[Cialug] Microsoft's attempts to overcome Vista preconceptions

Mon Aug 4 15:57:02 CDT 2008

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. 
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tim Wilson 
  To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group 
  Sent: Monday, August 04, 2008 1:04 PM
  Subject: Re: [Cialug] Microsoft's attempts to overcome Vista preconceptions

  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:

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.

  Adding your user folder to the Desktop, Start Menu, and Windows Explorer.  Now you can go to your directory more easily.

  Start Menu Search.  Nice, but I don't use it that much.

  Eye candy.  I like having a semi-transparent Start Bar so my wallpaper shows through.

  Now the bad:

  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.  

  Inconsistent.  Since finding the button that said I could create a movie from the pictures, I haven't seen it again.

  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.

  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).

  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?

  Non-Cascading Start Menu.  Bleh.

  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.

  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?

  "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?

  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.

  On Mon, Aug 4, 2008 at 10:46 AM, Brandon Griffis <brandongriffis at gmail.com> wrote:

    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").

    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.

    So here is the short list of things I do think Vista is good for.

    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

    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).

    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.

    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.

    -----

    As for the problems:

    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.

    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).  

    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).

    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.

    Thoughts?  Additions?  Questions?  Tomatoes to throw?

    -B

    On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 10:02 AM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:

      >From a co-worker:

      --
      Matthew Nuzum
      newz2000 on freenode

      ---------- Forwarded message ----------

      Spotted this: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

      In interviews with computer users, Microsoft have been asking what
      people think of Vista. That is, people who've never used Vista.

      According to the video on the above website, the response was largely negative.

      They then showed the interviewees Vista but pretended it was called
      Windows Mojave and that it was the next version of Windows. Cue lots
      of "Wow, it's so cool" responses.

      At the end of the video, the interviewer comes clean and, again, cue
      "I gotta get it" type responses.
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  -- 
  Tim 

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