Random Rants & Raves

Vista has a number of new features that optimize the way that your computer functions – especially in the area of power consumption. The new power plans, sleep mode and more intelligent management of hardware resources are some of these. However, there is one small problem that comes with this – if you leave your computer to perform a download, in many cases it just doesn’t complete since Vista automatically puts the computer to sleep after a period of inactivity. This is especially true if you’re downloading on a laptop and on battery.

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Tags: tips, vista
Categories: Tips | Windows Vista

If you're a Vista Sidebar gadget freak like me, then this one is for you. I ran across a gadget called System Monitor from BuildAGadget.com. This is one that can show you a whole bunch of information about your currently running system. This includes:

1. Date
2. Time
3. Single, Dual, Quad core usage stats
4. Memory usage stats
5. WiFi signal strength
6. Battery status and remaining time
7. IP Address - both internal (NAT) and external
8. Network tools - like WHOIS, Ping, Trace route, IP and Domain lookups

This basically lets you replace a bunch of other system Sidebar tools. The nice thing is that you can easily enable or disable any of these "monitors" and individually configure settings for them such as what to display (text or graphics), color of the display bar, and other specific information (number of cores/which IPs to show, etc.).

This is a great tool to be quickly informed about a number of system resources and a must if you use the Vista Sidebar.

Tags: sidebar, gadgets, vista, rave
Categories: Gadgets | Rave | Windows Vista

Jeff Jones, the Microsoft Security guy, has just released a 1-year security vulnerability report of Windows Vista versus other operating systems for their first year. The OSs compared are: Windows XP, RedHat Linux Enterprise 4 (Workstation), Ubuntu 6.06 and Apple MacOS X v10.4. Here is a summary of the report.

Metric	Vista	XP	RHEL4ws*	Ubuntu 6.06*	Mac OS X  10.4
Vulnerabilities fixed	36	65	360	224	116
Security Updates	17	30	125	80	17
Patch Events	9	26	64	65	17
Weeks with at least 1 Patch Event	9	25	44	39	15

*: Reduced feature set over full install

Some points of note are:

• To do a "fair" comparison between the 2 Windows and the 2 Linux variants here, the vulnerabilities in the Linux columns do not include optional and server components like OpenOffice, Gimp, gcc, Apache, bind etc.
• Windows on the other hand was analyzed on ALL the components that it ships with - not a reduced set

So what does this mean? Vista is more secure than everything else? Well, if nothing else, it does tend to show that the improved focus on Security during the software development process at Microsoft is actually doing a huge bunch of good. So the next time someone mentions security, Vista and Linux, it might be useful to point them to this resource.

Tags: vista
Categories: Windows Vista

I just went ahead and installed the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 from MSDN. I of course took the 64-bit version since that's what I'm running. The install process was very smooth. After a small (8-10 mins) install process after starting the process and going through the obligatory EULA and stuff, the system restarted once and informed me that there are three stages left for the install.

1st Stage: Installation continued at the login prompt area. Proceeded to stage 2 to up to around 8%. System rebooted. Time spent approximately 5 mins.

2nd Stage: A console based install process that seemed to list every single EXE/DLL available in Windows. Showed a huge number (>120,000) with a running count of files being updated. Suddenly jumped to the end much sooner than I expected. Time spent about 3 mins. System rebooted again

3rd Stage: Again a graphical install process at the login prompt area. Took about 5 minutes again.

After the 3rd stage, the system immediately took me to the login box - no reboot. Logged in and was immediately greeted by a Service Pack install success window. Going to the System properties confirmed this.

Current status is that the system feels a little laggy - but that is to be expected. All the saved speed boosting information of SuperFetch is wiped out. So all applications will feel a little laggy the first few times they are opened. Let's see how it goes. Will keep noting down any experiences - good or bad - right here.

Tags: vista, service pack
Categories: Windows Vista