42 … that’s the answer to life, the universe, and everything! So it is a momentous milestone this blog has reached, which makes it appropriate to talk about another momentous event: the upgrade of our desktop PCs from Windows XP to Vista. We’re living on the cutting edge!

I’d anticipate two questions at this point. First, why did we wait so long? And second, why did we do it now? The first question is a little easier to answer, I think. We all recognize that Vista opened to less than rave reviews, and we didn’t want to be the first ones to dip our toes into that water. Additionally, Vista requires more computing power than XP, and while our desktops here at APPX Software are not 98 pound weaklings, they would be much happier having more resources to call on in a Vista environment. Add those factors to the general satisfaction and stability (in a Microsoft-relative way) that XP provided, and there was no urgency to upgrade.

But wise old Joe, on whom we rely for technical omnicience and wizardry, is satisfied that Vista Professional is solid, and probably offers some security advantages. Thus began the process of upgrading all of our PCs, which also involved more memory, larger disk drives, and, of course, a migration process that always threatens to become a MIGRAINE-tion process. I’m happy to say that Joe did most of the work on my machine when I was out last week.

Still, there was a lot to do these past couple of days, such as trying to move various settings and things over from the old XP environment (which still exists on a VM within the Vista box), and getting used to the Vista lifestyle and the changes introduced by Office 2007. I don’t know yet if I see a lot of advantages to Office 2007, compared to Office 2003, but I’ll probably discover some things that I really do like. And that will lead to the next problem …

My home computer, and my personal laptop, both run Windows XP with Office 2003. When I get comfortable with Vista and 2007, I’m going to want to upgrade my own computers to the same level, and that’s going to cost money. I don’t think upgrading memory will be an option, so that means replacing them, involving many dollars, significant time and inconvenience, and, at least initially, a negative impact on life, the universe, and everything.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Al. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.