Vista, Ubuntu, Mac, Windows 7… what to do?
So I’ve been running Vista for the past year and a half. I know Vista gets a lot of grief, but overall, I really like the OS. Well, I should say I liked the OS because I’m not too happy with it now.
I recently purchased a new iPhone. After synching it with my Vista PC I started having strange problems. I can’t say it all started here. Let me go back a bit to when I first installed Vista…
In August 2007 I built my own PC. I ordered a copy of Vista Ultimate. I wanted Ultimate mainly so I could have the media center to try out and to have remote access to my computer while I was at work.
Trying to install was a nightmare. After about 5 tries I think I finally got it to "stick". Generally what would happen was I would got through the install and it would freeze at random points. That led me to believe I had a bad piece of hardware – such as the memory or hard drive. Ultimately, I figured I got it to work when I upped the voltage on my RAM – despite severe warning from my BIOS.
So I have been running Vista since them without major incident. There were problems. For example, I could never get SP1 to install. It would take over an hour when it tried then stop on the last stage, then another hour to uninstall itself. I never could get that figured out. There were also some other windows updates that would not install, but I didn’t worry too much about them.
At one point I swapped out my processor. That seemed to take my system to its knees and I thought I would have to reinstall the OS completely, but luckily I got it working.
So back to the iPhone. I can’t say for sure it was the iPhone, but that is the only change I can think of that would have caused my problems. Things started acting weird and lost internet access and programs wouldn’t run. So I decided to reboot. After that I could not get Vista to boot again. It would try but always give me a blue screen of death.
Again, I gave Vista the benefit and thought maybe my hardware is bad. I tried chkdsk but that didn’t help. I tried it memory test and it froze in the middle so I figured maybe I have a bad piece of RAM? But I happened to have an old Ubuntu instance on there and I could boot to that just fine and access all my windows files.
In any case I couldn’t get into Vista at all. So I decided it was time to wife my hard drive clean and start over. I decided to first try Ubuntu. I downloaded the 64 bit edition (I was running 32 bit Vista – I heard there was problems with 64 bit when I built my system). I was amazed at how fast and smooth the install went.
Once I got Ubuntu installed I did some configuring to get my dual 22" monitors to work and then installed VirtualBox and installed Vista inside of virtual box (my Vista install has never gone so smoothly)
VirtualBox was cool and you could certainly do some cool things to make Windows look somewhat native, but despite giving the VM 2 GB of RAM to work it, it still didn’t perform as well as I had hoped. Plus, I tried to get my files off of my mozy back-up and couldn’t.
These were all things I was willing to tinker with a bit then I realize a big problem I had… The main product I develop only runs on IE due to ActiveX controls! I didn’t want to spend my working day inside a VM. Eventually I decided to go back to Vista.
There are just some apps I need to have that run in Windows and not Linux, or don’t have good enough Linux counterparts, or maybe they do, but I’ve gotten too comfortable using what I have, such as:
- E – my favorite editor (I suppose I could have made gedit work, but…)
- Photoshop
- BeyondCompare
- Mozy
- TortoiseSVN
- Xampp
- GoToMeeting
- IE7 (for one site only – the one I work on)
- Google Chrome
- MS Office (Sorry, I don’t like OpenOffice.org)
- iTunes (better support for iPhone & iPod)
- Windows Media Center (couldn’t get MythTV running – didn’t want to spend much time on it anyway)
- Manufacturers printer/scanner drivers and software
Down the road I may go back to Ubuntu someday when I’m not in a work environment that is dependant on Windows. But for now, I’m not in that spot.
Now, on to the Vista install. The first two attempts failed – they froze in the middle of installation. The third attempt almost made it. It crashed during the configuration stage. I thought it might be okay, but once I got it and I couldn’t get automatic updates to work. I also tried downloading and installing SP1 and it crashed every time too – sometimes with the blue screen of death.
