Ports Thoughts

When I first tried installing Windows Vista I used a Thinkpad T41 . The results were very poor. Whist the operating system did install it was pretty much incapable of doing anything useful. I quickly reverted to using Windows XP again. With the launch of the Windows 7 Beta1 I thought I would try the same test again. And I am very encouraged by the results. It is clearly a step up from Vista both in terms of stability and performance. From downloading the code (over 2GB) to burning it onto a DVD to installing it onto my venerable Thinkpad only took a few short hours. Within a couple of reboots it was recognising my Wireless Lan, Graphics Card and the other computers on my network. Impressive although nothing you wouldn't expect from a Mac or Ubuntu. But the big question is does Lotus Software work on it? The answer is a resounding yes. The first thing I installed was Lotus Mobile Connect to get VPN access to IBM's internal systems. Then of course it was Lotus Notes. It installed...

I have been using Windows Vista on my home PC for a few weeks now - I will write about my experiences and opinions of Vista soon. But I was about to upgrade it back to Windows XP because of the appalling performance and reliability I was suffering. It would randomly hang or start going slow despite being a new machine with 3Gb ram and Quad core processors. I would also get cryptic errors like this one. I did loads of monitoring and analysis but Vista was giving no clues as to the source of the problem. However, through a series of troubleshooting steps that involved uninstalling just about everything and re adding it and then testing I discovered the the culprit was ZoneAlarms Security Suite. It was causing the machine to run like a dog. So if you are running ZoneAlarms on Vista Home Premium (32-bit) and are suffering similar problems then this may well be the solution to your problems. The current (as of 22nd Jan 2008) gold version of ZA for Vista is 7.1.078.000. This has seemingly be...