20 Things You Won't Like About Vista

feminazi writes "Computerworld's Scot Finnie details 20 things you won't like in Windows Vista, with a visual tour to prove it. He says that MS has favored security over end-user productivity, making the user feel like a rat caught in a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes required by the User Account Controls feature." From the article: "In its supreme state of being, Microsoft knows precisely what's best for you. It knows that because its well-implemented new Sleep mode uses very little electricity and also takes only two or three seconds to either shut down or restart, you want to use this mode to 'turn off' your computer, whether you realize it or not. It wants to teach you about what's best. It wants to make it harder for you to make a mistake."

Comments

You could wade through ~14 pages...

[linvir]

Or you could just read this:

1. Little originality, sometimes with a loss of elegance.
   Bla bla Apple bla bla
2. Price.
   Vista will be the first expensive Microsoft product in history
3. Version control.
   He hates the Regular/Diet/New/Classic thing
4. Installation takes forever.
   title == body
5. Faulty assumption on the Start Menu.
   Menu usability issue
6. Media Center isn't all there and falls flat.
   Driver issues
7. Lack of Windows Sidebar Gadgets.
   People haven't written enough 'Gadgets' yet
8. Problems without solutions.
   New error reporting system feels very one-way
9. Windows Defender Beta 2 is buggy.
   title == body
10. Where are the file menus?
    A menu has moved
11. Display settings have changed for no apparently good reason.
    A menu has moved
12. Too many Network Control Panel applets, wizards and dialogs.
    Bad network menu usability
13. Network settings user experience went backwards.
    A menu has moved
14. Windows peer networking is still balky.
    Peer to peer networking is still iffy
15. Some first-blush networking peeves.
    A menu has moved
16. No way to access the Administrator account in Vista Beta 2.
    title == body
17. Two words: Secure Desktop.
    Five words: He doesn't like Secure Desktop
18. User Account Controls $#^%!~\!!!.
    Another 'Proceed' button to click
19. Aero stratification will cause businesses woe.
    UI gripes
20. Minimum video system requirements are more like maximum.
    Hardware requirements are high.
    (Welcome to the world of tomorrow!)

Human Readable Version

[RickPartin]

Here is a link to the Human Readable version of this story that isn't split into 49853809 pages. Thank god for the "print this page" feature.

Better Link

[eldavojohn]

So, this is one of those annoying super advertisement sites. I recommend just using the print version instead of having to flip through every freaking page. The print version also has less ads.

Doesn't Microsoft already do this?

[jeblucas]

Honestly, their out-of-the-box options in Office have always been set to "We Are Smart You Are Dumb This Is A Feature Not An Annoyance." To wit:

• When selecting, automatically select entire word
• Show full menus after a short delay
• Copy and Paste of subtotals copies and pastes all the data, unless you paste to Notepad and then back to Excel, that makes sense.
• "Cutting" in Excel is totally broken anyway--it doesn't cut a damn thing--you WANT to leave that data there until you paste it elsewhere. You do, really.
• Spontaneous hyperlinking! THANKS!

They've always seemed waaaaaay to interested in the minutiae of my interactions with their software. Makes me crazy.

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

So...anything 99% of my users at work won't be doing on a normal basis is protected by the popup boxes you so loathe. In fact, from your quote here, in a normal work day all but one of my users will never see or use any of the items on that list. Yet your claim is that the boxes are so ubiquitous they interfered with the normal operation of the computer. I think no.

I haven't tried the beta yet, but a lot of people seem to mention this. From what I've read, it does not sound unreasonable, but at the same time the UI does sound like it was written by the usual idiots. "Continue" buttons?!? Gee, what a great way to condition your users to not read yet another series of pop-ups. Did all their UI designers get their degree through the mail or something?

The peer networking at my office is not balky. It works flawlessly and seamlessly. I've established that you're not a Windows user.

I take exception to this. Windows desktop to desktop networking is balky, especially on Win2K or in environments that mix Win2K and Windows XP. In an office of 100 machines, in multiple workplaces I've found it is normal to see a random subset of the machines actually on the network at a given time. I remember having to transfer a file to someone's shared directory and asking the people nearby, "who can see Bob's desktop?" and then getting them to transfer the file to him.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[odourpreventer]

sleep mode that actually fucking works like it's supposed to

My Acer laptop running WinXP has Stand By (draining the battery a little) and Hibernate (no drain) and both work like a charm. No problems whatsoever. Restarts are few and far in-between. Does this make my laptop unique?

