Ciprian who runs vista4beginners.com is a very enthusiastic Windows user.
We decided we had to know a bit more about the person who was interviewing us and publishing the interviews on his site. I thus decided to interview the interviewer.
Ciprian comes across as a nice helpful person. His website
vista4beginners.com was the runner-up at
The Best Windows Website Contest 2008.
What is your life story in a few sentences?
This is a very tough thing to do but let’s give it a shot. I was born in 1982. Spent most of my childhood in a small town called
Busteni (literally means tree-logs in Romanian). I was lucky to discover computers & technology in 1995, just before going to high-school. At that point I knew that computers were going to be my life. I started reading computer magazines even though my family could not afford buying me a computer. My interest grew with each magazine I read and each informatics class I took in high-school. In 2001, I managed to buy my first computer, ½ of it bought with money earned via a scholarship awarded by Cisco and the Institute of International Education, for my great results during the Cisco CCNA exams. At that time it was quite a personal achievement and I was very proud of it. Since then, computers & technology have been my playfield both at home and at work, a playfield I never got tired of. In 2001 I’ve also discovered rock music and since then I am passionate listener of all things rock, starting with classics such as Pink Floyd or Deep Purple and ending with contemporary bands such as Ayreon or Unheilig.
Which country are you from and what do you do?
I am from
Romania, a Southeastern European country famous for many things including our great gymnasts and programmers. If you want to know more about my country, you should view this 5 minutes clip, called “
A World Without Romania”. You might want to visit Romania afterwards.
Regarding what I do for a living: currently I am Project Manager in the IT Department of Procter & Gamble. Together with people from all over the world, I am implementing a software solution which improves the prediction of demand. The software is called “
Demand Sensing” and it uses complex pattern recognition algorithms to create an accurate prediction of demand for Procter & Gamble products.
Outside my daily job I blog passionately about Windows Vista, project management and how to make great presentations. So far, you can find all my digital work on
Windows Vista for Beginners and
Corporate Geek.
Which was the first version of Windows you worked with? What was your first impression?
Back in 1997 I first used Windows 3.11 and it was a bit scary for me. It wasn’t very intuitive and I had problems doing even the most trivial tasks. It was a very enigmatic operating system.
I was lucky that, a few months later, I got the chance to work with Windows 95 and Windows 98. Both were a major leap in usability and I had no problems working with them.
What about Windows Vista? Do you like it or you consider it to be Windows ME v2.0?
I have been using Windows Vista since it was launched and I am very happy with it. My home network is entirely on Windows Vista and, unlike with Windows XP, we have never seen a Blue Screen of Death. The operating system is very stable and provides the performance levels we need for everything we do, starting with gaming and ending with running virtual machines and testing Windows 7.
Regarding the comparison with Windows ME: the answer is both “Yes!” and “No!”.
“Yes!”, I consider Windows Vista to be Windows ME v2.0 when it comes to the negative image that it has gained. There are lots of people who hate it even though they have never used it. Almost everyone says that “Vista ****s! Do not install it!”. What is more tragic is that there are lots of technically skilled people which believe the same thing. In my view, Windows Vista is a major marketing failure for Microsoft. Their initial marketing campaigns were very weak and they did not really defend their own work. The press gladly spread bad news about Windows Vista and Microsoft had almost no reaction. I think they are aware of this huge problem and this is why they chose to get rid of the Vista brand for Windows 7, even though the two operating systems share the same core.
“No!”, I don’t consider Windows Vista to be Windows ME v2.0 when it comes to things such as stability, security, new features. Especially after Service Pack 1, Windows Vista is a rock solid operating system which introduces lots of good changes to the Windows world.
What is your favorite grouse or complaint about Windows Vista?
What I don’t like about Windows Vista is the fact that there is no “custom” installation option and I cannot remove certain features. I either install everything or nothing. Personally, I don’t use Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player, Windows Contacts or Windows Defender. I prefer other alternatives and I would have enjoyed the option of not installing them or removing them afterwards.
What’s your favorite tip for a new Windows Vista user?
I say this as often as I can:
don’t turn off User Account Control, even if it annoys or confuses you at first. It’s a security feature that works and helps keep Windows Vista much safer than Windows XP ever was. You can make it more flexible by using tools such as
Norton UAC and it will keep your system safe from lots of security threats.
What is your opinion about Windows 7? Do you think it’s simply ‘tweaked Vista’ or Vista v2.0? If you have tried its beta what is the favorite new feature you have liked in it and one suggestion for improvement in it.
I played a bit with a recent beta version of Windows 7 and I like it. However, I don’t consider it very different to Windows Vista. It is very obvious that they share the same code base. My first impression is that Windows 7 is a tweaked version of Windows Vista. However, it is good to see that Microsoft started to listen to the voice of the users and implemented lots of great usability changes.
Unfortunately I did not work too much with Windows 7 so I don’t have yet a favorite new feature or any suggestions for improvement. I will spend more time with it once the Release Candidate version is available.
When did you launch vista4beginners.com and why? And what were your biggest challenges? What do you think it separates your site from the rest?
Windows Vista for Beginners was launched on January 29th, 2007. Why have I launched the site? Well… back in November 2006 I tested the final version of Windows Vista, which, at that time, was released for business customers. I realized that Windows Vista was a huge change in the Windows world and people had to discard some of their old computing habits to use it. At that point I decided together with a good friend of mine, George Grigorita, to launch the website and share our experience with everyone willing to read us. Fortunately for us, we managed to be very successful and to actually help people.
Our biggest challenges?
The first one was to be consistent. There were periods when both I and George were very busy with other things and we sometimes struggled to publish at least one article per week. With time, we managed to find other people willing to write with us, so things got a bit easier.
The second challenge was to come up with original content which brings value to our readers. There are a lot of sites which do what we do. To stand up from the rest you must come with original content and with solutions to real problems. We managed to do a very good job, especially in the last few months.
I believe this is what separates Windows Vista for Beginners from many similar sites: we got better at coming up with original ideas and solutions. You won’t see us making a copy/paste of the work done by others. We try to do research as much as possible when writing about a certain topic. What we write is thoroughly tested on our computers and we don’t skip any steps. We do our best to publish complete tutorials.
If you want to know more about the site and our story you can check a presentation I made, called “
Windows Vista and my LIFE outside Procter &Gamble”.
Any interesting plans for the near future? Any plans for a Windows 7 website?
With the launch of Windows 7, we will most likely stop writing for Windows Vista for Beginners. We already registered the domain 7tutorials.com and we will be back with great content. We want to take what we learned in these last two years and build something bigger and better. Recently we came up with another idea: to launch also a site where people can easily share questions and problems they have with Windows. We will encourage other webmasters and Microsoft Professionals to join the site and help people out. The aim is to make a very user friendly site where beginners can share and find answers to their problems.
Keep it up Ciprian, you have all our best wishes. 