Thank god for that – because the tool provided by Microsoft didn’t support many UPS’s anyway, which meant you had to use 3rd party software. In other words, the inclusion was pointless.

I found a really good utility that works in 2000, XP, 2003, Vista & 7 called UPS Assistant. Best part is UPS Assistant is free.

It auto detected my cheap no-brand UPS and only required slight tuning to the min & max voltage parameters so it matched the meter on the UPS. This particular UPS was not supported by Windows XP, but does work on Linux.

UPS Assistant can send out e-mail notifications on power failures or run a command.

It does seem Microsoft have improved the kernel since Vista, so there are some performance benefits. Additionally the visual effects have been “toned down” so they don’t hammer graphics and CPU as much.

And probably the most significant change – User Access Control is nothing like it is in Vista and prompts far less.

I myself did end up skipping Windows Vista. However selling it as an OEM I never had much complaints and in fact told my customers I believed the bad rumours about Vista do not come from knowledgeable sources, neither are the rumours accurate. I actually built quite a success list of machines upgraded to Vista etc., where Vista was actually faster! Although I do disable UAC on Vista completely.

Trying out the Windows Live Writer too, since its compatible with Wordpress. I just might blog more often if I can easily post articles.

Its been a problem for the past month, if you ask me.

Next scheduled update: Jan 9, 2009

Merry christmas from Microsoft!