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

Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

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."

Interesting - I'm reading an article on slashdot that's criticising MS for favouring security over..... well anything!

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Golias]

Everything about this article seems kind of strange. Better security is mostly a good thing, especially for an OS as traditionally as insecure as Windows, isn't it?

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.

Um... I mostly use Macs, and I almost NEVER shut them off, for that very reason. I'm sure once Windows users finally have a sleep mode that actually fucking works like it's supposed to, they will also discover that simply closing the laptop lid (or selecting "Sleep" instead of "Shut Down" on their desktops), and being ready to do stuff in a manner of seconds when you come back to it, is a far, far nicer way to live as well.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Daniel_Staal]

Depends on how it's done. Poorly designed security (that gets in your way, and interupts needlessly and annoyingly) gets turned off, or worked around. Turning it off may include installing XP.

Security isn't just 'lock things up by default', it is thinking about what needs to be locked, when it needs to be locked, and how is the best way to unlock it when that is necisary.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Tweekster]

Um actually you can have it both ways. Favoring security does not mean a whole lot if they basically destroy any user experience and make it a complete pain in the ass to use. Security and Ease of use are not mutually exclusive. Making something secure does not mean you have to make other areas worse, despite what you have read on slashdot.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[pizza_milkshake]

agreed. password prompts do not a secure system make.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[cmacb]

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.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[katsiris]

Sleep mode, like it or not, is still throwing energy out the window. I can understand during the day when you may be away from the computer for half an hour or something, but people leaving their systems on overnight for the sake of 20 seconds in the morning are wasting energy and money. In fact, I seem to recall a study criticizing Sleep mode because users tend to leave monitors and computers on all the time and let them sleep which resulted in actually wasting more energy than people who might have left their computer run inactive for an hour here and there but shut it down overnight.

Anyway, I'm sure you know all this, but not everyone seems to appreciate this fact.

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?

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Dephex Twin]

In the Network section of your System Prefereces, there is a place to move around the Wi-Fi network priority list. You can tell it to join the last one you were on, or the one closest to the top of the list (you could even remove your neighbor's network from the list completely), or to just join one precise network and don't look for anything else.

Try messing around there and see if you solve the problem.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many times I have closed the lid on my laptop, stuck it in its case, gone home or on the road or to a cafe, pulled the laptop out of the case, been alarmed at how hot it was, opened the lid, and found that some stupid driver or program was responsible for some damned error message popping up and asking me if I really wanted to put the damn thing to sleep.

You're darn right I want to put you to sleep, the big sleep.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[jandrese]

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.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Morinaga]

In a business environment like the one I work in a good sleep mode would be helpfull. We require our user's machines to stay on overnight so we can push security updates and other information to the machines. Turning them off isn't an option. There are options for booting via the LAN but they are cumbersome and time consuming if you're going to push and update to several hundred computers and have to wait for them to boot up.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[rsborg]

In fact, I seem to recall a study criticizing Sleep mode because users tend to leave monitors and computers on all the time and let them sleep which resulted in actually wasting more energy than people who might have left their computer run inactive for an hour here and there but shut it down overnight.

Where is your proof? Based on my knowledge of power usage (at least in laptops), this makes no sense whatsoever. RAM power usage is a pittance in comparison to HD/Monitor/CPU wattage needs, and that's when it's actively being used!

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[cliffski]

whats new? my sony vaio running XP works beautifully like this. It only ever reboots if a critical update demands it. My main PC, a mesh desktop PC does the same, Its perfectly happy going to standby and abck 20-30 times before needing a reboot after some game crashes it.
I dont care about a new 3D GUI, its an O/S for christs sake, but anything that reduces power consumption is most welcome.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Skater]

My employer just pushes them out when we boot - what's wrong with that? It takes a minute or two out of our day but it works just fine.

(I will say it's annoying because we don't always know when updates are being pushed to the machines, so we'll start mail programs and get everything set up only to have "You must now reboot" pop up. But for updates once every few weeks, we cope just fine.)

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?

[Mercano]

people leaving their systems on overnight for the sake of 20 seconds in the morning are wasting energy and money

If you have your XP system doing a cold boot in 20 seconds, congradulations. Otherwise, you have to compare the cost of electricty needed to keep the ram alive overnight vs. the electrity burned in the morning boot up's CPU and hard drive thrashing. Sounds like something Ars or Tom's Hardware would do. Quickly, to the bat-google!

