Clarifying My Stand on Vista

I wanted to clarify my stance on Vista. I know I got excited last night, because it hurts me to see so much unjustified bashing of Vista when I and many others have had a very good experience with it. However, I wanted to make some things clear.

I don't recommend you to upgrade your present machine from XP to Vista. Even though I really like Vista, and it worked well on an older machine I had, installing Vista on older hardware can be problematic. Please, don't go and think you have to upgrade to Vista. You don't have to.

However, if you want to live dangerously and try upgrading to Vista, I highly recommend that you first download and run the Vista Upgrade advisor. It analyses your present machine and tells you what will and what won't work in Vista. You can download it at this location.

The best experience is to buy a new PC with Vista already installed. If you do, I suggest getting a machine with a Intel Core 2 chip, at least 2 GB of RAM, and a dedicated graphics card. Don't be confused by all the different versions of Vista; get the Home Premium edition. If you want to use older devices with your new computer, please check out the Vista Compatibility Center or the manufacturer's web site to see if there are Vista drivers available for your older devices. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my several-year-old HP PSC 2110 printer was supported out-of-the-box, I didn't need to download any drivers.

I hope I didn't give you the wrong impression that Vista was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It is not perfect, but it is not an embarassment or the worst version of Windows ever, as some in the press might lead you to believe. Don't be afraid of getting a new PC with Vista, just do a little bit of homework by checking out the Vista Compatibility Center to see if your older devices work ok.

Club Meeting August 19, 2008

The next meeting will be on August 19th, at 7:00 pm at the Canfield Prebyterian chrurch.

Some things we will talk about:

-- Google Calendar. http://calendar.google.com/. In addition to the free email that Google provides that we mentioned last month, they have a very nice calendar service. We'll go through the basics of signing up, adding an event, viewing your calendar, and setting a reminder. You can view and print out different views of your calendar, from a daily agenda list to a full month view. Of course, it's free! I like free.

-- Tim Ryan is fighting for you! Visit our representative's web site at http://timryan.house.gov/. You can see the cheapest gas prices in the area!

-- We might have some nice reserves of oil in the northern United States, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakken_Formation.

-- There is a new computer radio show on AM 570 at 1:00pm Saturdays.

-- Skeptical about Vista? Check out http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/ to learn more.

-- Anybody else having problems watching video on http://nbcolympics.com/. Perhaps you should try a new ZIP code.

As always, we will also try and answer any other computer questions you may have. I hope to see you there!