the C:\ drive.  Did a system restore and it fixed the problem.  In XP, the system would be hosed the entire time, even after the restore, or the restore wouldn’t even work. Looks like Microsoft finally got this function right!
10. Compatibility:  Windows XP introduced the concept of running a program in compatibility mode to allow a program from an older operating system to run under XP.  This worked(for the most part) but has been greatly improved in Vista.  Microsoft was even kind enough on certain editions of Vista to include the Unix Subsystem allowing for the running of Unix programs in Vista natively.  This has no value to the average home user, but to an enterprise customer or a power user, this is a valuable little add-on.  This used to be only available if you were running the previous server edition operating systems.

And with all pros, you need to know the cons…..

1. Resources:  Vista needs more resources than XP.  A lot more.  Hard drive space, ram, graphics card.  But the tradeoff of increased security and usability in Vista more than pays off for it.  Just make sure that Vista is put on a system that is more than capable of running it, and you should be fine.  Once SP1 hits the street though, expect the system that seems just a little on the sluggish side to feel snappier and more responsive.
2. Laptops: Eye candy costs money…and power.  Aero with its nice transparent graphics abilities takes a little more juice to keep it running.  This is fine if the computer is plugged in or has multiple batteries, but one battery and no ac adapters allows for a system running aero to loose about a half hour or so of usable time to the nice fancy transparency.  This usually isn’t too bad of a problem, but if your a road warrior and need to get as much life out of your computer as possible, you might want to consider turning this feature off. 
3. Sidebar:  The Vista sidebar.  One of the most wanted and then unwanted features of Vista.  The sidebar loads gadgets into the sidebar of the system.  This is nice, due to the fact that you can have tools that you frequently use on their, and have the ability to access them quickly.  The downside is that they are always running.  If one of them goes amuck, you could have your CPU being used more by a program you don’t want.  It also takes a considerable amount of ram to run this feature, and as a result of increased cpu usage and ram, the battery drains faster.  This is also a security nightmare waiting to happen as most of the gadgets are just a scripting language with html added to them. Security hole anyone?
4. Windows Genuine Advantage:  This annoying little program is now fully integrated within Vista.  You get so many days to activate your copy, and if you don’t then you get what is called reduced functionality mode.  This is a web browser and nothing really more(though you can load programs from the web browser —up to three processes!) and lasts only an hour before it goes completely black and useless unless you reboot. When the WGA servers went down earlier this year, this caused havoc for quite a few people.  If Microsoft could find a more balanced approach with WGA (like they did in XP) then I think that it wouldn’t be as bad as it could be.

There really isn’t anything other than that that is wrong with Vista.  I know that some people argue that the system seems slower and that it takes more computing power.  That is true with any operating system in its first iteration.  Each new operating system requires more powerful hardware.  You could make the argument that Vista was released a little too early, and because of that it seems to be a little slower than people would like.  I couldn’t argue with that as there are times I am a little frustrated with hitting Windows Key + R and get the run dialog a few seconds later.  But with the release of SP1 soon, this should be, hopefully, a thing of the past.  With the new SP1,however, security companies got their way and made the system less secure…….you read that right.  Security companies protested and cried because they couldn’t hook into the kernel.  They said that this prevented them from fully scanning the system.  So there are some things that you need to program around.  Big deal.  With each new operating system, there are always new things to program around.  By placing API’s that allow a program to hook into the system, it will not take long for spyware and viruses that a user accidentally downloads to hook into the kernel as well.  Symantec has just made the situation worse for everyone who wants to be secure, and it should be these companies that have to comply with the framework of Microsoft, and not Microsoft that has to comply with the framework of other companies because they do not want to spend the time and/or money to figure out how to make their system work in a different fashion from how it currently is working.  Another thing I can’t argue against is the DRM in the system.  I know that some people hate it, and I do too, just not to the extent that others do.  I don’t agree with the philosophy of DRM, but since it is law(stated in EULA) that some things are DRM’d, then I will deal with it as long as the screwing over isn’t too much.  While the DRM in Vista is supposed to be extremely awful, I can honestly say I haven’t seen anything with it yet which would causes a system slowdown or cause any other rare and/or weird conditions…but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist………

Well I know that I just disagreed with a lot of tech people, many of whom I respect and read their advice on a daily basis.  That though, is what is so great about being in the tech field.  All of us have our opinions, and we can each(for the most part) respect each others opinions—–of course since im still a nobody in the techfield no one will take my ideas with any force behind them—just grains of salt…..if even that.  Thats ok though, im not giving up on it, or my dreams. 

Categories: General, Technology, Thoughts, Work
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Life has been random recently.? Currently I am working on the website for the church.? Its a lot of fun, and there is a lot to do with it still, but the core is just about done! ? To catch you up quickly, here is a brief synopsis of my life so far….
So there is fun stuff heree.? I was sitting at work one day minding my business when someone from Database services runs in and asks if I could kill a spider.? An unusual request—not the typical technology support request mind you.? It was a decent sized spider, I will give you that.? But no worry there.? The mighty spider was no where near strong enough to deal with my mighty foot!

What other fun things have been happening?

Well, I am finally A+ certified—now to get microsoft certified.

Speaking of work…due to a certain someone who will remain unknown, planes are no longer as innocent as they once seemed.? Ah the fun of work!

Speakin of fun(or lack of it) Angel sprained(maybe broke?) her ankle while walking off of the grassy corner of the house.? Oh joy there……..

Categories: General, Work
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So today while at work, someone told Ryan to hit the lovely big red button sitting on the wall in the hallway where he works. So what does Ryan do? He slaps the button, and instantly all the power in his hallway goes off. Instant headache for everyone in the hallway, considering there was only one outlet in the hallway which was not connected to the switch. Its not like it didn’t take some time to get the power restored. Oh well. Just goes to show that when you tell a guy to hit a button, he will hit it!

Categories: Humor, Work
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