Hewie's Views and Reviews
By Hewie Poplock

Welcome to this issue of Hewie's Views & Reviews. Be sure to visit Hewie's Favorites at http://www.hewie.net/ .

++++ My answer to "Should I upgrade to Microsoft Vista or Office 2007?"
++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

++++ My answer to "Should I upgrade to Microsoft Vista or Office 2007?"

I am not going describe the benefits, the changes, or the problems with Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. I am just going to tell you about my reasons for my not upgrading at this time. I have several computers, but I primarily use an Intel 3.06 Ghz based desktop and my Intel Centrino Laptop. Both computers are about 2 or 3 years old.

I do have one refurbished computer that I am testing Vista and Office 2007. More about that computer as you read on.

The desktop computer is my main system. It has 1GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive. It should handle Vista and Office 2007 without a problem. However, I have several programs that I have yet to establish whether they will work with Vista.

In order to decide to upgrade, I have to look at which programs and hardware that I use and cannot live without. One of the most important items that I use is my Palm LifeDrive PDA. According to the Palm website, "Palm Quick Install (the desktop application that allows you to move files like .prc and .pdb to your Palm device) and Palm® LifeDrive™ mobile manager software are not currently Vista compatible."

Well, that is the deal breaker. I also checked and the HotSync software is not yet compatible with Office 2007, especially Outlook, which I use to keep my Palm synchronized with my main computer.

My laptop is used for traveling and presentations. I did test one of the Vista Release Candidates (testing prior to final release) and the internal wi-fi did not work at all. The connection used for projection equipment also did not work. I do not know if either of these problems has been resolved in the final release of Vista.

I use a pc-card device to connect to the Internet using either wi-fi or cellular access. The card is a Sony Ericsson GC89 from T-Mobile. Neither company has updated their software to work on the Vista platform. So I have decided not to upgrade my laptop to Vista. However I have installed Office 2007 on this Windows XP computer without any glitches.

My test computer was an E-machine that I had replaced with a generic motherboard that uses an AMD Athlon 2200+ and 512 MB of RAM, with 64MB of that used as video RAM. To help that machine run faster, I purchased a 2GB USB thumb drive, and use it as additional RAM. According to Microsoft, I can use Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system. You can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional memory "under the hood." I have added over 1800MB of RAM, but first had to format the USB drive as NTFS for it to work.

So, my answer to the question, "should I upgrade to Vista and Office 2007?", is to research everything that you use first, then make the decision. Of course do a complete backup of your data first, "just in case…"


++++ New additions to Hewie's Favorites

Ask Me Help Desk
http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/
online expert community where you can ask questions in any topic and have them answered for free by experts

Bargainer.com
http://www.bargainer.com/
News for shoppers - news that saves. Find hot bargains and coupons to your favorite online stores

Caedes.net
http://www.caedes.net/
Collection of great desktop wallpaper and desktop backgrounds from the caedes community. Over 12000 images: photography, 3D computer art, fractal, abstracts, nature, and space

Cheat Sheets
http://www.ilovejackdaniels.com/cheat-sheets/
HTML - CSS - PHP - others. Number of Cheat Sheets to download

CSS Property Index
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/css/propindex/all.htm
All CSS Properties Listed Alphabetically

Expression Web Help
http://any-expression.com/
Expression Web Designs - Expression Web Help - Expression Web Tutorials and Tips

Free Online Picture Resizer
http://www.picresize.com/
Resize, shrink, and crop your pictures online for free Resize photos before posting them on your MySpace, Xanga, Facebook, and blog

Freezing and Food Safety
http://www.fsis.usda.gov/Fact_Sheets/Focus_On_Freezing/index.asp
Fact sheet, formerly called Focus on Freezing, contains information about freezing, how to safely freeze food, and the effects of freezing on food

Index DOT Html
http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/html/index10.htm
Advanced HTML Reference

Neatorama
http://www.neatorama.com/
Features the best, worst, smallest, largest, first, oldest, and coolest of many subjects

One True Media
http://www.onetruemedia.com/
Easily upload and edit your digital video and photos, add in music, cool effects and transitions, stock art and voila a video montage that captures the moment and preserves the memory to easily share online or on DVD

Sushi FAQ
http://www.sushifaq.com/index.htm
Devoted to sushi, sashimi, and related Japanese food. Learn all about sushi and sashimi and its health benefits as well as how to make sushi at home

Ten CSS tricks you may not know
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/css/css-tricks.shtml
Article offering some lesser known CSS tricks - learn something new

Pixel2life Free Tutorial Search Engine
http://www.pixel2life.com/
Pixel2life is the largest tutorial search engine on the internet catering to graphic designers and programmers. From Photoshop to Poser to C++

USB Pen Drive Linux
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=174939
World's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications - SourceForge.net files

Webcredible
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/
Usability and accessibility consulting, training and CSS web development from Webcredible. Site provides a large resources area