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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>My experience with vista was a dramatic horror
story. I tried to rebuild my Vista image with the disks provided and it wiped my
drive. Vista doesn't have boot disks such as other versions of Microsoft.
Fortunately I backed up my hard drive. </FONT></DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; FONT: 10pt arial; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=tim_linux@wilson-home.com href="mailto:tim_linux@wilson-home.com">Tim
Wilson</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=cialug@cialug.org
href="mailto:cialug@cialug.org">Central Iowa Linux Users Group</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Monday, August 04, 2008 1:04
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Cialug] Microsoft's
attempts to overcome Vista preconceptions</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>I thought I'd weigh in on the subject since my Laptop came with
Vista. I've seen some good and bad things about Vista. First, the
good:<BR><BR>When installing a game, the game automatically got added to the
Games menu. Of course, I'm guessing that's based on a list of executable
names, so newer games might not fair as well.<BR><BR>I wanted to rename a
picture from DSCF0001.JPG to SomethingMeaningful.JPG. When I clicked on
it to rename it, everything but the JPG was selected, so I could change the
name of the file more easily. Of course, if you want to change the
extension, you can press Ctrl-A to select the entire name, and start typing
the new name.<BR><BR>I had a bunch of pictures that I was sending to
someone. I noticed in Windows Explorer, there was a button that said
that I could create a movie. Neat. I created a movie, which was
basically a self-contained slide show.<BR><BR>Renaming of "Documents and
Settings" to Users. I always thought that was stupid. I need to
get to my files, so I need to go to a directory called Documents and
Settings? Of course, they moved things around within the directory, so
if you're trying to find your Firefox profile, you'll have to hunt it down
again. And there are always those ill-behaved apps that "know" things go
into "Documents and Settings", so they'll create the directory and put them
there instead of using the built-in tools to figure out where to put
files.<BR><BR>Adding your user folder to the Desktop, Start Menu, and Windows
Explorer. Now you can go to your directory more easily.<BR><BR>Start
Menu Search. Nice, but I don't use it that much.<BR><BR>Eye candy.
I like having a semi-transparent Start Bar so my wallpaper shows
through.<BR><BR>Now the bad:<BR><BR>Slow. I have 2GB in my laptop, and
my laptop runs slower than my desktop with XP. My desktop has 1GB, and
is an older/slower processor. <BR><BR>Inconsistent. Since finding
the button that said I could create a movie from the pictures, I haven't seen
it again.<BR><BR>Drag-and-drop bug. Say you have an app open, and you
want to drag and drop a file into that app. In previous versions of
Windows, when you would drag the file to the taskbar, the task bar would
appear and you could drop it on your app of choice. For some reason, now
the taskbar remains hidden (if you have auto-hide turned on). So you
basically have to guess where your app was on the taskbar.<BR><BR>Games.
Some higher-end games just don't work. If you force the game back to
DX9, it works better. (Note, this is not something I've experienced, but
I've heard that this is true).<BR><BR>Defrag doesn't show progress. All
it says is the process could take from several minutes to several hours.
You had a defrag that would show you the status. This is
progress?<BR><BR>Non-Cascading Start Menu. Bleh.<BR><BR>UAC. Sure,
you can turn it off, but then you're nagged about it every time you
boot. It would be better if it remembered the request for a few minutes,
like Ubuntu does.<BR><BR>Send To changed. I used to be able to create a
folder with shortcuts in it within Send To (like viewing a file with less, or
editing a file with emacs). Then I could right click a file, select Send
To, select my folder, then select the app I want to send the file to.
