More on Vista, plus Virtual PC 2007 and Ubuntu

Despite the long title, I’ll try to keep this post short. I had two completely opposite experiences with Windows Vista today.

First, I don’t think people realize how handy Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is. And now that Microsoft made it officially free, there is absolutely no reason not to install it on your Vista!

So here is what I wanted to post, I ran into two distinct aspects with Vista today. On one end, I was able to run 2 Virtual PCs, one running Windows XP SP2, the other running Ubuntu Linux. And in addition, I ran some video playback full screen on the Vista host operating system, PLUS there was CD ripping running at the time, creating some 192 kbps MP3’s from my audio CD! And the two virtual PCs weren’t idle either, Windows XP was converting some of my video files to MP4, for my iPhone. Ubuntu was also running full speed, still installing, in fact.

So, with all that action, all activities were running quickly and without a hitch!

On the flip side, a laptop with Vista Home Basic, gone completely nuts during a simple operation of Logout. Granted, it was a bit overdue for some patches probably. Anyhow, without any special messages, all it said was "Logging Out", and that is it! It sat there on that screen, flashing Hard-Drive a lot, for a long long time. I even gave up, hard-booted it, logged back in (working ok), and then Logged out again. Same thing! Hanging and Hanging and Hanging. After about 20 minutes I gave up and left it running overnight. In the morning, it was fine, logs in fast, logs out fast, weird!!!

So, there you have it! Vista, in all it’s glory! You decide!

PS: For all the people that complained about compatibility of software with Vista, I find Windows XP inside Virtual PC to be perfect compromise. In fact, you can even run Windows 95 or Windows 98, if you so desire, in your Virtual PC. That would help those very old educational games I still have somewhere, but kids outgrew them already anyway…

PPS: I am thinking of going to DragonCon this year for the first time, any suggestions what is a must-see?

UPDATE: I was going to mention a nice Tweaks Guide on Vista, which is more of an overview of Vista annoyances and what to do with them. In retrospect, this post seems like as good time as any, plus Windows Vista blog reminded me about it today…