Update on Vista Testing

After many fitful restarts, it appears that my Vista installation has stabilized. IE7 still panics and restarts just about any time I try to download large files. In fact, I can’t view the videos over at Hot Air, and merely browsing to ATI.com causes the browser to crash and restart.

One of the biggest pains in the ass was when a Microsoft Update broke my newly installed version of Office 2007 Beta, which Microsoft recommends that is beta tested along with Vista. The update was supposed to be a spam filter, but somehow it corrupted other Outlook settings and I had to reinstall the whole Office Suite. My biggest problem is that I had already deleted the 500 MB downloaded file from my system to preserve space, so I had to download it again. Sigh.

There are several things about the new OS that are really nice. For one, the help files have made the biggest leap forward. They are comprehensive, very easy to read, and the help files actually LOOK good. The whole system gets indexed at installation too, so searching for just about anything is fast and easy. In fact, the keyword searches in the search bar will also produce results from the help files, for instance, if you want to find information on text to speech, you cant type that phrase in the search window and the help file will show you how to adjust text to speech on Vista.

This OS also takes security very seriously, almost to the point of annoyance. IE7 works hard to identify websites with expired certificates, invalid certificates, and does a good job of recognizing phishing websites. The built in spyware protector, Windows Defender, does a great job in identifying or blocking changes in browser settings, host file changes, and recognizing malware.

The beta feedback program is working pretty good too. With the IE crashes, for instance, I open a simple applet, wizard my way through by picking problems with Vista or IE7, and the feedback system automatically selects batches of logfiles to upload to Microsoft for analysis.

So other than being forced to use Firefox for a stable browser, Vista is looking pretty good.