I’ve noticed in recent weeks as I talk to people about Windows Vista that many, many people pronounce it VEE-stah. I expect that here in my home in the Southwest, where the Spanish language has an influence on just about everything. But I also hear it in talking with people on the phone from places like Washington State and Indianapolis – not exactly Hispanic capitals.

Anyone else notice this?

Chris Pirillo says he’s breaking up with Windows Vista. It’s vintage agitprop from Chris, and I was going to respond.

And then I read Dwight Silverman’s response. Dwight basically said everything I was going to say, starting with this:

He has a list of 10 complaints, most of which have to do with software that isn’t compatible with Vista and hardware for which there are not yet drivers. In other words: He’s working with a brand new operating system, and he’s suffering the slings and arrows that almost always accompany doing so.

If he were to take a moment and look back, chances are he’d find he was jumping through the same hoops 5 years ago, when he was working with the initial release of Windows XP.

There’s rarely a penalty for delaying a switch to any new platform, hardware or software. This time around is no exception. Despite the provovative headline, Chris’s actual column has this astute observation:

It’s NOT horrible at its core (by any stretch of the imagination). If all of your hardware and software are fully baked, you’re good to go – but that’s not the world I live in. I will continue to recommend Windows Vista for some users, mind you. I wish I could take the best parts of Vista and bring them back with me to XP. I’m still more than willing to help Microsoft improve Windows and get the message out to users, but I simply can’t sacrifice my own time and productivity without benefits in clear sight.

My overall judgment is the exact opposite. Despite the glitches (and yes, I’ve had a few), my productivity is up, way up, thanks to Vista and Office 2007. On balance, I prefer Vista over XP. I do, however, have an XP system running in one corner of my office because the drivers and supporting software for my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner won’t be ready until April.

Chris, you should invite Dwight on to the show for a debate. I’d tune in.

CastleCops is celebrating their fifth anniversary, and they’re giving away a bunch of valuable prizes as part of the party. (No purchase required, offer void where prohibited, etc.) I’m told there are eight copies of Windows Vista Inside Out and 15 copies of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, full retail version.

These folks do great work. Go, enter their contest (only four days left!), take a look around, and think about kicking $10 in the PayPal jar for a premium membership. It’s worth it.

[Via Corrine from Security Garden, in the comments to an earlier post]

Microsoft’s Omar Shahine has some initial thoughts on his ThinkPad T60. I was struck by this description of the Vista upgrade process:

Running Vista has been a breeze. Other than setting up BitLocker (more on that nightmare later) I basically did a clean install of Vista, then downloaded a single application called ThinkVantage System Update, and that program did all the work of downloading all the required, recommended and optional components and craplets . Big Kudos to Lenovo for creating a single unified application to update, download and install all the things required to utilize the enhancements on the laptop (like the volume buttons, trackpoint, fingerprint reader etc).

What a great idea. Too bad other companies aren’t equally thoughtful.

I just (finally) got my Acer Tablet PC back from depot repair today and am considering how and when to upgrade to Vista. The Acer website is pitiful. First of all, it appears to be powered by two gerbils with attention deficit disorder. Just reaching a page takes minutes in some cases (I’m not exaggerating) and it took me nearly four hours to download less than 400MB of drivers and updates. Occasionally it speeds up, as if to give me false hope, and then settles back down at about 4 Kb/sec.

Acer’s Vista upgrade instructions make it sound like the company is following Lenovo’s lead, with one zipped package of drivers and BIOS updates and another for additional applications like Power DVD and NTI CD Maker, all of which should be installed effortlessly when you run UpgradeKit.exe. Alas, the download page I was sent to just includes a dozen zipped packages, each of which needs to be installed individually. It doesn’t appear there’s any way to get the bundled apps (which are valuable, not crapware) except by doing an upgrade.

Meanwhile, Dell promises to deliver its own equivalent tool as part of the Express Upgrade program that should be going out in the mail, oh, Any Day Now:

Dell expects to begin shipping the Windows Vista Upgrade in the latter part of February. In addition to the Upgrade, you will receive a Dell-developed Upgrade Assistant. This tool will walk you step-by-step through the Upgrade process, assisting in the installation of Dell-provided drivers and the removal of incompatible applications. The Dell Upgrade Assistant will only be made available to Dell customers.

I don’t understand why this shouldn’t be downloadable now. Unless it’s not finished, of course.

Long Zheng passes along word that Hamad Darwish has released, as promised, the entire set of photos he took for Windows Vista in high-resolution (1920×1200 pixels) on his personal website.

They’re astonishingly beautiful. And free. Download speeds are (so far) fast.

And Microsoft, why wasn’t something like this included as an Ultimate Extra?

Look at this Task Manager shot:

That’s more than 1.3 gigabytes of RAM that Sidebar.exe is using.

This system, which has a total of 4GB installed, can probably spare it. But still, that’s just a wee bit excessive…

For the record, it’s the first time I’ve seen this, and I might even be able to reproduce the steps. When I killed the process and restarted it, memory usage returned to a more normal 13 megabytes – a 99% reduction.

Update: After a little experimentation, it appears that the Mix07 Countdown gadget is to blame. Buh-bye, silly gadget.

At long last, Amazon has enough copies of Windows Vista Inside Out in stock to fill any order as soon as it’s placed. (The initial orders, apparently, were sold out while they were still on the truck to Amazon’s warehouses.)

The book is now at #6 on Amazon’s Computers & Internet Bestsellers list, the best of any Windows Vista book. Thank you!

We’ve heard lots of great feedback (keep it coming, please!) but so far there are only two reviews at Amazon. If you’ve received your copy, why not head over that way and give us your rating and a brief review? If you see anything missing or have any complaints at all, leave your comment right here.

The latest posts in my Hands On Vista series are now up. Here are the details:

Vista Hands On #7: Move user data to another drive

A few months ago, I explained how to manually move individual data folders to a new location. The advantage is that when you separate data folders from system files, it makes backups much easier and more efficient. Here’s an even easier way to move all your personal data to a new drive.

Vista Hands On #6: Remove private information from a file

An all-new option in Vista lets you strip out personal data from a file’s properties. I explain where to find it and what it does.

Vista Hands On #5: Edit boot menus and more

Boot.ini is gone. Long live the Boot Configuration Data store and its command-line editor, Bcdedit. What? You don’t like command-line editors? OK, here’s a free utility that lets you handle advanced BCD customization from a well-organized graphical interface.