Are you using Windows Vista yet?
Windows Vista has been available for consumers since more than half a year - longer for companies and IT professionals.
Are you using Vista on your Desktop yet? No matter what you think of Windows Vista, you should already be using it right now. If you don’t think you’ll ever migrate to Windows Vista, you should start evaluating your alternatives now - and not when mainstream support for Windows XP ends in a few years.
Windows Vista is the next stop in the Microsoft desktop operating system part. I’ll agree that Vista still has some smaller quirks to be sorted out, but the main problem are 3rd party apps made by lazy idiots based upon technology from before 2000. If you’re working in IT, you should start getting used to Windows Vista now, even if you read and heard bad things.
Vista offers many great improvements - none of them are revolutionary, but they definitely make Windows a better platform. These are not the features advertised on TV, or debated in forums - but instead the deployment process which was just awkward under Windows XP and it’s predecessors, and many management improvements.
chuck:
I have vista on my desktop and laptop and 100 xp boxes I take care of.
1. Vista is stable for being so new. Only 2 BSD’s in a couple of months.
25. August, 2007, 01:262. Printing support stinks and 2003 won’t load the drivers to be available for people connecting to the server.
3. It had baby poop “bob” like characteristics.
chuck:
oops - pressed enter too soon.
3. We were talking about baby poop.
a. drag and drop uses giant fuzzy bars that slowly change color so you have to hover over the drop zone while you squint to decide which is highlighted and which isn’t. And the highlighting randomly jumps around from folder to folder in the folder pane..
b. When dropping by default a giant thumbnail obscures the target and makes it hard to see what is highlighted.
c. You learn that 1000 milliseconds after finding your drop zone a giant tool tip will appear to tell you what folder you are going to drop into because the giant thumbnail covered it up so you learn to wait to be sure because the fuzzy highlighting is to subtle to really discern. This makes every drag and drop operation an ordeal but strengthens your index finger greatly.
d. if you are saving a file and want to use the standard “save as” dialog to pull down the folder name and place it somewhere else, you are presented with a happy list of recent places that you used. These areas have no relationship to anything you actually want and is just sort of a stream of consciousness recounting of various tasks you completed, obscure places you visited because someone interrupted you or maybe some other distracting place in the recent past. There is no way to access the hierarchy of folders because that would be too left brained and MS is trying to be cool like Steve Jobs man or like MS Bob.
4. if you create a folder in XP the system goes immediately into rename mode and you can just type the name. Vista just blinks and if you want to see it you need to hit F5 and find it (its in the N’s)
5. If you display File Extensions XP would screw you up on a failed rename. Vista is more forgiving but considering how many years it took to fix that from XP to Vista I have little hope for my complaints to be addressed in Vista.
6. IBM client access fails because Vista won’t share its user name so give up automatic sign on for a while till you get it figured out. Same with Lotus Notes.
7. If you want to use an old program Vista will complain that it is not going to be really pretty and that you need to be warned that the next screen will only have 32,000 colors instead of 1.5 million so please stand by and look at this black screen and we will get back to you in 2-3 seconds.
8. Want to open that network file? Vista first needs to lie to you that it is in use by someone else. Click again and Vista has magically fixed it! thanks, Vista!
9 Like that “up folder” button in XP that lets you traverse the hierarchy by positioning the cursor once and clicking multiple times while you watch the folders change? Well, give it up because it is gone forever. Now you can click the second breadcrumb from the right once and then either find the proceeding crumb (second from the right, dummy), position to it and click once (repeat as necessary) or you can stop, think, and go directly to the crumb of the folder you want. Like the old way? Want the choice? Tough- get used to the crumby way.
10. OH! maybe the back arrow will take me back up the list? No, you haven’t been paying attention. It will take you back alright, man, in your stream of consciousness. Back isn’t alway back - sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down. Cool man. Just like Jobs. Wow, so thats where I went, cool!
11. It’s nuanced and beautiful. See that shadow? thats a flash in the title bar because they wanted it to be pretty. See that shadow? thats a glint that just caught you eye like the sun shining on a mobile outside. See that shadow? Thats the weekly operations report that is highlighted and is the one you are going to delete. See that shadow? that is the underlying window showing through the pane of the window you are trying to use. Isn’t it pretty? You didn’t actually need that report did you?
12. You know how funny it was when people laughed at Xp because to shut down you had to click “start”? Well that hurt MS’s feeling so they had to not call start start and instead made it a bigger round world or ball or Bob head or something and if you click it you need to find the little > triangle and click that and then choose what to do (you want to shut down) Don’t worry, it’s right there you’ll find it in a week or so.
13. Might just as well get used to it! MS is not a democracy! You will soon forget all the old ways. Bill has commanded it to be so. Forward!
25. August, 2007, 02:24Jack:
>I’ll agree that Vista still has some smaller quirks to be sorted out, but the main problem are 3rd party apps made by lazy idiots based upon technology from before 2000
Ouch!
25. August, 2007, 18:31