{"id":42,"date":"2009-02-21T19:42:16","date_gmt":"2009-02-22T03:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=42"},"modified":"2009-12-02T08:24:51","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T16:24:51","slug":"vista-bad-windows-7-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"Vista bad. Windows 7 good."},"content":{"rendered":"

I (Greg Porter) recently dumped XP as my home machine operating system.\u00a0 The main reason I had XP was to play games, and now that new games require DirectX 10, which requires Vista, I said goodbye.<\/p>\n

So I went with Debian.<\/p>\n

I decided to try running some Windows machines with VirtualBox, the virtualization stuff from Sun.<\/p>\n

I made a 40 GB vm, and loaded the copy of Windows 7 beta that my co-worked Byron made for me.\u00a0 I gave the machine 1024 MB of RAM.\u00a0 Windows 7 loaded fine, ran fine.\u00a0 The 2 apps I need to run on Windows are TurboTax, and Outlook (until I figure out how to free my old mail).\u00a0 Turbo Tax wouldn’t load.\u00a0 The copy of Outlook 2007 I had wouldn’t load (says “file is missing”, doesn’t load anywhere, I must have burned it wrong…)\u00a0 Symantec Endpoint Pr<\/span>otection v11<\/span> antivirus wouldn’t load.\u00a0 The free version of AVG 8 worked fine.\u00a0 Windows 7 running on 1GB of RAM as a VM seems fine.\u00a0 Not laggy, usable, seems good.\u00a0 I like it so far.<\/p>\n

Since I need TurboTax, I decided to make a 2nd VM and load Vista on it.\u00a0 Same size, same options as above.\u00a0 Vista loaded.\u00a0 Loaded TurboTax and Office 2003. (2007 wouldn’t load, bad DVD?).\u00a0 Vista is noticeably laggy and sluggish, so what they say about Windows 7 being less bloated seems true, at least for me.\u00a0 I should say that Office 2003 wouldn’t load as a regular guy, I had to enable the (hidden) administrator account and run the install logged in as administrator (yes, I tried the “run as” thing first, no dice).\u00a0 Loaded the Symantec Endpoint Pr<\/span>otection v11<\/span> antivirus, it loaded OK.\u00a0 Fired up Windows Update, let it patch Vista and Office.\u00a0 It loaded 68 patches and then wanted a reboot.\u00a0 The machine wouldn’t reboot.\u00a0 Bluescreened every time.\u00a0 Tried recovering from CD.\u00a0 No dice.\u00a0 I think this is the first time I’ve ever loaded Vista at home, and I must say I wasn’t impressed. XP has always treated me well.\u00a0 Windows 7 was nice.\u00a0 Vista sucked.<\/p>\n

Well, anyway, I was preparing to load a third vm as XP, and then something my co-worker Brian said about Windows 7 popped in my head.\u00a0 He told me “you know, they’ve got a compatibility checker that’s supposed to be really good.”\u00a0 Hmm.\u00a0 Turned the Windows 7 machine back on, put the TurboTax CD in, right clicked on the installer, picked “Troubleshoot compatibility”, told the compatibility wizard “This ran fine on XP” and voila, it worked!\u00a0 Fscking awesome!<\/p>\n

So I’m a disgruntled Vista user, but a happy Windows 7 user.<\/p>\n

They look almost exactly the same, GUI wise.\u00a0 No default gadgets on the desktop in 7, but I think they are lame anyway.<\/p>\n

I attached the picture I use on my Windows 7 desktop in case you care.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Byron who made me the Windows 7 disks.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Brian who told me to try the compatibility thing.<\/p>\n

\"small_dr_evil\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I (Greg Porter) recently dumped XP as my home machine operating system.\u00a0 The main reason I had XP was to play games, and now that new games require DirectX 10, which requires Vista, I said goodbye. So I went with… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greg.porter.name\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}