One of these things is not like the other

I have a couple of operating systems under test at the Home Office - Windows 7 RC and Ubuntu 9.04 are running in VM sessions on my Macintosh.

Windows 7 is a HUGE improvement on Vista - and Ubuntu's gradual evolution just makes this a nicer and nicer product.

I don't plan to abandon the Mac as a primary platform in the foreseeable future... but it's nice to know that the option set is getting steadily better.

Apropos of that, an oldie but a goodie:

A grudging admission

After removing all evidence of problems that were of my own making...

The Vista laptop is actually running pretty well, and it's a pleasure to use.

Despite having successfully used VMware Fusion for a couple of years now -- basically, a canned Windows XP environment lives on my hard disk and I kick it off whenever I need it (not often) - Carrie and I found ourselves in the absurd position of having a houseful of Macintoshes and being in the market for a Windows laptop.

Some of the software Carrie needs to run to crunch the data she's going to visually interpret is Windows-only.

Some software that I need to stay current on - Adobe Framemaker, for instance - is now available for Windows only. Technical authoring in general is heavily weighted towards Windows; most of the more interesting help and e-learning authoring tools are also Windows-only. MadCap products in particular are Windows-only.

We're not giving up our Macs. But we're a multiplatform household now.

I am in hellllllllll

Update, 20 April:

Aaaaaand it turns out I went digitally spelunking for no reason at all. (sigh)

My office buddy set me straight this morning.

His instructions started with "Perform an emergency restore of the factory configuration..."

(Thanks, man.)

---

Had to get a Windows computer for the house. (Long story.)

Bought a Dell Studio 15 series with the guidance of a trusted techie friend at the office.

Computer arrived, and I thought to myself - you know, this isn't too bad. What am I missing?

I mean, I'm using Vista on a laptop and it's actually kind of okay.

My office buddy is a Windows aficionado in the way that I'm a Mac aficionado. He has been responding wearily to my trash-talking about Windows Vista by ragging me about the hardware I was running it on.

"On a properly configured machine, Vista is very satisfactory."

Hey, it was looking good.

Then I ran Belarc Advisor to get a snapshot of my current configuration before I started modifying anything (hi, worked in IT for 20+ years, occupational hazard.)

Huh. The machine has 4GB of RAM but Belarc only reports three.

Why, that sounds like...

They didn't.

They DID.

Dell installed 32-bit Windows Vista on this machine, limiting me to 3GB memory access.

oh HELL no.

Bust out Windows Ultimate 64-Bit SP1 install disk, reformat the laptop, install 64-bit. Confirm access to 4GB RAM.

Score!

I start installing software again when I notice that the screen looks funny and I'm not connected via WiFi.

And that's when I realized that I hadn't saved a copy of that list of drivers and devices that I was kinda concerned about.

Have downloaded all thirty-five relevant pieces of software from Dell's support site and am installing them manually.

I AM IN HELL.

Windows 7 Update

Courtesy of xkcd:

Just a glutton for punishment, I guess

But VMware Fusion makes this very safe and relatively painless...

Guess we'll give Windows 7 a test drive.