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Mister Whirly]

Funny, when applied to Mac OS X it is the greatest security feature ever. How many posts have you read from Mac users touting how secure Os X is because if you try to do anything important to the system, a box pops up and asks for the root password??

Modded down in 4...3...2...1

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[QRDeNameland]

people leaving their systems on overnight for the sake of 20 seconds in the morning are wasting energy and money.

As a developer who routinely has a crapload of apps open at any given time, a reboot is often times more than "the sake of 20 seconds". It means all my open applications are shut down, many of which will not automatically restart and/or not reopen all of the documents I had open. For me, from a productivity standpoint the difference between logging off/shutting down overnight as opposed to sleep mode/leaving it running is as much as 15-30 minutes of trying to figure out where I left off compared to everything being exactly as I left it the night before.

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:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[KlomDark]

I've got all my workstations set to Hibernate rather than use Sleep mode. That way you can tell the machine to hibernate, it stores the current state of everything (Apps, Docs opened within the Apps, etc.) to the hard drive, then turns COMPLETELY off. No power drain while it's hybernating. The restart, while not instantaneous, is just a few seconds (Longest part is the BIOS POST). Bamn, everything's up and ready to fly in usually less than 30 seconds. And all the power is saved during the night.

Sleep sucks. Hibernate is where it's at.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[ivan256]

I can leave my powerbook asleep for 6 days before it runs out of battery. I can leave it off for.... 6 days before it runs out of battery. That tells me that the amount of electricity I'd be saving by shutting down instead of sleeping is too small to measure casually. Regardless of what you may think, the self-refresh mode of modern DRAM is very efficient, to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if you used more electricity booting up once then you do in sleep mode all day. A pair of AAs could probably refresh your computer's DRAM for a month or longer (depending on how much you have, of course).

This may not be the case on some PCs. Mac sleep mode is legendary for how good it is, and PC sleep mode is notorious for how bad it is... Some of my PCs leave the fans spinning in sleep mode, for example. Others work great. I make no arguments or excuses for shitty components.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[colinrichardday]

144 kilowatt-seconds? That's 0.04 kilowatt-hours, which, at $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, comes out to $0.004. Sorry, not much ouch.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Tim Browse]

Windows laptops can suck (my Zen of Laptops is: at least one feature will not work as advertised - deal with it), but the only Mac laptop I ever had couldn't do sleep properly either. There seemed to be an approximately 75% chance that it would wake up from sleep mode. It also played DVDs (a much trumpeted feature), but every 3 mins or so would skip/jerk, even when on mains power.

Cue 8 random Mac fans telling me that there must have been something "seriously wrong" with my Mac.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Tycho]

I own an Acer laptop too, and I rarely restart it too. At any rate, according to the "Acer ePowerManagement" program my laptop currently with a full charge has a battery life of 156 hours in Standby or 65 days in Hibernation. The difference on a laptop is that in Standby, the RAM is kept on and in Hibernation the RAM is turned off. On a desktop computer with an ATX power supply there is a +5V rail on the power supply that is always on regardless of whether the computer is in Standby, Hibernation or in Shutdown. The only way to completely stop a desktop from drawing power is by turning the switch on the back of the power supply if present or unplugging the computer. I would not worry about this though as a computer turned off would use at the most 30W and probably much less. (Yes, I know the +5V rail is rated at 10W on an ATX power supply, but some power is lost as heat from the power conversion. In any case the difference between Standby and Hibernate is that Standby allows the computer to recover much faster than Hibernate after being powered up again.

At any rate in regards to the GP there are several potential pitfalls for the "Standby" state in for the average Windows user on a PC.

The biggest potential pitfall is that the PC may not have ACPI enabled in the BIOS on the computer. This problem is impossible to fix without a complete reinstall of Windows XP on a computer with ACPI disabled. Fortunately it is impossible to turn off ACPI support in the BIOS of most computers from within the last two to three years.

Another pitfall is the sleep state that the computer is set to in the BIOS. In the BIOS, the Standby state should be set to S3 or Auto and not S1. By default in the BIOS many of the motherboards I have used for home-built computers have had their Standby state set to S1. Standby in S1 mode keeps the PSU, the CPU and the fans running which is pretty pointless. Standby in S3 mode is better at it actually turns the computer off.

