Vista Revisited

We first experimented with Vista Business upgrade edition when it was released in 2007 and were not impressed at all. The new OS refused to recognise the DVD/CD-RW, the video and the WiFi card on our machine. Manufacturers of the same did not have compatible drivers as yet. We were forced to reformat the system and install Windows XP back on the machine.

One year on we got our hands on a full version of Vista Business and decided to try it again. This time we experimented with it on a tablet PC (HP tc4400). The tablet PC came installed with XP table pc version and since we were not too keen to loose this we replaced the hard drive, went to HP's web site and downloaded the latest drivers for Vista and installed the Vista Business edition on a brand new hard drive.

Installation took about a hour. What impressed us was that Vista was connecting to the Internet to look for drivers and downloading them for installation. Once this was done we installed the drivers that we had downloaded from HP's web site.

Vista looked very good on this system. It recognised that the system was a tablet PC and installed software to allow input using the pen. The battery life also is better on Vista. We were able to get an extra hour out of it.

The standby and hibernation features also work flawlessly on the tablet pc unlike XP where we always had trouble with these features. Using standby/hibernation we are able to start the pc up in under half a minute which is great when you are moving from one meeting to another.

When we connected the PC to an overhead projector while the pc was on it recognised this and displayed the output without asking which was great as with XP we had to either connect it while it was off or we needed to restart the PC after connecting.

The last thing we tried was sending a fax and this too went without a hitch. The only issue was that we could not head a dial tone so were not sure what was happening but the fax software updated the status once it was done.

Vista is a much better OS than XP and if you are buying a new PC get it with Vista.

Microsoft Vista and Office 2007

30th January 2007 saw the release of Microsoft's new operating system Vista this is an upgrade to Microsoft XP and also Office 2007 an upgrade to Office 2003. The release was very low key and there are a lot of questions about upgrades which are answered on Microsoft's website.

We have had the opportunity to install and work with both Visa and Office 2007. The layout of both these products is very different from their predecessors and required a little retraining.

Vista - The operating system comes in various flavours Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. We bought a PC during the holiday season (2006) and it had a sticker saying 'Windows Vista Capable'.

We upgraded to the Vista Business Edition, the installation took about 30 minutes and it moved over all our programs and files over from XP without much trouble. There were some driver compatible issues, Vista downloaded the latest versions from the net. Some of our programs did not work and had to be re-installed like our anti-virus (AVG) software.

In our experience the upgrade versions of Vista are not the best to go for because a system failure will mean you need to first re-install the OS the PC came with install Vista again. In our opinion it is far better to buy a new PC with Vista pre-installed as this would also eliminate any program or driver issues. If you do want to upgrade you existing PC, uninstall all the software and re-install them after upgrading to Vista to avoid compitability issues with these softwares.

Office 2007 - This is a great piece of software and we would definitely suggest anyone to upgrade to this version if they are still running Office 2000 or XP. Office 2003 users might not be able to justify the upgrade.

The traditional menus and toolbars have been replaced by Ribbon. A new layout that gives you access to all the usual command quickly. There are trial versions Office 2007 you can tryout before you decide to buy or upgrade.

Another great piece of CRM software, Business Contact Manager which integrates with Outlook is also included in Office 2007 Professional , Small Business and Ultimate Editions.