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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."
I don't like the User Account Controls either, but this is coincidentally one of the areas in Vista that has seen most work on it the past few months, and Microsoft claims they understnad it's a problem and will keep trying to reduce the annoyance.
:-)
OK, you may now proceed the bashing for annoying UAC's in this beta.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
A (clean) Windows XP machine, albeit not 3 seconds, is also very quick when starting up: I am more interested in getting a more meaningful figure of the start-up time, eg. a machine which has at least installed a few apps, of which a few will be running in the background.
I was totally with you until I got to the bit about Windows peer networking. If you know the magic button that allows me to get to other computers on the network without a 30-second hang before reporting, "No, I haven't figured out how to get to the computer that's right next to this one", I'd really like to know about it.
A Windows Vista Premium Ready PC includes at least:
Which in English means recommended configuration.
+1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
Not too bad for modern machines, but this is starting to get crazy for just an OS
+1 GB of system memory.
I know a few gamers still running 512 MB and most systems are still coming 256/512 as the default.
+A graphics processor that runs Windows Aero.
+128 MB of graphics memory.
So like 90% of machines that the big three sell will not run Aero? Most still default to 64MB or built-in cards and right now most people do not want/need more.
+40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
This is nearly 10x the install for XP pro. Does anyone else find this a bit crazy?
+DVD-ROM Drive
With a 15GB install, I damn well hope it install off of a DVD and not a CD-ROM or I might die switching out CDs.
This is just plain silly for an OS. And I am supposed to play games on top of all this? I love how more and more system resources are being hogged away by Windows. I have already verbally committed to Windows XP being my last Windows OS. M$ has done enough for me to ensure, despite the headaches it might cause, my relatives whose computers I support will be running Linux when XPs support runs out.
I think many of the features of the OS are over-hyped. Some of them (IE7, WMP11, etc.) will be available to XP anyway. Some of these features are also things that either OS X or Linux (or sometimes both) have had for a while. They eye-candy hardly impresses me either. I have gnome as pretty as I want it, and I have no complaints. I really did not like the XP visual changes that much and a lot of people I know still use the traditional appearance and old-style Start Menu.
While I will commend Microsoft for trying to add security, it is almost too little too late. I also do not like the "cost" of upgrading either. There are two many requirements that make older PCs out of reach for running even a trimmed down version of Vista. It seems like these requirements have grown almost exponentially from 2K->XP->Vista. BTW, my sources for Vista's Requirements and XP's.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Well, I can't get to the article but...
The irony here is that almost every instance of "insecure by design" in Microsoft's products were introduced to put a competitor at a disadvantage. It's not like they made unknowing mistakes or something, and in fact in many cases they were criticized by the minority of people who worried about security all along, even to the point of inventing proof of concept exploits to show the dangers.
Now they are going to "clean up their act", but I bet you at least a part of their problem with bloat is that these security concepts were not designed in earlier. I really feel sorry for my friends who think that they just HAVE to used Windows or Windows based products. They don't, but I don't feel like spending any more time preaching to them.
The numbers are still small, but I think there is a critical mass of people who can get what they need to do done without constant fear of attack (I'm speaking of Linux and OS X users) who will serve as role models for "the masses" to find their way out of the badlands that Microsoft has lead them into.
Oh man I'm having a metaphor Thursday.
Some users, like those of us who live in Florida, need a simple, clear way to turn off our personal machines in the event of a severe thunderstorm (daily during the summer), or other similar event. Why? Because I have in the course of five years blown through three Uninterruptible Power Supplies, two whole networks of gear, and three machines. No matter how good the UPS is, nothing beats pulling the plugs from the wall for stopping a lightning strike.
Even where I work, we have had shutdown calls because the power was too unstable for even our high grade UPSs to handle. It does happen.
And I, for one, want to be absolutely sure that when I tell my computer to power down it does so BEFORE I yank the plugs.
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
The sleep mode gets better with each release of Windows. XP is pretty much as good as the Macs, however because there is a lot of ingrown distrust of Sleep mode in Windows from years of bad experiance with it, many people still instinctivly shut off their machines anyway.
I use the sleep mode on my modern Windows laptop without any trouble.
I read the internet for the articles.
If you think Windows peer networking is balky, you likely aren't setting something up correctly.
Setting up is soooooo, 90's. Does Vista have ZeroConf yet? You plug into the network and within seconds all the printers show up as options when you print, all the local users show up in your chat program, all the shared streaming music channels and files show up in your mp3 player, all the shared directories show up for filesharing, and all the shared documents for collaborative editing appear. It makes conferences a lot more fun. Configuration is a waste of time.
Maybe it is possible that with some more configuration work you can get all the machines to show up, without any centralized servers, but who the hell is going to go mess with the configuration of every machine to get this to work? It sure isn't set up properly by default since it hasn't worked at so many places I've been. Spotty peering that can be fixed with a configuration work-around is still a problem.
- The user is a beginner
- The user is experienced
Why not?Then the user will get the neat-looking desktop with lots of colors, sounds (even the click sound when you click your mouse) and all the other crap like tutorials and "click here"-balloon messages.
This way, Windows will deliver maximum performance (ha ha), turn off those annoying sounds and let you be in charge.