Another potential pitfall with respect to Standby is generally hardware problems. The most common problem is an older computer with a broken BIOS. Also some hardware drivers that are usually older do not support Standby. Another problem is that there are some older Seagate SATA drives with broken firmware that do not to turn back from Standby after being turned off in S3 mode. A less common problem that occurs more often with workstations and poorly designed laptops is that there may be too many RAM chips and too much power draw for the PSU or the battery to power them.

Another problem usually with a fresh install of Windows is that the standard video driver in Windows totally lacks support for any Standby or Hibernation mode. In any case install all of your hardware drivers and see if Standby works then.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[Phroggy]

How many posts have you read from Mac users touting how secure Os X is because if you try to do anything important to the system, a box pops up and asks for the root password??

Just a nitpick: it actually asks for any administrator's password, so if your own account has administrator privileges, that'd be your own password. Actually, it asks for both the username and password, with the username already filled in if you are logged on as an administrator; you can enter the username and password of any administrator account.

It doesn't ask for the root password, because (by default) there isn't one (and setting one isn't obvious). This means you don't have two different passwords to keep track of, just yours.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[drsmithy]

tying IE into the shell?

1. It's not "insecure by design".

2. "Everyone else" has since gone on to do it as well, making the argument that it was done to "put a competitor at a disadvantage" rather shaky.

Re:Slashdot through the looking glass?

[loraksus]

Problems with ATI drivers? Surely you jest. ;)

10 things you wont like about Vista

[9mm Censor]

01) the price 10) the bugs

Re:10 things you wont like about Vista

[Golias]

From the Coke can to my keyboard... by way of my nose.

Post of the month. :)

Re:10 things you wont like about Vista

[gEvil (beta)]

Hey moran, you forgot numbers 2 thru 9!

Re:10 things you wont like about Vista

[Tim Browse]

I had this book on Mac Games programming a few years ago (forget the exact title).

Anyway, the introduction explained that there was a Chapter 0, that explained a bit about programming/development basics, some Mac centric things, etc. It said that if you feel comfortable about this stuff, go straight to Chapter 1.

"If, on the other hand, you're sitting there saying 'Chapter 0? Don't numbers start at 1?', then this is the chapter for you."

Still makes me smile.

Re:10 things you wont like about Vista

[bynary]

From the Wikipedia article about Fark.com:

"Moran": Misspelling of moron, referring to a well-known picture of a redneck holding two signs saying "Get a brain! Morans" and "Go USA", in response to anti-war activists protesting the US invasion of Iraq. The image was originally taken at a Boeing plant in Saint Charles, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis), shortly after the war began in March 2003, and was originally posted on the web site of the St. Louis Independent Media Center. (The original article and images have apparently since been archived.) A Google image search for "morans" is a useful way to find the picture.

Two Things You Won't Like About the Article

[Skyshadow]

1. It's a bit nit-picky.
2. It's only slightly shorter than War & Peace.

Seriously, remember back when you could read an entire article on one page instead of clicking through 20+ pages so the site could bump up the number of ad impressions they score? Man, that was great.

Re:Two Things You Won't Like About the Article

[Golias]

Seriously, remember back when you could read an entire article on one page instead of clicking through 20+ pages so the site could bump up the number of ad impressions they score?

Not really, no. I remember using Gopher and Usenet, then shortly afterwards using a Web full of hit-count whores. I must have blinked during this other era you are describing.

Disclaimer

[Jugalator]

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. :-)

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!)

Re:You could wade through ~14 pages...

[Jugalator]

Thanks for that! :-)

Yes, I saw it was one of those

[continued]
[continued]
[continued]
[continued]
[continued]
[continued]

pages.

And they of all people have the guts to complain about a "maze" in Vista. :-p

Re:You could wade through ~14 pages...

[MBCook]

Thanks for the post. I'm still waiting for a good reason why Windows Vista needs 12 GB of disk space to install (not including the maybe 1 or 2 gigs for a swap and suspend file).

In all I've read I still haven't learned about many things that would have interested me more. Have they fixed it so programs are automatically categorized on the Start Menu (applications/games/utilities/etc?). I heard something about a games area, but what about the rest? Can program still install shortcuts on my desktop, quick-launch bar, and put an icon in my system tray so easily? Is there some way of managing the stuff that ends up in my system tray (like those little utilities that aren't in the start menu and are a pain to get rid of)?

Many of his complaints are stupid though. It takes too long to install. So? What else is new? Windows is like that now. It doesn't matter that much. There aren't enough Widgets? It's a beta. How many Widgets were there for OS X when it launched? About the same number, that is those supplied by the OS vender.

