Practical tips for migrating to Vista notebook

I recently migrated to a new Windows Vista notebook and I'm still having problems working on it. So allow me to share my Vista migration tips, and hopefully you won't experience the same problems:

Choose Vista Business, Ultimate or Enterprise: These editions of Vista have a built-in backup feature, which should be very useful for backing up your work to an external hard disk.

Get a fast processor and plenty of RAM: Vista will make good use of all available CPU and RAM resources (up to 4GB).

Install Vista Service Pack 1 for bug fixes and performance improvements in Vista.

Install Microsoft Office 2007: Your notebook manufacturer may have preinstalled a trial version of Office 2007 on your notebook. Uninstall it before installing your licensed copy of Office 2007, or you will see the message "Non-Commercial Use" every time you use Office (which is happening to me right now).

Problems accessing old secure Web sites: You may be unable to access some secure corporate Web sites and Web applications that use older SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption schemes. My colleague Maung Maung has provided a very helpful solution, click here to read.

Some websites don't work with Vista because Vista uses NTLM version 2 for authentication, whereas the older websites only support NTLM version 1. Follow the instructions here and change the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA\LMCompatibilityLevel to 1. This makes Vista authenticate properly with older websites, while still supporting NTLM version 2 for newer websites.

Upgrade your corporate VPN (virtual private network) client software: If you're using a corporate VPN (e.g. Cisco VPN), you may need to install a newer version of your VPN client software that supports Vista. Test your corporate VPN before traveling, or you may have difficulty working overseas on your new notebook.

Remote access for your old notebook: Consider installing a remote access software (like LogMeIn) in your old notebook, in case you need to run any special applications that don't work on your Vista notebook.

Virtualize your old notebook: It's technically possible to capture a complete image of your old notebook and run it on your new notebook as a virtual machine. That way you can run your old applications within the virtual machine on your new notebook. I tried virtualizing my old notebook using Acronis True Image Echo with Universal Restore and it seemed to work, but it required plenty of CPU and RAM to operate the virtual machine properly.

Configure your notebook for regular backups: Just click Start -> All Programs -> Backup and Restore Centre to back up your notebook. It's good to do a complete PC backup after installing all your work applications, and again every few weeks in case your notebook fails to boot up properly (which happens sometimes to my home Vista PC). Do a weekly file backup, or even nightly if possible.