Today I started my journey to acquiring my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer 2003 certification. I am training at TechSkills, a nationally recognized innovator in technical and professional education. The existing skills I’ll polish and the new skills I’ll gain will offer significant benefit to my clients. Though MCSE training is aimed at business needs, its core helps with residential needs, too. In addition to the MCSE-specific training, TechSkills instructors also offer numerous “microlabs” on various topics of their fields of mastery.My first course is “Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows XP Professional” and should progress quickly (once I get used to the way things work at TechSkills), considering my years of experience with XP. Upon passing Microsoft’s exam for this course, I’ll be a Microsoft Certified Professional and be off to a good start on achieving the MCSE certification. I’ll post updates on my progress and milestones.

Along with my years of experience and my CompTIA A+ certification, being a MCSE really beefs up PCIAM’s credentials and hopefully my ability to assure clients that their needs are covered. Great customer service goes a long way and it’s one thing I am adamant about providing my clients. My clients also deserve great technical service and continuing my education helps ensure they get it.

I recently loaded Windows Vista Home Basic on a spare laptop to explore the low-end option of Microsoft’s latest operating system. Besides the occasional (OK, very frequent) UAC prompts, it’s pretty nifty. My main concern for many users is they will likely never repeat the same procedure twice when making changes to the operating system. I say that because there are so many different ways to get to where you want to go. Sometimes, limiting options makes for a better user experience. I expect someone will contact me for help because they changed something and don’t know how they got there! One good thing, though, is knowing what you’re looking for can save you. The search function (available almost anywhere in Vista) is pretty powerful. Say you want to get into the Device Manager - simply type dev into a search field, press enter and you’ll have a link to it in the first few results.

OK, enough of my Vista review. There are a million reviews of it already! The thing that prompted me to write this post is what I just experienced. I have a personal photo gallery on Picasa Web Albums that I tried to access as a visitor using Internet Explorer 7 on the Vista laptop. Instead of taking me to the page showing my public albums, the Picasa front page with a Google Account login window appeared asking me to sign in or create an account. HUH? This address is not supposed to require a login to view the albums. I started Firefox on the same laptop, keyed in the same address and… voila! The index of my albums showed. Hmmm… What’s amiss? This little “Protected Mode On” indicator at the bottom of IE looked suspicious. I double-clicked on it and unchecked the “Enable Protected Mode” option and clicked OK, acknowledged the warning (surprised it was not the UAC) and re-entered the address. Again, voila! My index page showed.

Now people getting into my measly little photo gallery is not of great concern. However, being redirected from a perfectly harmless photo album (or other harmless site that Little Timmy might send to Grandpa) without telling of the redirect, why the redirect and, quite importantly, how to get past the redirect… That ain’t all that good. Now when I choose to email a link to my gallery or to another such site, do I have to include a blurb of directions for Vista/IE7 users to access the site? Wow. That really improves my and the recipients’ computer experience.

In light of this and the plain ol’ newness of Vista, I counsel my clients NOT to purchase Vista just yet. Let the “first adopters” play with it for awhile and put it through real-world paces. After Microsoft and other developers have worked out the kinks (about this time next year?), then consider the purchase. For what most of my clients need, Windows XP with service pack 2 is highly adequate. If you need a new PC now, consider a refurbished unit with XP. It’s a good buy.