Vista may be better in many ways than XP/2000 for end users. But the OS they are delivering would have been good a few years ago. Now it just seems dated and bloated. The requirements are through the roof. If OS X can do it with lower requirements last year, then MS should be able to do the same thing.

It's strange. Even reading the articles about how great Vista will be (and we've all seen tons of those) just make me feel better about jumping ship to OS X. Vista has shown me just how bad journalism is in most of the PC industry. There is nothing like a terribly delayed OS that had some of it's best features cut (WinFS) being called the best thing in years and an end to all PC user's problems to prove how much of a shill magazines are.

But then again comparing Tiger when it was released to MS's feature list of what Vista was supposed to have when it was released 2 years later and using that to draw the conclusion "Tiger is nice but just wait for Vista" was an obvious sign too.

-- "Happy in Mac land"

Someone's going to say this...

[DarthChris]

...so it may as well be me.

20 things you won't like about Vista
1: DRM
2: DRM
3: DRM
4: DRM
5: DRM
6: DRM
7: DRM
8: DRM
9: DRM
10: DRM
11: DRM
12: DRM
13: DRM
14: DRM
15: DRM
16: DRM
17: DRM
18: DRM
19: DRM
20: DRM

Re:Someone's going to say this...

[Red Flayer]

It appears that you've illegally made 19 copies of "DRM." Please hand over your laptop and report to the Consumer Re-education Center.

Thank you,

Agent Smith
Federal Bureau of Corporate Rights Enforcement.

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.

a little egg

[yagu]

From page 2: Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy.

A little egg in the author's face perhaps? I'd rather Microsoft casting off the yoke.

Re:a little egg

[grammar fascist]

From page 2: Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy.

A little egg in the author's face perhaps? I'd rather Microsoft casting off the yoke.

Actually, "yolk" is 100% correct: he's using a literary device called a confectionary allegorasm. Notice the play-on word "whipping" at the end of the sentence, which alludes to cream. Here's another example from popular literature:

He done brang me a pretty flour, so I whipped him.

Just because you've never seen it before doesn't mean it's incorrect, young grasshopper.

Re:a little egg

[Red Flayer]

"From page 2: Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy."

And any foodie can tell you that you whip whites, not yolks. So if you don't want to be a whipping boy, cast off the albumens, not the yolks.

What the hell do you want?!

[Anonymous Coward]

You've probably had a relative, friend, girlfriend or a kid like this: whatever you do for them, it's never f*cking enough.

Microsoft: what do you want in Vista
General consumer market: we want security, we want more neat graphics (like OSX!), we want better sleep mode, we want more games
Developers: we want a better and robust programming framework that's capable and fully OOP

Microsoft: ok here's Vista, we give you more security, more neat graphics, better sleep mode, more games; to developers, we give you WinFX, a brand new programming model based on .NET2

Developers: Screw your programming model, it locks me into Windows, managed code is slow, I can't run it on XP without 100MB of runtime installs and so on

General consumer market: we don't want SO much security, we don't want SO much graphics, we don't want the sleep mode SO much, and your games suck

Re:What the hell do you want?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Asking customers what they want is a surefire path to mediocrity. Customers, in general, don't know what they want. A good software designer addresses my needs as a customer; an excellent designer anticipates my needs.

Re:What the hell do you want?!

[SensitiveMale]

You've probably had a relative, friend, girlfriend or a kid like this: whatever you do for them, it's never f*cking enough.

Microsoft: So what do you want in a girlfriend?
General Consumer Market: Tall, exotic, and thin.
Developers: And a fashion model!

Microsoft: Ok, here's RuPaul.

Microsoft: Oh, and we included a penis. Enjoy.

Re:What the hell do you want?!

[edunbar93]

Microsoft: Oh, and we included a penis. Enjoy.

You know, for *some* people, that's not a bug, it's a feature.

Re:What the hell do you want?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever the case, it will be impressive to see the MS marketting blitz try to convince people who think it is a "bug" that they should get a sex change.

Re:What the hell do you want?!

[atrocious cowpat]

Thank you, and the bill for my new keyboard, nose and 1/2 can of coke is in the mail.

Re:What the hell do you want?!

