Microsoft Vista

As we are hearing more and more everyday about Microsoft's new operating system Vista, I was checking around to see costs etc. I came across Vista Pricing and Release Candidate 1. I am presently running IE 7 Release Candidate 1 on my one of my computers. This gives me a bit of a taste of what the new Vista will look like. Of course these are US prices, so our Canadian versions will cost more.

I continued to do some searching on Vista and one thing that I found sort of surprises me is that Vista will only be shipped on DVD as per Vista Coming Soon. Hummmm, that means that all who have just a CD player/burner in their computers at present will not be able to upgrade to Vista without a hardware upgrade. They will either need to install a burner or go the USB route and use an external DVD burner/player, or take their computers to someone to do it for them.

Of course I do have an external DVD machine that I can transfer from machine to machine with a quick software install. However, I do think there are going to be some sad people when they rush home with their new operating system in their hot little hands and quickly insert the DVD into their CD player and find out that nothing happens. They should have read the packaging at the store, but for the most part they don't read. It is the newest and bestest thing, so they just have to have it so zip zap with the credit card and they have a Vista on DVD with no DVD player :-(

To those that can, a CD replacement with a DVD player is quite easy. But then you have to open up the computer and most folks are a tad shy of doing that. Normally there are only 2 or 3 screws to open up the computer and then 2 or 4 screws holding the CD player in place. Along with that is a power connector (that can only be inserted one way), and the main cable for hooking up the CD player to the motherboard. You take out the CD and put the DVD in it's place, hook up the cables and power and away you go. There will be some software to install, but for the most part it is a relatively easy upgrade. Well at least for some folks it will be easy.

This not saying anything about the computers ability to have the RAM and horsepower to run the new operating system Vista though.

That is another bridge to get across.