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Last Night, Windows Live OneCare informed me that I was now rounding the last corner towards the home stretch.

With the exception that mine said “30 Days” where the screen shot says 21 Days. I neglected to take a screen shot of my pop up (it was 11:30pm, and I was trying to watch the end of a DVD, while an automated system scan by Windows Live One Care not scheduled by myself in any way, was taking up 100% of the CPU time). I wonder if Windows Live One Care might actually start to do a better job, in an attempt to encourage me to purchase a subscription at the end? Some how I don’t think so.

Issues

The amount of software still not compatible with Windows Vista is becoming a problem. So far I have been able to install some software using the Windows Vista Compatibility Settings. Windows Vista Compatibility does work well, but it’s not the solution for every program. Some software applications just will not work.

I guess my biggest complainy is a result of the amount of times Firefox has crashed in the last 40 days. It crashes now at least once every 2-3 days. I applaud its ability to restore my session after the crash, but why did Firefox crash in the first place?

Windows Live One Care still continues to can my system every damn night! When 90 days are over, I will be removing Windows Live One Care, and installing a real firewall and anti virus software combination. It seems that the free 90 day trial, can’t actually remove anything from the system, it merely finds viruses and spy-ware and “quarantines” them. Want to remove the malware? Sorry, have to pay for a subscription to be able to do that! As for the monthly Tune Up. What Tune Up? I haven’t seen it once yet!

The installation of Windows Live One Care has probably been the worst caveat so far. The integrated firewall is particularly annoying. Especially when the pop messages for programs that require access to the internet, always manage to appear behind absolutely everything else. To make matters worse, they don’t flash on the task bar, like a new active window does. This then causes programs to function strangely, because they need access to the internet, which they don’t have, because Windows Vista failed to notify me correctly.

For some reason, Windows Live One Care also continues to disable Windows Defender. I have no idea why this occurs. Every time I go to run Windows Defender, or it is scheduled to run, I get a pop up message telling me that Windows Defender has been disabled, and that I need to re-enable it. The disabling seems to happen all the time, and is completely invisible to me. Sometimes Windows Defender must be disabled for days at a time, as it often needs to download updates, and than perform several scans. On My PC with Windows Vista, this never happens. My PC however, does not have Windows Live One Care installed either. In fact, My PC is running perfectly fine, with the exception of the degradation in graphics performance.

Pretty soon, getting a replacement AGP graphics card won’t be too easy. Better start shopping around on eBay now I think!

Power consumption is something that I feel Windows Vista does not take care of too well. When I was running Windows XP, I was able to use my laptop, on batter power for a couple of hours. With Windows Vista, set to “Power Saving Mode”. I am lucky if I am able to get 30 minutes out of my laptop, before the performance is so low that my system is unusable. I guess if I turned off Windows Aero, I might get a few more minutes, but wouldn’t it be useful if Windows Vista just reverted to the Basic Theme when the systems is running on battery? It’s not as if it is a big task to change to the basic theme. Just stop the Windows Display Manager server (WDM).

With all of that our of the way, Windows Vista has still been quite good otherwise. I have my complaints, but I haven’t been forced to go back to Linux. Oh how I do miss my Fedora! I wonder will I get to use Fedora 7 much, before Fedora 8 is released? According to the Fedora Release Schedule, I will get a month or so of use before Fedora 8 is released. I know I could just continue to use Fedora 7, but I like to live on the edge!