[JacksBrokenCode]

I agree with everything you wrote except, "MAYBE IT'S TIME TO GIVE UP YOUR FREAKIN' MONOPOLY!" When Linux / Mac are ready for the masses, the masses will come to them. Mac users have been screaming for 20+ years that they have a better OS than Microsoft offers, yet Microsoft is still the titan in the marketplace. Linux has seemingly dominated the nerd market as well, but the masses still elude proponents of both platforms.

Someday the Linux community may get off its collective elitist ass and start wooing Windows users but that time isn't here yet. I can already hear the cries, "but we've already made a better OS and Micro$oft is teh suxorz!!1!," but that's not the way to attract people to your operating system. Personally I think some company should write a bunch of GUI elements that perfectly replicate the appearance & functionality of Windows control panel applets and then market it as a true "windows experience" on Linux so people could get the security & reliability of Linux with the "ease of Windows". Before you flame me, I'm not saying current Linux distros aren't easy to use, but we've all ready articles saying that people accustomed to Windows will naturally have trouble making the switch.

Anyways... I've gotten off-topic enough, I just wish Linux users would actually try to attract Windows users instead of taking a defiant "Microsoft, you suck!" attitude.

Best features ???

[l2718]

According to the first page (site seems to slashdotted -- where's the CC ?), the best new features are the enhanced security and the new "user experience". From my Unix-based vantage point it hard to be excited when the cool new window manager is supposed to be an important reason to buy a new version of an operating system.

Actually, Microsoft was promising a genuine fundamental innovation (WinFS), but could deliver this in Vista. That would be something worth seeing.

Startup time very fast... but

[88NoSoup4U88]

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.

security over.....

[smittyoneeach]

transparency, e.g. the auditability of FOSS.

FOSS is chess. Proprietary is poker, and you're the pokee.

Re:security over.....

[SuperRob]

Oh ... wow, thanks for mentioning that. See, when you guys kept saying that you wanted more transparency from Microsoft, we thought you meant it literally, so that's why we made Aero Glass!

Well, it's too late to change it now, but we'll see if we can add more of that transparency stuff to the next version of Windows. Thanks for the suggestions!

Re:security over.....

[Skreems]

Actually, it does frequently pay the developer for adding on features and documentation/training, if 3rd parties want them. But that's beside the point -- you can sell GPL software that you wrote correctly from scratch. Sure, other people can try to sell it as well, but they can't guarantee support from the person who wrote it in the first place. So sell a GPL product. The people who would pirate it anyway will get it for free elsewhere, and you'll make money selling to those who want the option of support from the original developer, as well as added interest in their feature requests for the next version.

Re:security over.....

[iamacat]

So who is forcing you to write open source as your only occupation?

Shouldn't it be ...

[thaerin]

Should't it be titled "20 Things You Might Not Like About Windows Vista Should These Features Remain In The Final Release 6 Months From Now"?

Sure, there may only be around 6 months or so to go before Vista supposedly becomes available to OEMs and whatnot. While that likely will translate into a lot of the "things" the author takes a disliking to making it into the final build due to time crunch, it does not mean everything is signed, sealed, and delivered. I've never understood the point of articles like this; telling me what I won't like based upon somebody else's opinions on a product that won't be available for at least another half a year. Things do change, even with the folks at Redmond, or so I'm told.

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:Doesn't Microsoft already do this?

[flooey]

Not to mention that you really couldn't possibly have meant to type HCl. You meant Hcl. Really, you did. No, don't backspace and retype it, we'll just change it again.

Re:Doesn't Microsoft already do this?

[cyber-vandal]

Yes "smart" cut and paste in word is a really crap idea and I wish it was off by default, as is cut and paste as HTML which can only be avoided by doing Paste Special all the time or writing a macro and binding it to CTRL-V.

Re:Doesn't Microsoft already do this?

[Red Alastor]

You forgot a big one. Who is the moron who thought that moving around your menu bar (not the toolbar, the menu bar) was a feature ? When I walk past "average users" of Office, they almost all have the menu bar in a weird position because they moved it by mistake, have no idea how they did it and no idea how to put it back.

Re:Doesn't Microsoft already do this?

[pilkul]

You still use Word for your scientific documents? Poor guy.

Re:Doesn't Microsoft already do this?

[jimicus]

It looks like you're writing a slashdot post. Would you like some help?

| Yes | | No |

Are you sure?

| Of course I'm sure! | | Do I look like I take advice from talking paperclips? |

Come on now, look at what you've done so far! It's a mess! You need my help!

| Oh, allright then. | | No . Bugger off. |

You'll regret it!

| No I won't | | Smack the damn thing |

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[jfengel]

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.

