WINDOWS VISTA SP1 PREVIEW

There’s a frequently repeated piece of conventional wisdom: many businesses have delayed buying computers with Vista because they never purchase Microsoft’s first release of an operating system. It’s not clear whether that’s true, but for...

DELL & VISTA

In the last couple of weeks I’ve set up several Dell Optiplex computers running Windows Vista from Dell’s small business division. Dell has seriously cut back on preinstalled software; there’s been virtually no unnecessary programs to remove, which...

OS STATISTICS

As you can imagine, different people interpret these statistics differently. I’ve seen articles in the last few days that reach dramatically different conclusions. You decide which ones are meaningful.In the latest quarter, Apple Macintosh computers garnered...

WHICH VISTA VERSION?

Many people should buy the Business edition of Windows Vista, even for home computers. Here’s Microsoft’s chart comparing the features of the various versions of Windows Vista, and here’s another one with a few more details. No one should buy Vista...

PARENTAL CONTROLS & TIME LIMITS

Vista has built-in parental controls that do certain chores very well. Parents can filter web sites, monitor web surfing and other computer activity, and limit what programs and games can be run. Vista also makes it easy to limit a child’s use of the computer to...

VISTA PROGRESS REPORT

It’s time to embrace Windows Vista.Programs will run and hardware will work. There are a handful of exceptions – businesses should still check on business-critical programs. Frequently new hardware drivers will have to be downloaded and program upgrades...