DWR -

I've already sort of expressed my opinion of Vista, and from a user standpoint it's not too favorable. Actually the greater damage was done to Office with the release of Office 2007. Both have extensively changed the interface to "facilitate discovery" by the user. In other words, the Microsoft "user model" is a gross idiot who is expected to NOT KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING, so the interface has to be so "busy with little hints" that NO USER will ever be able to consistently do anything well.

Blow by blow?

The WinXP desktop died a few days ago. As noted, I've worn out several displays, replaced lots of components, it was showing RAM errors frequently, power supply sagging, and then it simply quit.

Hard drive removed and into a USB External case. All the stuff on the drive is intact. While I'm waiting for the new machine, a Vista Home Premium laptop is being "studied."

1. Flatbed scanner lost completely, as it was running on a Win95 era driver and there is no Vista replacement driver and no substitutible driver. A comparable replacement scanner will be about $300 (US) but I can probanly get by with one of the $100 ones, since we have two other scanners now.

2. Large planform printer is working after about 10 or 11 hours research. It's an HP 9650 4-color Super-B (13" x 19" max paper) and there is no Vista driver; but HP suggests using the 9800 series Vista compatible driver. It's running, but I haven't had time to test all the functions (and big paper is ^@$#%^! expensive, so I'll wait until I need to print something and punt what doesn't work.

(A fringe benefit of installing the "alternate" HP driver is that now several web pages at MSNBC show an HP icon in the address bar instead of the normal IE or MSNBC icons. Quite puzzling.)

Driver installation instructions for substituting the 9800 for the 9600 were incomplete and partially incorrect, but a few hours fiddling got it in place.

3. LaserJet printer (HP1200) no changes required. I already had a good driver on the laptop.

4. Small (letter size) inkjet/scanner combo, Canon PIXMA 610 needed all new drivers, even though I had used it with the laptop. Installing drivers for the other printer apparently made exising drivers "incompatible." Canon had updated Vista drivers for download, but since separate drivers for print and scan, and an updated program for scanner control were needed, it took maybe 6 hours to find, download, and install them all.

5. LAN connections to remaining two desktops almost completely non-functional. (I've been through trying to get the Vista to talk to the others for about a year now.) A new infobit revealed that Vista uses a different default name for Workgroups than WinXP and all prior Windows. I knew that, but didn't know that Vista changes the name back to it's default when you reboot^*, if you try to use the Workgroup name for which the other machines are already set up.

^* Not all the time. Just sometimes, but randomly.

6. An ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERY while looking for something completely different may have shed some light on Vista file sharing.

Vista has specific designated "Public Folders" that (they say) are easily shared.

Option 1: put all 2,785,492 files and 17,422 folders that my three computers need to share into one folder (Instead of on three separate hard drives).

Option 2: To share a folder or drive other than one of the designated ones, it appears that the network has to be set up as a "private" network.

6a. After renaming the workgroup network names on the other machines to agree with the Vista default name, I find that changing the workgroup to a "Private Local Network" changes the network name on the Vista machine. At present, the other two machines can see the folders on the Vista machine but can't access any of them, and the Vista machine can only see one of the other machines (but can't access any of the files), so some additional setup is needed. All computers can share printers on all computers - just not files.

7. We have used Outlook Express for email for more than a decade, but it does not exist for Vista. It also ceases to exist (sort of) for WinXP if you update to IE7. It is replaced by "Windows Mail" in Vista, and WinXP users are encouraged to use "Windows Live Mail" as the replacement. Nobody knows what the differences between "Oulook Express," "Windows Mail," and "Live Mail" are. Critical information, for me, is whether "Windows Mail" backups can be imported to OE on the non-Vista machines, and whether OE backups can be moved in and out of "Mail." Microsoft give NO INFORMATION that's in any way useful.

I'm waiting until the new machine gets here to set up my email, so I'll only have to do it once. No clue whether it will be useful; but a fallback "out" is to go to Outlook. I figure it will take no more than a couple of months to TURN OFF most of the useless "features" in Outlook that I DON'T WANT on my computers. I can read my mail in my browser, and backups/archiving can wait. The other two (XP) machines still have existing email setups that work.

All machines have internet access via router/DSL hookup.

Numerous unpleasant "quirks" in Vista handling of USB external drives have also popped up, but I don't have enough of a handle on what's happening there as yet even to describe the behaviour. Suffice to say that sometimes the drive mounts immediately, and other times (at random) Vista decides I have to reset it to be shared before the Vista machine to which they're connected is allowed to make changes - which takes almost two hours for Vista to "set sharing" on one of the couple of drives where I've run into this.

Just lots of fun. (But still not as bad as what they did to Office.)

John