Vista transition

Microsnot is very consistant about one aspect; push the product out now and work out the bugs later.

My friend, before attempting ANY data transistion on your system, back everything up, mirror-copy your hard disk if you have to before ever running their "new" transfer utilities on their OS. Because if it goes wrong, you are screwed.

 

+ 100000000 Very good advice.

 

I wouldn't do it yet, since as mentioned there are some bugs in it. I haven't been real impressed with using it.

 

I run Vista on my laptop. Pleased with it overall, yet not ready to move my desktop machine to Vista since I cannot risk any destablization of my research.

I wouldn't use any software utility to transfer files.

If you're using an existing computer, as I have typically done in the past, I would get a NEW hard drive, put Vista on with a CLEAN install, and then have your old hard drive listed as drive "E" or something along those lines such that you can manually migrate "My Documents" and your Outlook PST files, Internet Explorer favorites, etc.

In an emergency, in this case, you would just unhook the new drive, switch the jumper on the old one, and you're booting back into your original system.

Do NOT *COPY*data - MOVE data. The moment you start creating multiple copies of data all over the place, you're in trouble!

If getting a new system, you can simply put your old hard drive in the new system and work from there. Vista will recognize it if you have the jumpers configured properly (for master/slave).

In concept if you do it the manual way, the experience will be not much different than if you were doing the same thing with a new XP machine. Only "My Documents" is called "Documents" now, etc.

PM me for add'l help if needed. (I'm local.)

 

The moment people listen to that piece of advice they are in trouble.

Multiple copies is the best advice. Never delete until you are 100% certain that it made it to the other side and you have a CD/DVD backup Copy of the data!!!

 

Wait at least a year until:

1. Hardware manufacturers have enough data to properly update their drivers.

2. MS has enough data to patch the huge holes that will undoubtedly be found within the next two to three months.

If you are a business owner or an IT guy, put it out of your head for two years. Look at 2000, and XP. 2000 at service pack 4+ before complete confidence. XP SP2. You can't run without it.

The gains are not worth the trouble just yet.

 

You misinterpret my advice. I hope people don't pay you for your services!

It goes without saying that critical data needs to be backed up before doing any sort of operating system transition. In fact, relying exclusively on a CD/DVD backup of the data these days is also getting silly because of permanency and reliability issues as well as the sheer mass of data we have. A reasonable backup solution is an external pair of hard drives mirrored off of each other (see the Western Digital By Book Pro's) for redundancy.

The crux of my advice was aimed at preventing the following scenario. You copy over a Word document from your old My Documents hard drive (old OS). You make changes to it.

Then the next time, you open it up directly on the old hard drive, make changes to it. Because you made a copy, you allowed yourself to shoot yourself in the foot and now you have a data consistency issue (multiple copies, changes to each - how to synchronize)?

That's why, the tens of times I've done this and been paid to do it, once data is backed up, I do a cautious, manual My Documents, Outlook PST, IE Favorites, Outlook Express (!), Photos, Music, etc. migration over to the new hard drive. The old hard drive, after a few months, will typically be reformatted and make into a backup drive for the most critical data for redundancy.

Copy (and move) operations are extremely robust when source and target are hard drives. "Moving" files in modern operating systems will not delete the source file until the target file has been verified as having been written and is done on a file-by-file basis for most file systems (e.g., XP on NTFS).


--Mike

 

For existing businesses and individuals NOT buying a new computer, this is my advice, too. And this is coming from a former "MSFT" guy!

Windows XP over Win2K is kind of like the 328 over the 308. Point release, same "kernel", bolstered reliability, etc. Is Windows Vista the 348? (Gasp!) No offense to the brotherhood!

I read an interesting article today.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9009961

I liked it. Vista is more satisfying to use at a gut level and represents a nice leap forward in user experience and overall user ergonomics. But I'm not able to identify a "killer feature" or really any tangible evidence to compel people to upgrade at this point.

When I buy a new machine, yes, it will run Vista. The decision for me (and many) really is pretty much that simple.

 

Some Vista users already trying to go back to XP and having problems.

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/536910-windows-vista-problems.html

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6320865.stm

 

i really dont like that M$ is forcing people to move to the [obviously still buggy] WinVista.

all new laptops and desktops are shipping with vista, and most dont have an option for say, XP Pro instead. :|

ive been running hte beta leaks, and the RTM version, and dont really like it at all. i wont buy it until after SP1 comes out, and see if it's worth it.

 

OT but supposedly MS has been having a very disappointing release of Vista.

It's hard to fathom because EVERY new PC comes with it now. When people are getting it and wanting to go BACK to XP, you know something is wrong