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IT | John Tate | 24 Oct 2008

John Tate shares his experience of upgrading to Vista.

Last month I gave my annual IT update to CFDG members. The topic of Microsoft Vista came up and there was a lot of negative sentiment about the new operating system, mainly around the cost and hassle of yet another upgrade.

That set the scene nicely for the upcoming upgrade to my own computer. The commercial organisation I am running has decided to upgrade all staff to Vista and I was the last person to get a new machine. Last time I upgraded it took around three weeks to get my machine working properly and at least five days of my time to connect it to my mobile phone, so I could send and receive emails when on the move.

I am not a great fan of upgrades. My old machine was still on good form and the best part of £1,000 to replace it seems like quite a bit of money. However, it was getting a bit slow and creaky and I sensed it was getting towards the end of its life.

I should disclose that the company I work for has developed a product to get applications working on operating systems such as Vista. However, our client base is large corporate and we have not had any engagement with UK charities.To kick things off I got one of my more technical colleagues to configure my Tosh and set up my connection to the Internet and email. This took around half an hour and my machine was delivered. I delayed turning it on for three or four days as I could not face the prospect of hours of hassle. However, after some nudging from my colleagues I gave it a go. Vista has a different look and feel from XP and it took me a little while to work my way around the system. I logged Crash course onto email - my number one application and off I went. I had an early problem with the speed of Outlook and discovered that it was set to work online all the time so I changed the setting. Within minutes I was up and running.

The desktop layout has some nice advantages over XP. I tend to leave open a large number of applications eg. several email and web browser screens and this can create a lot of material on my taskbar which can be difficult  to navigate. Vista groups these activities  making it easier to find open work and to close activities when finished. It also seems to handle applications that crash better, allowing  for faster restarts without a full reboot. Of course applications shouldn't crash in the first place but at least it is some consolation that Vista has this feature.

I took my machine home after its first day of office use and approached the connection to my wireless network with some trepidation.  I turned the machine on, asked it to find the nearest wireless network, keyed in access password and a few seconds later was connected. So time for the killer test - would it connect to my mobile phone? It took 40 plus hours to set up with XP - how long with Vista and a Tosh? I had the advantage that I was using the same phone that had connected my old machine and had the dial in number already set up. But I needed the Bluetooth connectivity to work and the mobile phone modem to work properly with my laptop. I clicked the control panel set up a new connection and it found my mobile and within a minute I was connected. Well ,well, well.

One week on I have had a few glitches and one reboot when Outlook totally froze.  But in conclusion I am quite surprised, even shocked to be so positive. For larger charities Vista needs careful thought. Servers need configuring, IT departments need  training and many software applications need configuring to run 100 per cent on Vista. So what is my advice? If you need to replace machines Vista is certainly a serious option. Support for Windows 2000/XP is on the way out and there actually are some real user benefits to using the new operating system.

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