First thing one notices after installing Office 2007 is, “HOLY @#$%, where are all the freaking buttons and menues?!!?”  I had this exact reaction but I intend to move forward with the application.  I’m hoping Microsoft’s decision to change the entire visual layout and design of the Office Application Suite will be benificial for me.  I’m sure they’ve promised everything under the sun from “more time” to “faster navigation”.  I however am somewhat hesitant to immediately believe such marketing nonsense.

Along with the other 8,987,234,435 entries I promise to write, this is another topic that I hope to hit upon in the near future.

Well I’m on round two of installing Windows Vista.  The main reason being that McAffee Anti-Virus, if the wrong version, which I thought I purchased the right one, blows the hell out of the OS.   I had memory messages displaying and this and that and this and that… blagh blagh blagh.

Needless to say I uninstalled it and it wasn’t all gone, it instead continued to act as a virus itself causing havoc with the memory.  So reload I did.

Now with a clean load of Vista I went about troubleshooting some other issues I’ve had.  Nothing out of the ordinary with a major operating system upgrade.  The first thing was the attempt at installing the correct components with IIS 7 so that I could then install the development tools I needed.

One of the problems I ran into was the inability to install reporting services.  So after a quick internet search via Google I came up with some answers in this kb article. This same issue is brought up over on William Li’s Blog.  He has the list of required IIS parts along with some SP2 notes and errata.

After I got it installed I couldn’t login to the blasted server.  I then went searching in regards to that and found a blog entry by Robert Burke pointing out that SP2 is required for SQL Server 2005 to work under Vista.

Now that I have been through the installation strangeness that SQL Server 2005 has put before me I am going to embark on Team Foundation Server (Hopefully) and finally Visual Studio Team Developer Edition!  So stay tuned!

…and now I get to go through multiple days of figuring everything out real quick…

…and of course multiple days of getting all the apps installed and features setup the way I want them!

I received my first copy of Windows Vista today.  It’s gonna either get installed on the laptop, but if that doesn’t work out so great (I have little faith in Fujutsu drivers) it will then go on the desktop machine.

I have my fingers crossed that it’s a new world of fun exploration and… blagh blagh blagh.

If it loads on my laptop WITH IIS capability I will be stoked.  It is the “Ultimate” version so it should have the whole can of worms!

About 11-12 months ago I bought a Fujitsu Laptop that had Windows XP pre-installed, as things go, it is a mediocre at best Windows XP Load.  It has what seems to be the required annoyance software from the manufacturer.  I tried reinstalling Windows XP Clean, but that didn’t seem to go so great.  Very annoying.  I’m not one to just give up easy so I tried to boot various ways and still no go.  I finally just gave up and reinstalled the “Factory CDs” that put all the regular proprietary crap back on the machine with Windows XP.

One of the main reasons I bought the laptop, which is now obvious I should have just waited and got a Dell, is to do development on the machine.  IIS however will not install with this particular version of Windows XP and whatever registry hacks/tweaks Fujitsu’s infinitely wise techies decided to make.  Everytime I try installing IIS I get some annoying registry error issue.  This is the second load on the machine so I know it isn’t “the current load” crap.  It just doesn’t work.

So with this being a MAJOR hurdle for the primary purpose of my laptop I think I’ll be getting/purchasing a copy of Windows Vista.  I played around with it a bit already and it looks rather nice.  If it is all it is cracked up to be, amid some of the media negativity, I’m thinking it might be a wise investment.  The only problem next is to dig up the obscene amount of money for it and whatever else is requisite I get, such as a virus scanner that is compatible with Vista.

Hmpf.  A developers woes, never ending.