Windows Vista Resource Kit, the best reference

 Since the times of the Windows 3.1 Resource Kit (1993?) I always get my copy of this essential guide to everything Windows. This Windows Vista® Resource Kit is the best education you can get on this great operating system in a language you can understand, but also with a great technical level. In addition, you'll have good and documented information not only when it comes to fixing a rogue computer but also when you want to have an intelligent and meaningful chat with IT people or other PC enthusiasts.

Windows 7 is an improved Vista, but it is, in essence, Vista

Windows 7, for unsuspecting users, is an improved Windows Vista with some additional features thrown in. For example, among the improvements, multitasking is easier, finding files and programs is faster, connecting to company networks is more secure with a built-in defense against spyware and other malware, and you can keep your data in a more private and secure way. The additional features include faster start-up, sleep and resume, faster navigation in a busy desktop with lots of open windows, easier setup and connection to wireless services, better management of printers, cameras and other devices, including the ability to connect to your home PC media library remotely, etc. Go to this Microsoft page, "which one is right for you", to learn more...

The only problem with the naysayers is and will be when...

...they are part of an IT department, the guys to whom (usually IT-clueless) management listens to. Let the rest of folks keep their sacred preconceptions about Windows Vista. Yesterday, while starting a casual conversation with someone in an office environment, out of the blue this person starts bashing Microsoft with the usual rants and how Google is more this and more that, yadda, yadda, yadda, and interspersed it came out a "Vista was cr**"...BUT he "really liked" Windows 7. I have to say to this, once again, what I said back in 2008: Windows 7 = The Mojave Experiment II. The whole issue is really amusing. And I also say it again: to each his own. Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc., all of them create good stuff. Luckily creativity and innovation will never be anybody's or any company's monopoly. Windows Vista will be around for many years to come. Check the official Microsoft Vista website.

Is Vista more stable than Windows 7?

Consider this: Vista, except for a spell of crashes in its early days, does not crash ever in my old machine, and I think it seldom does in other machines, but Windows 7 Ultimate, in a brand new laptop (a Latitude E6510) has crashed more times in 2 months than all my Windows Vista and Windows XP experience combined! Simply unacceptable. So the questions is: Is Vista more stable that windows 7? But I'm probably ahead of myself, and, of course, let's give that OS the benefit of the doubt and wait till the release of SP1. Read more about how I finally stopped getting blue screens in Windows 7!

