Lukas Beeler’s IT Blog

Yes.

Vista isn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread. Vista isn’t revolutionary. Vista isn’t Wow. But it is a lot better than Windows XP. It’s evolutionary, not revolutionary.

I’ve been using Windows Vista for over half a year. There are several very cool improvements in Windows Vista, which you might not have heard of. I don’t really care about Aero, but i do care about all the other, important enhancements in Windows Vista.

• Virtual file store
  
  Windows Vista allows broken or legacy programs to run without admin privileges, by creating a virtual store for programs that try to write to %ProgramFiles% or %SystemRoot%. This is much more important than one might think, because many SMB businesses run all their users with admin rights, because they don’t have and can’t afford a dedicated IT staff which would make sure that all programs have compatible permissions for a limited user.
• Better integrated firewall
  
  The integrated firewall from SP2 was okay. It worked, but it wasn’t very flexible. GPO managment was so-so. With Windows Vista, this has changed. You can create custom rules, distribute them through GPO. The firewall also takes advantage of Windows Vista’s network location awareness, allowing you to make rules depending on the location of the machine - domain network, home network or public network. It also has integrated support for RPC, allowing you to allow and disallow seperate RPC calls - e.G. allowing file share access, but not access to remote registry, services, etc.
• Working internationalization
  If you have ever worked with Windows XP MUI, you will know that it was an incomplete piece of shit. IE7 still isn’t available for XP MUI, and there were severe problems with Outlook Express (unable to open attachments directly). With Windows Vista, there are no more native language versions, everything is MUI now. This is a good thing, because MUI is a first class citizen now. Even the file system has symlinks (called Junctions) to the internationalized name. This means less hassle with Vendor preloads (I’m thinking of you, Lenovo).
• Better offline files support
  Offline files finally work 100%. While XP was almost there, Vista now has fully working Offline Files without unnecessary problems. Laptop users, rejoice!
• User Account Control
  Every power user complains about it. I don’t understand why, honestly. But i’m used to sudo, so i might be biased. I even configured UAC through group policy to always ask for a user name - this imitates sudo well, and makes the user even more aware that there is an important decision to be made.
• Deployment Toolkit
  Well, i hated RIS. It always reminded me at the good old times, when we still used DOS. With Windows Vista, Microsoft made Imaging with ImageX the new default for network deployment, allowing more flexibility. Windows PE is now available for normal people like me. This is a good thing.
• More group policies
  Managment for 802.1x on WLAN, but also on wired networks has been extended. There are many, many new GPO settings, allowing easier customization of your deployed machines. Also, the new centralized GPO store will solve some problems in the near future.
• Many updates to admin tools
  Like the new eventvwr, there are very many improvements to the Vista administration utilities. It’s now also possible to make partitions smaller in Vista, eliminating the need for 3rd Party Partitioning Software.

For home users on the other hand, i don’t see much reasons for vista adoption. Of course, when buying a new PC you should buy Vista. But if you’re not interested in the OS itself.