People have been starting to ask me if they should upgrade to Windows Vista.  I’ve been running it on my Gateway M675 laptop for awhile now and have been pretty happy with it overall.  Most of the issues I have encountered so far were caused by a lack of support from software and hardware vendors.  However, over the past few months vendor support has been getting a lot better.  The following article by Ed Bott goes into more details on how the hardware support has been improving:

The Vista driver outlook gets a little brighter by ZDNet’s Ed Bott — I’ve been watching for the past six months as PC hardware makers deliver updated drivers to make their products work with Windows Vista. Lately, the trickle has turned into a steady stream, with some high-volume hardware companies delivering solid 32- and 64-bit updates. But there are still some rough edges to deal with.

If you want to upgrade to Windows Vista the easiest thing to do is to purchase a name brand computer with it preinstalled.  That way you know all the hardware is compatible and has already been tested to work well with it.  In addition, it will probably end up being more cost-effective in the long run since it will cost a couple hundred dollars just to purchase Vista (the price varies depending on what edition you choose).  That isn’t figuring in the cost of any hardware upgrades or labor if you need to have someone help you get it installed.

If you are planning on upgrading to Vista from Windows XP make sure you do a little homework first to make sure your computer meets the recommended system requirements.  You also need to make sure all of your other hardware and software is compatible.  If you are already running Windows XP then a great place to start is by running Microsoft’s free Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor utility.  It will look at everything installed on your computer and let you know what steps you need to take before upgrading.  If you are running a computer that came with anything older than Windows XP you should probably consider purchasing a new computer to get the best bang for your buck.  Here is an excerpt from the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor website:

The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor will help you to determine if your Windows XP-based PC can run Windows Vista. You can also use the Upgrade Advisor to determine if your Windows Vista-based PC is ready for an upgrade to a more powerful edition of Windows Vista.

This small software tool will scan your computer and create an easy-to-understand report of all known system, device, and program compatibility issues, and recommend ways to resolve them. Upgrade Advisor can also help you to choose the edition of Windows Vista that best fits the way you want to use your computer.

If you have an office with multiple computers networked together you might want to check out the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment.  It will scan all the computers on your network and make a comprehensive report on which ones are compatible with Vista.

It is impossible to give you the best advice for you without knowing your specific situation.  In general, Vista has made some nice improvements over Windows XP and I have been pretty happy with it so far.  Just make sure you do your homework first by checking to see if everything on the computer that you rely on is compatible with Vista.  Now, if only Gateway would release updated drivers for my M675 laptop :p

Here is a tip from the Microsoft Office Outlook Team Blog about how to reduce spam by using the new postmarking feature in Outlook 2007.

Postmarking is a new part of the Outlook 2007 junk e-mail feature; it complements the existing feature set to reduce the amount of spam in your inbox.

One of the great advantages of e-mail is that it is easy and cheap to send. Unfortunately, this is the very same reason that makes it so useful to spammers as it enables them to send huge amounts of email in bulk.

Think of Postmarking as computational “postage” imposed when sending email. This is a small burden for an individual user, but is a very large burden for spammers. Spammers rely on being able to send thousands of mails per hour, and in order to be able to send spam with postmarking turned on, they would have to invest a very large amount of money to expand their computational power.

Postmarking generation is only present in Outlook 2007 and postmark validation is present in Outlook 2007, Windows Live Mail , Exchange 2007, and Windows Mail in Vista.

So, how does it work?

Sending e-mail with postmark: Before messages leave your Outbox, Office Outlook 2007 stamps each message with an e-mail postmark. The postmark incorporates unique characteristics of the message, including the list of recipients and the time when the message was sent, making the postmark valid only for that message. As a result it takes a little longer for the message to leave the Outbox – however, this is not noticeable during normal day-to-day Outlook usage.

Receiving e-mail with a postmark: When a recipient e-mail application that supports Outlook e-mail postmarking receives postmarked mail, it recognizes the postmark. The postmark means that the message is most likely not spam and this is an additional factor evaluated by the junk e-mail filter when determining if an email is spam or not.

How to turn Postmarking off

To turn on/off Postmarking, use the following option in Outlook 2007:

1. On the Tools menu, click Options.

2. On the Preferences tab, under E-mail, click Junk E-mail.

3. Clear the When sending e-mail, postmark the message to help recipient e-mail programs distinguish regular e-mail from junk e-mail check box.

NOTE:  I updated the post to include a copy of the instructions (without including the screen shot at the end).  I also noticed after posting this tip that it is currently only supported within Microsoft’s e-mail software (i.e. Outlook 2007, Exchange, etc.).  That severly limits the effectiveness of this feature because there are a lot of people out there that use e-mail software that isn’t made by Microsoft.  You’re much better off using a server-based solution that works well no matter what client everyone else uses.  The solution we use ourselves, as well as resell and recommend to clients, is called ExchangeDefender.  It has cut the time we spend dealing with spam down to less than 5 minutes a day.