Windows Vista

[boosterjuice]

I'm just curious if anyone is beta testing the new Windows Vista? I'm currently downloading it as we speak and will give a review soon.

 

[Liesje]

Yes, we are at work. It's been running on a dual-boot machine for a week or so.

 

[Elvis]

Whats your impression of it? I downloaded the beta, but havent had time to install it anywhere -- yet.

 

[Liesje]

Me? I haven't had many chances to see it yet, but from what I overhear from the guys in the cubicle it's pretty "fresh" and "sweet". It's on my co-workers new computer, well, one of his several, but he uses a KVM switch so he's always at the workstation and I never get to look. He did show me one cool thing - when you do Alt Tab, instead of just the little window with the program icons, it does this 3D thing where you see mini windows of each program, kind of stacked at an angle. There's all these other crazy changes to the display settings, like how the whole thing looks, and it seems a bit over the top to me. It took them forever to get it up an running, but I think it's because he needs to be able to boot into our standard XP pro image on the same machine. I don't know anything about the technical specs of Vista since I'll be leaving this job before they start supporting it. That, and my specialty is our Novell software, so all this talk of graphics is like Greek to me. We've got enough server issues to keep everyone busy at the moment!

I'm still gaga over my OS X work computer, so I'm a bit behind!

 

[Canadiens1131]

I'm deleting an old Linux partition tonight to make room for a dual-boot of Vista.

We'll see what's new.

 

[bono_man2002]

I'm Sticking with XP until all the bugs/holes and whatever else is going to be wrong Vista are well not gone, but impoved upon

 

[U2Man]

I'm deleting an old Linux partition tonight to make room for a dual-boot of Vista.

We'll see what's new.

 

[Canadiens1131]

 

[BrownEyedBoy]

When is it due?

 

[Elvis]

I've got a steadfast rule of not using Windows operating systems, in a business environment, until at LEAST the first service pack is issued.

 

[Liesje]

I've got a steadfast rule of not using Windows operating systems, in a business environment, until at LEAST the first service pack is issued.

We don't even allow our students to attempt use campus networks without 2000 SP4 or XP SP 2.

But, it is fun to play with. I might put it on my fiances computer to see it since he got hozed with a virus and we have to reinstall the OS anyway.

 

[Elvis]

We don't even allow our students to attempt use campus networks without 2000 SP4 or XP SP 2.

But, it is fun to play with. I might put it on my fiances computer to see it since he got hozed with a virus and we have to reinstall the OS anyway.

How do you make sure that they don't use anything less?

 

[Liesje]

How do you make sure that they don't use anything less?

We got this new system in place, we call it Bradford (I think that's just the name of the company who came and set it up) and I'm not a networking person so I really know nothing about how it actually works. it has worked really well and cut down our first-two-weeks-of-school call volume by probably 70%. What they do is plug their computer into any ethernet jack (each dorm or apartment has several). They load their internet browser and for the time being, they are on a quarantine network, so it automatically loads our ResNet startup page. They have to first prove they are a registered student by authenticating through our online system called KnightVision (it's Blackboard 7, I think). Then, they work through our requirements and instructions on how to meet them. The first page explaines the OS requirements and includes links for downloading the service packs. The second page states our virus policy and that all computers on our networks MUST run OUR configuration of Symantec AV 10, which is provided for them to download from that page. Then they have to install this exe file, I think it's called the CSA agent. It runs for about 30 seconds and if they pass CSA, their computer is moved out of quarantine to ResNet and can access ResNet from any ethernet port (I'm assuming it goes my MAC address?). If it fails, it will say something like "You must be running Windows XP Service Pack 2" or "You must install Symantec AV" and then link back to the page where they can download what they are missing.

 

[Elvis]

Damn, thats awesome. Glad to see a school taking such a proactive approach.