Vista OK for CCNA?

jrmcent

Right now I have vista home premium on my machine. I am beginning to study for the ccna and get some routers for a lab. Now should I stick with vista or should I go back to xp? I know vista no longer has HyperTerminal, so is it worth switching back to xp? Any suggestions would be great.

malcybood

use this. does the same thing as hyperterminal

http://www.ayera.com/teraterm/

Ed Rooney

Vista + Teraterm should do you right. Just make sure you know the console connections settings for the test.

jrmcent

Awesome thanks for the link! So it seems like vista will be ok in that sense, but do you think xp is better because it has more documentation? I am just wondering because I don't want to run into a problem while I am running vista and then realize it wouldn't have happened, or I would have been able to solve it quicker, on xp. I know its an opinion question probably, but any suggestions would be great.

malcybood

jrmcent wrote:

Awesome thanks for the link! So it seems like vista will be ok in that sense, but do you think xp is better because it has more documentation? I am just wondering because I don't want to run into a problem while I am running vista and then realize it wouldn't have happened, or I would have been able to solve it quicker, on xp. I know its an opinion question probably, but any suggestions would be great.

Personally I wouldn't remove Vista to install XP. Teraterm should be fine to use with Vista but If you are conscious about wanting an XP box, why don't you install XP so you have a dual boot XP/Vista system?

Here's the instructions how to do it, then you have the best of both worlds - Slick

http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp

jrmcent

LOL that totally escaped my mind. I used to have Linux and XP on my machine but I erased them both when installing vista. Thats what I am going to do, Thanks!

Webmaster

It really doesn't matter what operating system you run. It might as well be DOS, Windows 3.11, Windows XP/Vista/Mobile, Linux or MAC OS even. As long as it runs a terminal client like HyperTerminal or Teraterm and supports the TCP/IP suite (inlcluding telnet), which they all do so it's irrelevant for doing the CCNA.

jrmcent

ok great, thanks for the help everyone

Paul Boz

For what it's worth, I did 99% of my studying using a Solaris server at work in my spare time. It would probably benefit you to understand how to interact with routers and other networking equipment within a unix environment anyway, since in many cases you'll be forced to do so in a professional environment.