VISTA – let off on probation

In the past I had quite some issues with VISTA. It came preeinstaled with my Sony VAIO but never really worked well. Lot´s of driver and stability issues that I already ranted about in great detail here and here.

Anyhow, I´m kind of a Microsoftie and don´t think that Linux is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I also like challenges so I did not give up and got myself a new Dell. Ok, not really because of the challenge but because I really needed to replace the Sony for performance and warranty reasons.

All warning lights were on and blinkling brightly because I intended to wipe the preinstalled config and install VISTA x64 because I want to use all the 4 Gigs of RAM (VISTA x32 only supports up to 3 Gig of RAM) – and so I did – and it worked pretty well! Sure, it´s a bit tricky to get hold of all the x64 drivers for my XPS M1530 because VISTA x64 is not officialy supported for that model. There is a big community especially around the XPS product line and after reading through some helpful posts, I had it all up and running.

What a difference. Granted, there are still some minor quirks getting my phone to talk to my computer but it was basically just connecting it to the PC, doing some Windows Update, waiting for the driver install to fail, Restart and -tadaaa- have both Bluetooth AND USB connections actually work.

Same goes for VISTA in general. I haven´t had a single issue with x32 software not running on my x64 machine. It´s very stable, no Bluescreens or other defects so far. UAC is still not working well but luckily there are ways to turn it off. I actually wanted to use it but it doesn´t work well with my Post-Build-Events where I need to call some .EXE´s and .DLL´s and get´s rather having to confirm a pop up every time I compile a project.

Finally, my OS is not longer blocking my productivity and the 2,5 Gig Centrino-Chip doesn´t hurt either ).