G
Guest
I'm a long-time PC User and recently retired app support manager. A few
weeks back, I purchased a new laptop (specs below). Even though Vista was
available by then, I almost purchased a machine with XP Pro as Vista was
still pretty much a newborn o/s. Then I thought about my experiences with
moving to XP, which had been uniformly positive, both in my job and at home,
and I took the leap to Vista. Every day, I regret that decision more and
more and I sincerely wish I'd remained with XP. Vista is certainly pretty,
but it's costing me far too much to use and I can't trust it any more. Given
that it rarely trusts me when I ask it to do something, I desperately want to
toss it out of bed and look for a divorce.
I spend 10-12 hours a day conducting genealogical research online. In
most cases, this involves searching the holdings and data of paid
subscription sites for electronic versions of historical documents and
archival material I can refer to in my research. My time is valuable and the
searching, aside from being a tiring activity, costs money. Purchasing
copies of source documents if and when I discover any, costs substantially
more money. Yesterday, I did my research on my new laptop, locating (it was
- at first - a very productive day...) and purchasing a number of documents
I'd been searching for at length. When I find any of these, I usually also
save a text file with information on the source I used, for reference
purposes. Today, the only record I have of yesterday's work and the
documents that cost me well over $100 in all to purchase are my text files;
Vista is claiming complete ignorance (none of the files even show up in
Search results, even when searching on every last file modified over the last
24 hours!). The files themselves were from various sites, and were *.jpg,
*.djvu (DejaVu, a format used by archives), *.tif and *.pdf. In most cases,
at the time I saved them (all to the same "Family History" folder I created
one level under my "Documents" sub-folder), I got a warning message from
Windows, saying (something like) that "...for my own good, Windows (Vista)
would save the file to my Temporary Internet Files folder" (rather than to
the folder I specified) "...did I want to open that folder?" This was
annoying and alarming, but as I was getting numbed by the constant stream of
second-guessing messages from Vista, I wasn't overly surprised. The message
offered no alternatives, which was rather upsetting, and in most cases, I
said "Yes" to opening the folder (no idea why it asked me to do that and no
reason was given by Vista.
However, after the file save (or not) was complete, I repeated the save
process as a check. Very surprisingly, when I went to (re?)save (or not)
each file in its original destination folder (rather than in the Temporary
Internet folder), Windows (Vista) said it was already there (that is, in the
desired destination folder - in fact, in the save dialog, with "Folders"
opened, I could see its filename and icon there), and did I wish to overwrite
it? Today, despite having seen what appeared to be those files there,
correctly saved, yesterday, none remain and I have wasted my day and a good
chunk of money. Where have my files gone? They cost me, so this is no
simple matter What did Vista do with them? Is there some way to make this o/s
work responsibly? Today, I will have to repurchase - on my XP Pro desktop,
which I can trust - new files to replace the ones Vista lost. For now, I'm
staying clear of Vista except to play games - which is what it did to me.
I am the Administrator on my laptop, which has Windows Vista Home Premium
on HP Pavilion dv2000 (WEI Rating 3.0) w/AMD Turion 64, 2 GHz, 959 MB RAM;
security is Norton, pre-installed.
weeks back, I purchased a new laptop (specs below). Even though Vista was
available by then, I almost purchased a machine with XP Pro as Vista was
still pretty much a newborn o/s. Then I thought about my experiences with
moving to XP, which had been uniformly positive, both in my job and at home,
and I took the leap to Vista. Every day, I regret that decision more and
more and I sincerely wish I'd remained with XP. Vista is certainly pretty,
but it's costing me far too much to use and I can't trust it any more. Given
that it rarely trusts me when I ask it to do something, I desperately want to
toss it out of bed and look for a divorce.
I spend 10-12 hours a day conducting genealogical research online. In
most cases, this involves searching the holdings and data of paid
subscription sites for electronic versions of historical documents and
archival material I can refer to in my research. My time is valuable and the
searching, aside from being a tiring activity, costs money. Purchasing
copies of source documents if and when I discover any, costs substantially
more money. Yesterday, I did my research on my new laptop, locating (it was
- at first - a very productive day...) and purchasing a number of documents
I'd been searching for at length. When I find any of these, I usually also
save a text file with information on the source I used, for reference
purposes. Today, the only record I have of yesterday's work and the
documents that cost me well over $100 in all to purchase are my text files;
Vista is claiming complete ignorance (none of the files even show up in
Search results, even when searching on every last file modified over the last
24 hours!). The files themselves were from various sites, and were *.jpg,
*.djvu (DejaVu, a format used by archives), *.tif and *.pdf. In most cases,
at the time I saved them (all to the same "Family History" folder I created
one level under my "Documents" sub-folder), I got a warning message from
Windows, saying (something like) that "...for my own good, Windows (Vista)
would save the file to my Temporary Internet Files folder" (rather than to
the folder I specified) "...did I want to open that folder?" This was
annoying and alarming, but as I was getting numbed by the constant stream of
second-guessing messages from Vista, I wasn't overly surprised. The message
offered no alternatives, which was rather upsetting, and in most cases, I
said "Yes" to opening the folder (no idea why it asked me to do that and no
reason was given by Vista.
However, after the file save (or not) was complete, I repeated the save
process as a check. Very surprisingly, when I went to (re?)save (or not)
each file in its original destination folder (rather than in the Temporary
Internet folder), Windows (Vista) said it was already there (that is, in the
desired destination folder - in fact, in the save dialog, with "Folders"
opened, I could see its filename and icon there), and did I wish to overwrite
it? Today, despite having seen what appeared to be those files there,
correctly saved, yesterday, none remain and I have wasted my day and a good
chunk of money. Where have my files gone? They cost me, so this is no
simple matter What did Vista do with them? Is there some way to make this o/s
work responsibly? Today, I will have to repurchase - on my XP Pro desktop,
which I can trust - new files to replace the ones Vista lost. For now, I'm
staying clear of Vista except to play games - which is what it did to me.
I am the Administrator on my laptop, which has Windows Vista Home Premium
on HP Pavilion dv2000 (WEI Rating 3.0) w/AMD Turion 64, 2 GHz, 959 MB RAM;
security is Norton, pre-installed.