At this point I didn’t know what to do. I had just wiped out my Ubuntu set up that I had spent about 8 hours configuring. I have XP, but I don’t want to go back there… I was certainly not going to buy another copy of Vista just to get a decent installer and SP1. So I looked forward. I grabbed a copy of Windows 7 beta and installed it.
Gratefully there were no errors on the install. Everything seems to be running fine. I’m writing this post from Windows Live Writer. All my apps I had on Vista seem to work great on Windows 7. No problems so far – except for Mozy. I think once I finally get my files back from mozy, I’ll drop their service and use JungleDisk for online back up.
Now, a word to you Mac missionaries… I could use a Mac, but I don’t want to. I don’t hate Mac. I just don’t understand why people love them so. I grew up on Macs. It wasn’t until I got into a CAD class that I ever used a PC. I felt I had just gotten into the real world of computers where you could actually do cool things (what? you can put more than one button on a mouse?). I’m sure it was just a perception. Don’t tell me Macs don’t have problems. After high school I worked for the school district. All we had were Macs. I’ve spent hours fixing Mac problems. If I could put the Mac OS on my existing hardware (legally) then I might try out the new OS. My dad still owns a Mac, so it’s not like I haven’t kept up. I’m still not that impressed. I’m not going to buy their overpriced hardware just for their OS. (Well, maybe, if I decide I want to make some iPhone apps I might look into a mac mini). Rant over.
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February 13, 2009
Posted in: Technology
22 Responses
Thanks for this post – interesting slant on things…
I don’t know if I’m a “Mac Missionary” but I own both a Mac and PC and use the Mac a lot more. (I’m on it now). Macs do have problems, but less than PCs and, more importantly, trouble shooting problems is generally easier on a Mac. That said, Windows has come a long way in the last few years. Glad you pointed that out.
Amen to that. Though I haven’t actually tried out Mac but I just can’t understand while some “elitist” prefer them.
I’ve heard a lot of great things about Windows 7, but I haven’t been able to test it out myself (The Mrs. is getting really tired of me switching operating systems on the PC). I love Ubuntu, but I can’t get it run properly on my PPC Mac (my main machine). So it’s still OSX 10.4 and XP for me, I’m starting to feel a little left behind.
What about OS/2 (ECommStation)? Just kidding. I say everyone use what makes sense to you. My sister used PCs for years, until she became a teacher full-time, and then she changed to a MAC.
Oh, and for those of you folks who use a PC, and have slow PC performance issues, please stop by my website, I’d love to help you out. I’ve had a great deal of success in helping folks speed up their slow PC.
good post, vista is a hassle, i’m curious to see how many things they can fix with windows 7. I would love to go all the way with linux but like you said there are just too many things not compatible that a lot of people are used to.
I agree that at first, Vista was problem-filled. I had it installed on a laptop I used for school, it would never connect to my school’s internet; I had to walk around with a router in order to get it to connect. Now, I wouldn’t use anything else. I can’t wait for Windows 7 to come out as I am anxious to see what they fixed. I will say that I do hate Mac’s; don’t see what is so great about them, seems like those who say they are better don’t seem to really know anything about computers (no offense to those who actually do). Regards!
Vista was a little strange to begin with but thats the same with many window applications, the trouble is the corporate guys are always pushing the techies for early release. The te techies are scared and give their bosses and sales people what they want…
End result ..applications with tons of glitches
Will windows 7 be a total new OS or will it be something like windows 98 SE?
Kris, it will be totally new. There are a number of new features added to Windows 7.
Hi Dustin,
Thanks for the post, I know its not directly related to the above post by thought I should get some advice.I have a laptop which run Ubuntu but the problem is
1. when ever my daughter wants to watch video/games on pbskids.org, firefox on ubuntu dones’t load these games.
2. Realplayer embedded in firefox doesn’t work on ubuntu even though I have installed realplayer Linux version of application.
3. I have a VCD on PAL format which movie player on Ubuntu doesn’t detect.
All of these above works fine on windows. Do I care if Ubuntu boots faster or load application faster 2-3 milli seconds compare to windows but non of above uses cases work?