The psychology of operating systems

Traditionally, among the taboo subjects you should not bring into a social event or a simple conversation between friends, colleagues or even strangers are religion, politics and sex. But nowadays, there's another subject, which can easily bring the worst of people or simply have people start acting on the defensive and that is operating systems. I am talking about Linux, Windows and also Apple Mac.
••• Fanaticism at its best
Each one one has its own horde of followers and fanatics, known as "fanboys" with its own "fanbase", thus "Linux fanboys" (check), "Apple fanboys" (check), "Microsoft fanboys" (?). To the latter, I'm not sure that there are actual fanatics of Microsoft in the same way there are 'religious' followers of Linux and Apple. This is, in addition, a male thing. I have yet to see a woman, and for that matter, a pretty and feminine one, who is an operating system fanatic. Nope. Hard to find. They may know the stuff but never, ever boast about it. It is usually guys, who without a doubt, think they are smart for the fact of having picked either Linux or Mac. •••Oh, glorious command line
A sign of a true geek, a tired notion, something that some guys never were able to overcome, is that, he doesn't care about grooming. Look at his desk, home, car, at his persona (a lot of incongruent "stuff" all over the place) and that's, perhaps, why they love the console, that little screen, usually with a black background, to type "commands". The console is the altar of, specially, Linux geeks. Typing commands, like in the prehistory of computers, is a "macho thing", the thing to do, to know, to practice, to live by, to google about, to chat about, to text about, to talk over the phone, most of the time with another Linux guy(s), who is geekier than thou. GUIs are for "sissies", then. Apparently, real Linux geeks don't care about "appearances", just about "the power", "the speed"... and that bring us to...
•••The beauty of software is a non-issue?
Have you noticed the elegance, the usefulness, the creativity of the new, or rather revamped, search engine Bing, compared to the traditional minimalist Google home page? Well, I believe this disdain for design, good visual design, is typical of open source guys, mostly hard-core Linux guys, and some software companies (IBM?). Like old fashioned engineers all they care about is that "the thing" works, the rest is fancy schmancy. Don't you find for example ugly and unfriendly Lotus Notes? Lately, in the Linux world they have improved considerably with nice GUIs like Ubuntu and OpenSuse, particularly KDE. I personally have installed, last year, and seldom used, Ubuntu, but I definitely prefer OpenSuse, in its new incarnation. After all, my first contact ever with Linux was back in 2002 with Suse Linux, and then in 2004 with Fedora and Red Hat, and finally in 2009. It's basically a copycat of Windows functionality, including the keyboard shortcuts. What innovation, computerwise, digitalwise, have Linux accomplished? I always wonder. They just reproduce commercial software: OpenOffice as a copy of Microsoft Office, GIMP as a copy of Photoshop, etc. The list goes on. I will keep an eye on that, too, anyway. And speaking of look and feel, that brings us to usability...
•••The line between looking nice and being secure has been blurred
For traditional Microsoft users, Linux is a cryptic operating system, not easy to use, etc. and that's because they have not seen the latest "distributions" like the ones I just mentioned. For traditional Linux users, yes, Linux fanboys, Windows is not secure, is not as sophisticated and don't give you complete access under the hood, and that's because they have not seen Windows 7 and much less Windows Vista. But I believe the distinction between these two operating systems is now blurry, and the war of operating systems is over. Who won? Apparently nobody, the status quo is the same and Linux continues to be an also-ran operating system after more than a decade of comebacks... Apple, on the other hand, has all not only the beauty but also the power of a modern OS and its based on Unix (!). If Windows and Apple were free, no money needed to get them, who would care about Linux? I ask.
•••Do you actually need the source code of your operating system and/or your favorite applications?
Really. Linux followers claim that if they get their hands into the source code to tweak your operating system or any application to do what you want to do... I mean, what else in the world you want to do? All the functionality you can think of is already there, the designers of the software thought of it all, trust me. Software is what it is, like geometry and algebra, there is only so much room for improvement, this science is already there, new "ideas" on how to open and close a door are redundant. It's like the automobile. The paradigm of and engine, a steering wheel, the front wheels, turning right or left, stopping and accelerating, that is already done, thought out. You can improve how the fuel is burned and processed to make it greener, etc. but THAT is about it. How many times do you you need to disassemble your radio, TV, cell phone, iPod to make it do exactly "what you frigging want it to do"?!!! Everything is already there, you don't need to go under the hood. You don't need to do anything else. Why? Almost nobody buys or downloads or acquires software because they have the ability to get the source code. There are other more important motives. That selling point for open source software is, in my view, moot, a non-issue. Of course some high priests in the temples of Linux, the 'initiated' actually compile their own kernel and distributions... and, sure enough, boast about it, and some even take it further and compile their own operating system and that's why you see some many "flavors" of Linux around. But don't get me wrong, developing, creating and 'debugging' software is and will continue to be a source of joy, pride, and yes, jobs. I love software, myself, creating it and using it, but it is not a religion for me, just a tool.
•••You get your money's worth
If you get something for free and something fails where do you go to complain? To the Internet social networks, to the blogs...? And having the source code will make your problem any easier to solve? How many users have that ability to read and interpret source code? Perhaps less than the 0.000001 %... If you pay for something, you have more rights, as simple as that. I make a living with computers, which are my tools. Shouldn't you pay for the tools of your trade? I always do. You, Mr. Electrician, do you expect not to pay for your tools?
Finally. No, Linux did not invent the GUI
An IT guy told me with a straight face that Apple and even the Xerox Alto machine were based on Unix, and that they "copied everything", when in fact that first modern computer visual interface was programmed using BCPL (Basic Combined Programming Language), a language created in 1966, a few years before Unix was born... The rest is history: Apple took the GUI ideas and concepts from the Alto computer, etc. Linux is basically a spin-off of Unix (the kernel) and a knockoff of both Windows and Apple look and feel (KDE and GNOME). Now it looks nicer, and it may be user-friendlier, but operating systems based on text files are so 20th century! Yes, the power of the command line... 30 years ago. I know, Linux is used intensely to run the Internet.Yes, because it is brute force, a good workhorse, like a BIOS software, you set it and forget it. But that is the subject of another post, which I'm not going to write and don't care about... this subject is everywhere in the blogosphere.

Internet Explorer 8 (and below), security, Trojan horses...

There's definitely something wrong with Internet Explorer (Weird things that I don't see happen in Firefox or Opera with exactly the same Websites). These are the facts: 1) Pages with Flash player ask for an "update" even if the latest version is installed; 2) When going to msn.com (from New York City) it always asks me if my location is Canada or the US and no matter how many times I say I am in the United States (!), it will revert to asking the same question; 3) Trojan horses have a way to get into your system through Internet Explorer AND Firefox (that's my assumption) and spread to other applications (see MS Access screenshot on the right). For this last occurrence take for example the Trojan horse iolo System Shield caught the other day (IFrame.gen). I looked it up, but, curiously enough, the iolo System Shield that caught it did not provide information about it, so I googled it, and one of the search results "happened to be" (?!) a Website for a Chinese "antivirus company", which surely enough after having visited it my menus changed to Chinese language (!!!). To Microsoft credit I have to say that once I downloaded and installed the security updates and fixes, this menu option in Chinese disappeared. PLEASE NOTE: the Trojan Horse was however in the Firefox cache (!) so now I'm not sure if I should try Opera or Chrome instead.
And all of these is happening when I reinstalled Vista in a new hard drive. Other that these Internet Explorer annoyances my system is working perfectly well, thanks. So, I would ask the Microsoft techies (and yes the Firefox techies, too!) to please fix these annoyances and security lapses asap! For the time being I'm avoiding Internet Explorer as much as I can but I'm becoming uneasy with Firefox as well. In addition, let me say here that Microsoft Security Essentials, the free antivirus, antimalware and antispyware (also installed in my computer) never was aware of this Trojan horse. On the other hand, do not trust Google or any other search engine to find information about viruses, the search results links provided are loaded and will most likely get you directly into the hands of the virus, malware and spyware bad guys, go directly to the trusted Internet security companies Websites, instead.