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So, my work machine finally got "upgraded" to Vista while I was off in Canada (the process has been going on for months, I'm one of the last holdouts).
In addition to all the reset-all-the-settings stuff I wasted time on yesterday (including lowering the screen resolution because I couldn't find any other option for "make the system font bigger than microscopic") and a few problems unique to our IT guys (i.e. I forgot to triple-check that nothing important was on my C: drive, since they never back that up before wiping your machine for an upgrade...and it turns out that my Firefox bookmarks lived there despite having thought I'd moved them to the O: drive).
Today I ran into two other annoyances, although to be fair, the bigger one isn't Vista's fault.
The big one is that I can't install software anymore. Too many people have blithely stuffed their machines with malware around campus, so anyone moving to Vista loses admin access to their own machine. So I had to get special permission to upgrade my Flash plugins (since the old plug-in was apparently either also on C: or it wasn't Vista-compatible).
The little one is a matter of "changing how things are done for no good reason" in Vista. In XP, it remembers what you last did for "Shut Down". So if you only ever want to log out, you don't need to do anything special, just click Shut Down and hit enter, it remembers you did Log Out last time. Vista, at least in my experience today, doesn't remember this. It returns to Shut Down as the default, so I need to change my habits to avoid shutting down every time I want to just log out. :/
In addition to all the reset-all-the-settings stuff I wasted time on yesterday (including lowering the screen resolution because I couldn't find any other option for "make the system font bigger than microscopic") and a few problems unique to our IT guys (i.e. I forgot to triple-check that nothing important was on my C: drive, since they never back that up before wiping your machine for an upgrade...and it turns out that my Firefox bookmarks lived there despite having thought I'd moved them to the O: drive).
Today I ran into two other annoyances, although to be fair, the bigger one isn't Vista's fault.
The big one is that I can't install software anymore. Too many people have blithely stuffed their machines with malware around campus, so anyone moving to Vista loses admin access to their own machine. So I had to get special permission to upgrade my Flash plugins (since the old plug-in was apparently either also on C: or it wasn't Vista-compatible).
The little one is a matter of "changing how things are done for no good reason" in Vista. In XP, it remembers what you last did for "Shut Down". So if you only ever want to log out, you don't need to do anything special, just click Shut Down and hit enter, it remembers you did Log Out last time. Vista, at least in my experience today, doesn't remember this. It returns to Shut Down as the default, so I need to change my habits to avoid shutting down every time I want to just log out. :/
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http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable
Download that (from any computer) to a jump drive, and run it. It shouldn't need any kind of administrative privledges since it doesn't touch anything but memory. (Vista's security crap prevents settings from being saved to the harddrive, but I don't think it'll keep you from running a 3rd party app that doesn't need to touch anything.)
Alternatively, I can show you how to run RealVNC from home, so you can use your desktop from anywhere.
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Edit: Here's one more question, can you lay your hands on a Windows XP disk? If so, there might be a way around Vista is they'll let you install VMWare server on your system. Just run XP in Vista. :)
Or, I can show you how to setup RealVNC on your computer at home and work, so you can just use it during the day.
Or, I'll shut up now. :)