Hope to hear from you soon.
@ jerry
you might want to read these:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Media_Path
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/08/hdcp-vista.ars
Sadly, those Virtual Box installations are never fast. I’ve used Sun’s xVM on OS X, Ubuntu and Vista on high-specced computers, and it crawls no matter what. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to use Ubuntu only, like you said. Windows 7 is really impressive so far though. Mostly because it “feels” faster, but it’s obviously more efficient, too. i got an extra hour of battery life on my laptop when switching from Vista. But I digress.. thanks for the article.
Most of the time i’m using Ubuntu. But i still have a Vista on my laptop. But as i remember i didn’t have any problem to install vista ultimate. And for virtual machine, i’m using vmware because it’s working on vista and ubuntu. Thanks for the great article tough.
For Photoshop, GIMP is the alternative in Linux and I think Google Chrome has also got an unofficial version of Linux made by some other developers. I don’t use Vista, I use XP and dual boot with Linux Mint 7 (Based on Ubuntu Jaunty). It has got extra tools which you won’t find in Ubuntu, you can always look for Linux Mint if you ever want to come back to Linux
.
There are several nice text editors in Linux to try. Plus gedit also supports plugins so it is hard not to find an editor you might like. What is the one you are currently using?
Photoshop, depending on the version, works well in Wine. There is also GIMP for smaller tasks.
I believe there is some sort of visual diff program, but it escapes me now.
There are Linux compatible backup services available. (Jungle Disk)
There are several different SVN clients in Linux to choose from. Surely you can find one you like!
Setting up LAMP for web development is not too bad.
Unfortunately, I cannot think of a replacement for GoToMeeting
I believe IE7 (at least its rendering engine) works on ie4linux.
Google Chrome has a developmental linux build almost complete as well as chromium daily snapshots. It will be released soon, I think.
MS Office works in Wine for the most part. It is reported to work well in Crossover.
I do not know much about iTunes, sorry.
I do not know much about WMC, sorry. But there are options in Linux that might provide that functionality easily.
This is truly a crappy part about Linux. Hardware is sometimes tough to work with. Stick with HP and you are usually alright.
Once drivers for my model come out I may give Windows 7 another go, but Linux is really nice and I think people should give it a try and consider dual booting.
I’m now running Ubuntu and Windows side-by-side in my work environment. It’s great because I get the best of both worlds. I am using Synergy to have one keyboard and mouse to operate both. I love it!
I still prefer editing on E editor, e is being ported to Linux, but it is still extremely buggy and it’s not really working out for me. I can run e on windows to edit my files, but I’ve found Samba to be too slow, NFS is quirky with support from windows and I tend to have permissions issues. FTP seems to be the fastest method, but file changes don’t sync both ways. I find myself using gedit more for convenience, but I still prefer e.
I’ve found meld to be a good visual diff tool and works great with git.
Speaking of git, it seems works much better in linux (obviously)
Not really using SVN in my work environment. Still considering whether to move personal SVN repos to git.
Dropped Mozy a long time ago for Jungle Disk.
Windows search doesn’t compare to the awesomeness of grep.
I had alot of grief with windows vista myself so i just found the best thing for me to do was just to down grade back to windows xp
I’m testing windows 7 now and now what? I’m satisfied! So far so good. It works much faster as XP and all programs looks working just fine. Will keep testing
Vista did get lots of criticism but I think if you use Vista on New Hardware it is great. But I will still prefer to use Win 7 after testing it for past 2 months.
I have already stopped using my Mac notebook and I am waiting for Notebook with Windows 7.
I finally made the switch to make and with virtual box which is free i am running XP and Unbuntu. I tell you the best i have ever seen XP run is on my mack book pro. How silly is that!
I switch to Ubuntu last year and I have been so pleased with the stability and ease of us of this operating system. I am thinking about going mac so that virtual ware sound interesting. thank you
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