I’m writing this and all upcoming Blogs on My 3 year old Dell Inspiron 1100 Pentium 4, 2.4 GHz and a Gig of ram with Vista Release Candidate & Office 2007. I won’t be going back to my XP and office 2003. Vista has a lot of neat features that I’ll be exploring soon.

I did a few tech tweaks (turned off Indexing) and got the drivers correct. It looks like Microsoft will pull off the impossible. Releasing a new OS is hard enough, Imagine releasing your Flagship Office suite at the same time. I didn’t think they could do it. I was wrong. My little Dell with Vista and Office will be my primary work horse.

I’ll admit that this OS is still raw. Incomplete Help pages, driver issues, etc.  I’m happy enough with it to use it as my primary Field Laptop. My PC seems faster than XP, much more robust.  Don’t rush out to get this gem. Give it 3-6 months until most of the issues have been ironed out. I spent 28 man-hours getting the OS right, but I run Wireless (encrypted) and other considerations.

Good Job Microsoft, the Engineers have done an excellent job. You do need a way to contact the staff with problems found in the beta testing.

St. Pete city leaders are deciding on who'll be the Wi-Fi company for this city. Brighthouses proposal is the best and with free access to it's customers and low prices to others is a Win Win. Since Bright was the first cable company in St. Pete I really think that gives them the edge with there existing equipment allready in place.

Working in the city you've grown up in has its benefits. I always run in to somebody who knows me, my parents or sisters, etc. My Dean of Girls at Northeast now calls me whenever theres a problem with her PC. I'm glad it was the dean of girls, the dean of boys knew me fairly well during my time there. It's really cool helping people who were instrumental in your early development.

The Dean of Girls now calls regulary with problems, and it's great seeing her.

Dine One One (http://www.dineoneone.com/ ) is a restaurant food delivery business located in Tampa employing 20. 2:30 PM Friday Labor Day weekend, there servers go down. They called Dell Support and for 2 hours they had them do everything short of formatting the drive. When Dell recommended Formatting Ken(Owner) said no and called the one company that could get his servers running.

4:30 PM Abacus Computer Repair/Data Recovery receives a call from DineOneOne, Help. Abacus’s Tech arrived within an hour coming from St. Pete over the Howard Frankenstein. After determing corruption, Microsoft Server 2003 was loaded saving the files and file structure. Databases were given there previous settings and DineOneOne was once again taking orders by 6:30 pm.

Before leaving the Abacus Tech checked security, installed an anti virus, and scheduled for a proactive service call.

Get this, Abacus Computer Repair/Data Recovery only charges $55 an hour for there services. A previous relationship always gets you through the door quicker. Normal rates are from 7:00 AM to 5:00 Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 3:00 Saturday and Sunday, and the best part: only $35 an hour.

Were located at 2627 38^th avenue north in St. Pete. Check our web at http://www.AbacusComputer.US