Schneier on User Account Controls

[Adrian Lopez]

Here is what Bruce Schneier thinks of Vista's UAC feature.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[HardCase]

From MacInTouch, about a year and a half ago:

Jan. 25, 2005

Boyd Waters
I plugged the power brick of my Mac Mini into a simple integrating power meter. Here is what I measured:

        Off 0-2 Watts
        Booting 30-40 Watts
        Idle 25 Watts
        Sleep 3-5 Watts, almost always 3 Watts

The power brick is rated at 85 Watts output. I have yet to measure power consumption during a compute-intensive task such as DVD playback.

I think the 40 Watt max was during hard disk and DVD spin-up at boot time. Idle means that the disk is spinning, booted, logged in, at the Finder with no user input.

I have a rather complex array of stuff plugged into the Mini via USB; there are two switches and at least one USB cable with in-line LED indicators, a wireless receiver for keyboard and mouse (Gyration, recommended, works fine with Mac or PC).

Of course this power reading does not include the monitor or the external FireWire disk.

I note that this power consumption level compares favorably with my 15-inch aluminum PowerBook, which has approximately the same specifications as the Mac Mini (but cost 3 times as much). The 15 PowerBook draws about 25 Watts nominally, about twice that under heavy compute load or charging the battery while running (as opposed to charging the battery during sleep).

Further note that the power brick and monitor are plugged into an APC uninterruptible power supply (a power strip with a battery back-up); I have yet to measure the difference in power consumption at the UPS wall outlet, but with the Mini asleep at 3 Watts, it's possible that the Mini makes no measurable difference in power consumption at the wall outlet.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[NetFu]

If you put your laptop to sleep a couple of times a day, and have no problem coming out of sleep or hibernate modes, then you are unique.

We have 45 salespeople with laptops who put their Windows laptops to sleep all the time without problems, but that's only because they shut down or restart once a week to avoid freezes, etc.

We have about 4-5 Mac laptops over the last 6 years that are always left in sleep mode, and I'm talking continuous sleep mode for up to a year at a time. We've never had a problem with Mac laptops going into or coming out of sleep mode.

Of all the salespeople we have with Windows laptops, many, many of them tell me how they close the lid of their laptop to put it to sleep, put it in their briefcase, then go to a customer or home (at the end of the day), and when they get to their destination, their briefcase is 150 degrees F because their laptop didn't actually go to sleep. And, either this causes a freeze-up, automatic shutdown because the laptop couldn't stay running with the screen on for more than 45 minutes, or it generally concerns me and them that the screen or hard disk could get screwed up. That hasn't with the Mac laptops in about 7+ years.

If you've never had problems like I'm describing, then you are very lucky or just have a new laptop (less than 6 months old). I'm telling you, however, that most people who use Windows laptops do have these problems and just live with them.

[rant]

If you don't think that Windows drivers can get corrupted on desktops, laptops, and servers for no real reason, causing bluescreens and general hard crashes, you haven't used Windows for very long. Why else would people like me have to reinstall drivers on Windows computers/servers even though the computer is never shut down or rebooted?

What's amazing with Windows is how you can use 3 apps on a Windows machine for 6 months, and have problems like these even though you never change anything after you initially set it up. I have a Windows desktop at home that I use to browse the web and play 3-4 different games, all of which were installed from the beginning. Everything else I do on our Mac laptops and computers. So, I use that desktop 2-3 times a week, maybe 10 hours a week. It should work the same way on day 180 that it worked on day 1, right?

Wrong.

Nothing has changed except installing high priority Windows patches (which you can't avoid) -- nothing else has been installed, and the games were patched only on day 1. But, boot and login times are slow, and I'm having video choppiness in some, but not all the games.

And, I'm not some idiot who doesn't have antivirus installed from day 1, or who would install miscellaneous crap without knowing it. Everything is the same, but Windows just *degrades* over time from continuous unchanging use. It shouldn't, but it does. So, even with a computer like that, I know I'm going to be reinstalling Windows a year after day 1. That's better than the 3-6 months I get with other Windows computers that are heavily used and changed, but still, why does Windows just fall apart while other OS's don't?

And, don't tell me it's because we install so much more crap in Windows than on other machines because we can. I've had Windows servers that are set up, locked down from day one, don't change, run 24x7, and then their video or ethernet drivers get corrupted causing a bluescreen that won't go away until I reinstall the drivers.

[/rant]

Sorry about that, but a lot of us on Slashdot have a lot (and I do mean a lot) of experience with the Windows frustrations that some people think are myths...

Re:I use Beta 2... and the alerts aren' t that bad

[Tony Hoyle]

Have you used it?

The 'prompt' consists of:

'Rundll32 wants to run a privileged operation. OK?'

The 'help' consists of:

'c:\windows\system32\rundl32.exe Shell32.dll,Control_RunDll appwiz.cpl'

Sorry, that isn't informing users at all.

Plus it comes up *constantly* - it's the most annoying feature I've ever seen in an OS - and that's coming from someone who's used OS/400..