Vista
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I would definitely not recommend Vista for SQL developers:
My home office PC is a HP 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 with 2 GB RAM, running XP Pro. My biggest customer recently replaced their development PC with a Dell 3.0 GHz Xeon with 3 GB RAM, running Vista Business. Both machines have SQL 2005 Developer Edition.
With a two-generations-older CPU and 2/3 the memory, the HP is actually a tiny bit faster than the Dell when running SSMS.
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I can't imagine trying to do my job now as is in Vista. I live by "shift-right-click choose Run As" to get me into admin mode on my machine to keep me honest administering servers. Without that -- it is a HUGE pain in the butt. Vista assumes I know nothing about security and locks down my machine too much. We have an ex-MS employee here who says that Vista is an OS designed to please lawyers, not techies -- the lockdowns drive us nuts but please the legal eagles trying to avoid lawsuits.
Count me in as one who thinks that XP meets all my needs and sees no reason to upgrade save that MS needs to meet their budget needs.
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Pam;
SQL Server 2008 will install on Vista. If you want Reporting Services, though, it requires IIS 7.0, and only Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can install IIS 7.0.
You may want to consider downloading and installing the VirtualPC image for SQL Server 2008. You probably do not want to install beta/CTP software on your base system. And if you have SQL 2000 or MSDE or SQL 2005, there are some things (like tools) that will get overwritten, or incompatibilities that will prevent installation.
Hope this helps
Mark -
The worst thing about Vista is its incessant prompting for approval to do something. You can turn that off, but then why build it in the first place? Seems like there should be a better way.
OK? Not OK? Are you sure? Are you really, really sure? Sheesh
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Thumb drives are another source of irritation. I have three: a 128MB, a 512MB, and a 4GB. The smallest one works fine, but when I plug in either of the two larger ones Vista warns me that there might be something wrong with it, and offers to scan and "fix" it. Not willing to risk losing something, I always click, No. They all work just fine with 2000, XP and Server 2003, and I've never popped one out before the "safely remove" step in those other OS's.
Then, when I click the Vista icon to "safely remove" a thumb drive, it displays a modal dialog box that says it's safe to remove the hardware device, but the message box never goes away until you click OK.
Last but not least, I routinely copy zipped SQL backup files to the 4GB unit which should take 30-40 seconds, but the "calculating time" thing takes so long, I might as well be plugged into a USB 1.x port. Fortunately there's a fix on the way for that in SP1, I think.
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A month ago I bought a brand new laptop (sagernotebook.com)--their top-of-the-line with 4GB RAM, dual-core 64-bit processor, mirrored hard drives, with Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. The laptop is sensational; and Vista? So far I am pleased with it; I like the new OS, the features, and the like. But I haven't used it enough to be really excited or displeased with it. It is very pretty. I have not had any gotchas--but I waited awhile and I'm running new software, mostly.
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I got Vista Ultimate pre-installed on a brand-new Dell XPS in January, but I now run it as XP-like as possible, e.g. the User Account Control is turned off, and I have no widgets or fancy graphics like the "Aero" interface. It's still infuriating, but I can live with it until I find my original XP CDs, and reformat the hard disk so I can install XP from scratch.
I imagine that some of my disgust is peculiar to me, e.g. I love and still use NT's File Manager but it doesn't run on Vista, but some of my disgust is legitimately aimed at Microsoft, e.g. my SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition doesn't even install on Vista, even though they were developed concurrently!
One last complaint: an Explorer window will suddenly switch from showing file name, date and size to song title, length and track number if Vista thinks that the folder being viewed contains music! The same goes for pictures, movies etc.
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Earlier this year, we bought a replacement Dell laptop with Vista Business edition and Office 2007 preinstalled as a test for the future.
I really like the small alpine lake and mountain wallpaper as it reminds me of younger days hiking in that type of country.
The rest of Vista is junk.
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Speaking of the new Windows Explorer, you can no longer double-click in-between columns to resize the width - now you have to right-click and then click "re-size to fit" but then it stays at that width forever. You have to right click on the column, select "set column width" and then type in how many pixels wide the column should be. How the **** should I know!
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I run XP on an Intel iMac with both dual-boot and in a virtual windows app (Parallels)
I can do all my programming in XP and all my video and GarageBand in the Mac. Don't think I'll be changing anytime soon.
Plus where I work will not move to VISTA until they must.
From what I hear, Vista is still un-proved and un-liked by enough people that I have no need or desire to make the move.
DRS
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Vista had to come, security under XP was being overwhelmed. MS could not release the new and improved XP and leave all that third party app money on the table. So we got VISTA, XP with improved security (debate rages), New "Cool" interface to attract the bugs to the bug light, and lots of apps to put some of the third party people out of business. Having said that, who does it work well for: Technically inclined business users who want the latest thing. Who does it not work well for: people who hate change, people who have apps from third party vendors that are not compatible, and people with old hardware. It is buggy but mostly because of incompatible hardware and software. With the standard business setup running compatible platform it works fine. The problem is only about 20 to 30 percent of the user base is going to fit that model. Leaving everyone else in frustration or waiting for the next evolution. Yes I run VISTA Ultimate on a new laptop with few problems but enough that on some days I love it and some days I wish I had waited.
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Yeah! *chants* One of us! One of us!
Sitting next to me is my MacBook Pro running Win2K Pro with both Sql 2000 and SQL 2005 installed. I do pretty much everything on my Mac side and venture into Parallels for SQL Server and occasionally for Photoshop (they don't have the student editions of Adobe's CS3 suite at the campus bookstore yet).
No Vista plans here, as has been said previously: I'll give up my XP Pro (and 2000 Pro) when they pry my cold dead fingers from around it. That, or my employer switches over, which isn't going to happen any time soon. As nasty as I've heard Vista is, I would wait until SP2, not my usual first service pack.
MS really dropped the ball on this one IMHO.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font] -
This is the first time I haven't gone kicking and screaming into a new Windows OS. If technology did not change so rapidly, half of us would probably be out of jobs. We in IT need to be one step ahead of our users, so we can't whine everytime we have to learn something new. I got a new laptop with Vista in the spring. Yeah it was different and it took me a while to find things, but it still gets the job done. It didn't like some of my hardware, but then again my scanner was 8+ years old (now I just take pictures of documents with my 10 megapixel DSLR, way better resolution than the scanner)! I read an article that suggested installing your XP driver if there wasn't one for Vista and that solved most of my issues. IIS7 has been a little tricky but a few posts on the MSDN forums pointed me in the right direction. And it has never been so easy to setup my network. I say thumbs up.
Kristin
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Excellent point, Kristin. In my job, I don't do first tier user support, I only work with users when it is database issues. My PC at work is XP Pro and we have no plans to go to Vista any time soon. I'm at total liberty to run what I want at home, and now I'm running Mac, especially since I know my home equipment is too old to run Vista well.
I only do hardware/software recommendations for friends, and I'm advising them to stay well clear of upgrading to Vista. Perhaps if they're going to buy new hardware it would work, but I also tell them that I can't give them any help at this time if they go to it.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font] -
This has nothing to do with Vista, but a few members mentioned buying new PC's with Office 2007 preinstalled, so here are some "Interactive guides for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007" to ease the transition from the menus & toolbars to the Office ribbon. AFAIK they're only available in English.
Word Commands:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100744321033.aspx?pid=CH100487431033
Excel Commands:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel/HA101491511033.aspx
PowerPoint Commands:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/powerpoint/HA101490761033.aspx?pid=CH100668131033
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