Gnomie Matthew Ribaul writes:

Hey Chris, my name is Matt, I’m 21 and originally from New Orleans, LA. I have been a longtime user and PC nerd, I guess you could say. Always enjoyed being around computers and new technology. Anywho, I recently saw your video on how you are “upgrading” to XP from Vista and had some comments to share with you. Personally I love Microsoft; I have stock with the company and I’m always interested in what it’s doing. But I do have some things to relate to you regarding Vista. I couldn’t wait for Vista to come out. I finally “upgraded” to Vista Home Premium, and the main issue that I have with Vista, as you said, is the UAC (User Account Control) feature that stops you every minute to ask you if it can do something and makes it worse with dimming your screen and that annoying “do do do” sound as it does it. There’s a way you can turn it off in Control Panel through the Users settings; after you reboot it tells you it’s turned off, but if you just tell it to hide it through the Notification Area settings thing, it goes away and it’s like it never existed. Then again, if you turn it off, it’s just defeating the point of having the security of Vista!

It may seem so ridiculous to do this, but I’ve been finding myself formatting my hard drive and switching from XP to Vista, then Vista back to XP several times a week! I have a Dell XPS system with a decent 4 GB of RAM and two 500 GB hard drives, but the thing is that the system just works with XP. It was made for XP; it can run Vista, but it doesn’t mean it should. At least not at this point in time. I’ve installed Vista Home Premium and installed the SP1 through Windows Update, but it just didn’t seem to correct anything. At least not anything that I’ve noticed. I suppose if I had a different lifestyle and used different programs, yeah, I’d notice it.

But one of the main things that bothers me is how, at least on my system, If you have DivX format videos and you have them added in WMP 11, and you click on the Videos tab, without fail (on my system at least) WMP will stop responding. But you know, Vista when you get down to it is a pretty good OS. I want the stability and the “It Just Works” reality of XP, but on the other hand I want the new little features in Vista, like the snipping tool. I love that one little tool. And of course Media Center. I love it. On the other hand it’s the constant “…has stopped responding, Windows is checking for a solution to the problem” which, by the way, is almost ALWAYS followed by “No solution found” appearing and Windows telling me what program stopped responding as if I didn’t already know. Then it has the gall to ask me if the information was helpful! Well… NO it’s not helpful to tell me what I already know! What I want is a solution, and I don’t want to have to drop everything and wait for one. Vista was not just sprung on all the companies overnight. Microsoft’s had a good bit of time to create updates to support Vista — such as DivX.

When you get down to the basic line, it’s that Microsoft did release Vista in a “Ready” state. But basically that’s only if you use your computer simply to surf the Web and email. If you even take one step into a basic task such as printing, you’re taking the 50/50 chance that something’s not going to work with Vista.

Now I did install Vista Ultimate on my laptop and my desktop to see if either would work differently in any way. Well, BitLocker, which is mainly for laptops, isn’t supported on my laptop and I haven’t met anyone who has upgraded their laptop with Vista Ultimate and has a laptop that supports it. It seems the only “add-ons” other than that are Hold’em Poker and Dream Scene. A game and a program that puts videos on your desktop as the wallpaper… as if we all need something else to make Vista even slower — even on decent systems.

But anyway, I was just wondering… is there anything that I should really remember other than:

  1. Vista is a new OS that isn’t fully compatible yet with most/all general programs.
  2. XP performs better on my system. Vista runs great; I’m just tired of the “Has stopped responding” issues.
  3. More software is compatible with XP, mainly because XP has had such a long life-span in OS terms, so a lot of programs have been made for XP.

Vista really appeals to me, I think I should just give it a few more months and wait until Microsoft possibly releases SP2 for Vista perhaps? If there is one in the making at all, which if they’re smart, they HAVE begun designing.

On a different note, going back to XP, I’ve been getting this weird message when I boot my computer up that says: “**** Not found, skipping auto-check.” I’ve gotten the one before about lsdelete, I believe it is. But the one I’ve been getting lately is several rows long but all saying that something is not found and it’s skipping auto-check. Have you experienced this or heard anything about it? I have Live OneCare installed. From what I’ve researched on it most forums say it’s something to do with Ad-Aware and stuff. But it started after I installed the infamous Hijack This program — I don’t recall why I installed it, but it made sense at the time. Anywho man, I know your time is valuable and if you’ve read up to this point at all I greatly appreciate it. I would love to have your feedback on this and any suggestions you have — or your readers might have.