Microsoft gave me a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate installed to try out. I have been toying with the Vaio but not using it heavily. To be fair to Microsoft, I’m going to try to switch as much as possible of my work from my MacBook Pro to the Vaio to see how I get on over the next few weeks.
A lot of my work is done online so that part shouldn’t be too difficult (I installed Firefox on the laptop last night!). However, for presentations I will continue to use the Mac as there is no comparison in the quality of presentations created in Keynote versus those done in PowerPoint.
Oh, and for my photos I will continue to use iPhoto because that is where my current extensive library of photos resides.
The most difficult move will be my email I suspect. I love Apple’s Mail app. It will take a lot to win me back to Outlook.
Wish me luck!
I found another bug in Vista this morning.
In an attempt to tidy the desktop, I right-clicked on the ppt file Microsoft left on the desktop and chose Send To -> Documents to move this file off the desktop.
Windows Explorer crashed. Reproducibly.
And then restarted itself.
I dragged the file into the Documents folder and there was no crash!
I then created another file on the desktop and this one could be Sent To the Documents folder, no problem.
I suspect it was a permissions issue or similar on that particular file. Still crashing Windows Explorer is a bit drastic!
I couldn’t screenshot this occurring either for some reason so I had to get my camera and photograph it - hence the blurriness!
Well, the Vaio Microsoft sent me yesterday arrived today! It is a SZ series, core 2 duo with 2gb of ram, and a 120gb hd.
It came with goodies like a HSDPA card from T-Mobile - not sure if that will work in Ireland and a memory card adapter for reading SD, XD and MC cards.
Unfortunately it also comes with the driver issues which have plagued other Vista owners who have upgraded from previous versions of Windows.
Upgrading would appear to be the issue here as well - the sticker on the underside of the laptop is an XP sticker. It appears this laptop was upgraded to Vista and not all the drivers are ready.
The above error occurred after less than 10 minutes of using the laptop and re-occurred 3 more times in the next half an hour. Oh dear!
Microsoft Belgium rang me yesterday (I don’t think they realised it was a public holiday here!).
I did some consultancy for Microsoft Belgium last November and at the time they asked me if I’d be interested in participating in a program where they send out laptops pre-loaded with Vista. The aim of the program is to get feedback on how the laptop behaves from the recipients. I said I’d be very interested in being involved!
The phone call yesterday was to confirm my address - the laptop (a Sony Vaio - dunno which model or spec yet) is en route with Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate pre-installed.
To date Vista has received a major panning, even from Microsoft fans and Microsoft Partners. The main issues seem to be how well Vista works with older drivers and hardware. By sending out new machines with the software already setup, many of the issues people have already had will be circumvented.
It is going to be great fun to see how well Vista stacks up against OS X (and the Vaio against the MacBook Pro!).
What should I install first on the Vaio?
I have written about Parallels previously and how it makes running Windows applications on a Mac seamless.
Arstechnica are reporting that the latest version of Parallels is now available to download. For anyone who already owns a copy of Parallels, this is a free upgrade (wohoo!).
Demand for the upgrade appears to be extreme though, the link on the download page is timing out or the download dies after about 5mb 
According to an article in InformationWeek, a privilege escalation vulnerability has been found in Windows Vista.
The vulnerability was reported to Microsoft by eEye Digital Security on the 19th of January.
Marc Maiffret, Chief Hacking Officer of eEye said:
with this vulnerability, you can elevate yourself to system-level access. Any normal user can do anything they want to the system.
He went on to speculate that:
If it was coupled with a virus or a different remote vulnerability, it would be a lot more serious… On its own, though, it’s only medium [threat]
Oh dear! How much did Microsoft invest in Vista again?
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