Friday 18 April 2008

Windows Vista, part 3

I haven't said a lot about Windows Vista lately, and I just want to make sure that you don't all think that that means I've come round to it or anything. No, because my laptop has developed a new trick, which we'll call 'The Unexpected Update Process'.

What happens is this: I switch on the laptop, it all starts up etc., and then I maybe do a few things, update iTunes etc, and then settle down to watch a DVD. The DVD player takes up the full screen, so I can't see that behind the scenes it has conencted itself to the Internet and is downloading more Windows updates. No, the first I hear about it is when the screen goes black and then the laptop shuts down with a message saying 'Installing Windows updates...'. It spends a while doing this, and then reboots, and starts configuring said updates.

10 minutes later, and I'm free to start watching my DVD again.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can set Windows Update to "download updates but don't install"

ScatterCode said...

Ah. I see. I need to do that then. I'd really rather it didn't just automatically download thigns in the first place. In fact, I'd rather it didn't need updates. You know, like if it just worked properly in the first place. That sort of thing.

Thanks for the tip.

Anonymous said...

im on the verge of Mac-ing myself up. Mac-lovers have a tendency to rub me up the wrong way... when they talk about it as if its more than a peice of IT kit! but i have/had a kick ass spec sony laptop from work... but vista is plain and simple - slow. when i go back to XP i dont feel theres anyhting im missing (apart from the Start-Search thingy - which i use all the time to start up my programs)

i promise not to become a 'mac lover' though... if theres a new/better windows machine in 2-3 years ill jump straight back - just like i do between IE and FF browsers

ScatterCode said...

Yeah, Qmonkey, I agree. My previous computer at home was Windows '98 and Vista really doesn't feel like a big step up even from that.

Macs are really nice, but like you say, owners do tend to be a bit obsessive. The price is what puts me off as well.

I've now got Vista to run Ubuntu as a virtual machine, and that's quite nice - so I use Vista for watching DVDs, and Ubuntu for pretty much everything else.