Now, when you create a folder within Send To, Vista assumes you want to send
the file to that folder. Really? I want to send a file to a folder
buried within a system folder?<BR><BR>"Security". Vista makes finding
certain folders more difficult, like the Send To folder. You have to
change permissions and ownership to see the folder. That's also true for
the Services file. So you've written an app, and you want to add the
port it uses to the Services file. You need to take ownership of the
file before doing so, even as administrator. This is their idea of
security?<BR><BR>I'm sure there are others, but you get the general
idea. They "broke" a lot of things between versions, and haven't really
shown they're willing to fix them. I had planned to put XP and Ubuntu on
my laptop, but with XP getting harder to find, I might just have to stick with
Vista and Ubuntu.<BR><BR><BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Brandon Griffis <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A
href="mailto:brandongriffis@gmail.com">brandongriffis@gmail.com</A>></SPAN>
wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">
<DIV dir=ltr>This is actually kind of interesting to me. I've been
trying to figure out the pros vs cons of Vista. I think it's easy to
say that "it sucks" but a lot of times when I push for reasons I don't get
much back (usually just "it's so bloated").<BR><BR>Bloat is a genuine
concern, and honestly I'm at a loss to find *what* is bloating Vista vs XP,
as I don't see *much* difference. So I figured I'd ask here to see
what differences people find and their thoughts pro v con.<BR><BR>So here is
the short list of things I do think Vista is good for.<BR><BR>UAC - I
realize I'll probably get some flack on this one, but I think this is a
great thing. Administrative actions *should* need to be
confirmed. Ubuntu (and most desktop linux versions) do the same
thing. It's about time Windows caught up a little to the idea that
there should be a user account and an administrative account, and they
shouldn't be the same thing but you should be able to do the actions without
having to log out and back in (ala win2k). Granted they aren't
actually separate accounts, but still I think it's a step in the right
direction<BR><BR>Start Menu Search - this is quite convenient as it keeps me
from having to leave the keyboard when trying to launch a program in windows
*FINALLY*. (yes I know there are programs that have been around to do
this and that you can setup hotkeys, but I'm talking about built in features
and this is nice).<BR><BR>Installation - This one won't matter for most
people as they get Windows pre-installed. But it's nice to finally
have a windows version that will actually install to SATA drives (XP sp2
wouldn't do that without a separate driver). Which is the second
benefit of the install, you can load drivers from flash or CDs and not have
to hunt around for a floppy (and a driver file small enough to fit on one)
if you *do* need to load a driver during installation. Both of these
things are in the "it's about fscking time" category for me, but again,
improvements over XP so they have to be checked off in the positive category
for Vista.<BR><BR>64-bit OS - I can't count XP 64 as... well, it just didn't
work. 64-bit is an absolute requirement, if for no other reason being
able to actually use more than 3GB of memory.<BR><BR>-----<BR><BR>As for the
problems:<BR><BR>Long boot - It takes a long time to boot. I realize
the idea is to hibernate and restore (but even that takes as long as an XP
boot used to). And hibernating with a dual boot can cause problems
when mounting the partitions in other OSes.<BR><BR>Driver Signing - This is
specifically a 64-bit vista problem. In all the 32-bit versions it
works just like XP where it will tell you that it doesn't recommend it, but
let you override. No problem there. But the 64-bit version *will
not* let you run unsigned drivers period (unless you disable it during every
boot using F8). <BR><BR>Memory hog - No idea why. (perhaps
someone could enlighten me). But 70% of 2GB used up without a single
program running is just insane. (note: that's
un-tweaked).<BR><BR>Missing 3D Interaction - Why on earth develop a desktop
capable of 3D and then do *literally* nothing with it? For the
resources it takes up it should at least offer
something.<BR><BR>Thoughts? Additions? Questions? Tomatoes
to throw?<BR><FONT color=#888888><BR>-B</FONT>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=Wj3C7c><BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Matthew Nuzum <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:newz@bearfruit.org"
target=_blank>newz@bearfruit.org</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE class=gmail_quote
style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid">>From
a co-worker:<BR><BR>--<BR>Matthew Nuzum<BR>newz2000 on
freenode<BR><BR>---------- Forwarded message ----------<BR><BR>Spotted
this: <A href="http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/"
target=_blank>http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/</A><BR><BR>In interviews
with computer users, Microsoft have been asking what<BR>people think of
Vista. That is, people who've never used Vista.<BR><BR>According to the
video on the above website, the response was largely negative.<BR><BR>They
then showed the interviewees Vista but pretended it was called<BR>Windows
Mojave and that it was the next version of Windows. Cue lots<BR>of "Wow,
it's so cool" responses.<BR><BR>At the end of the video, the interviewer
comes clean and, again, cue<BR>"I gotta get it" type
responses.<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Cialug
mailing list<BR><A href="mailto:Cialug@cialug.org"
target=_blank>Cialug@cialug.org</A><BR><A
href="http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug"
target=_blank>http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug</A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></DIV></DIV></DIV><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Cialug
mailing list<BR><A
href="mailto:Cialug@cialug.org">Cialug@cialug.org</A><BR><A
href="http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug"
target=_blank>http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug</A><BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><BR
clear=all><BR>-- <BR>Tim <BR></DIV>
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