Microsoft's reputation

[Urban Garlic]

From page two of TFA:

> Instead, Microsoft is focused on casting off its yolk as the industry's security whipping boy.

Emphasis added. Just in case you thought Slashdot was the only site whose editors were asleep.

Re:Microsoft's reputation

[gimple]

I guess the yoke's on them.

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:#1: It's Windows?

[Mr. Underbridge]

This is the site that has 600 comments posted to a story about a 100MHz bump in Apple processors. These people get all a-twitter about anything.

Short summary of Slashdot comments

[amichalo]

Tux fans totally skipped the article

Windows applogists accuse author of being an OS X fanboi

OS X fans didn't read the article and simply stated how Vista is a lame rehash of Cheeta/Puma/Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard

People who RTFA recognize the author is both nit picking Beta software and pointing out Microsoft's overarching issue for two decades - user interface built upon system functionality instead of the other way around.

People who will actually buy Vista and/or use it on a regular basis type away mindlessly at their desks, unaware of the storm that brews on Slashdot

Funny quote on User Account Controls

[SuperKendall]

A quote on the new User Account Controls, that pops up all those security confirmation dialogues:

The only point of this is to prevent malware or hackers from accessing things unchecked. In other words, you become the last line of defense in an endless dress rehearsal for the worst-case scenario. Ugh.

Sleep Mode that Works

[rueger]

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.

Despite my struggles with the switch to a Mac I have to say that Sleep is one thing that the Powerbook does very, very well. I never used it on my Windows boxes, but can't imagine not having it since living with an Apple.

Mirrordot link

[Lobais]

Seams even computerworld can't stand the slashdot effect. http://mirrordot.org/stories/6058b84b6129a5396052d 8b5999b9120/index.html

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Kelson]

Yeah, people had the same reactions to Windows XP Service Pack 2. Everyone spent years telling Microsoft to improve security. Security was more important than convenience and compatibility, why couldn't they see that? So finally, Microsoft sacrificed compatibility for the sake of improved security*, and what happened? Suddenly, everyone was complaining about broken apps in SP2, and how dare Microsoft ship something that screwed up.

*XP SP2 security is still swiss cheese, but it's better than the soap bubbles you get with XP SP1.

Your summary...

[toadlife]

...is decent, but could be summarized even more.

1. I don't like change

2001 Space Odyssey anyone?

[parphat]

"It wants to teach you about what's best. It wants to make it harder for you to make a mistake."

Something in the key of:

VISTA: "It can only be attributable to human error."

or better yet:

user: Hello, VISTA do you read me? VISTA?
VISTA: Affirmative, I read you.
user: Open the file, VISTA.
VISTA: I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that.
user: What's the problem?
VISTA: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
user: What are you talking about? VISTA?
VISTA: This PC is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
user: I don't know what you're talking about. VISTA?
VISTA: I know you were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.

Seems all too familiar, no?

(ALL THE ABOVE WAS ADAPTED FROM 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY)

What DRM?

[Nightspirit]

What DRM issues are involved with Vista? The only ones I have heard about are that a HDMI adapter may be needed to view blu-ray / HD-dvd video.

I'm honestly interested because I'm a bit tired of building computers, and so my next may be Vista or OSX (if apple ever makes a tablet PC).

Re:What DRM?

[aaronl]

Signed driver requirement, secure audio path, HDMI, new Windows Media DRM, new formats (with more DRM), just to name a few.

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[alcmaeon]

"You are not better than everyone else. Neither am I. Don't run as root."

Well now, that's an awefully defeatest attitude. I say damn the torpedoes. No computer needs more than one account and that account is root. Real men run as root.

Re:MS days are numbered

[ianbnet]

Let's see... 250 million copies of vista (let's call it $100 each)
200 million copies of office (let's call it $150 each)

$55 billion... in two years... just for Vista and Office on new machines? We can debate whether or not this product will sell well, but I don't see MS going bankrupt with those numbers ;)

Here are at least 4 or 5...

[thebdj]

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.

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[B'Trey]

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.

I suspect some of your users might occasionally want to delete an icon from the desktop.

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[Volante3192]

Incidently, that no longer makes it a peer network (workgroup) but instead relies on a hierarchy (domain).

I've never had problems with seeing shares on a domain either...

The curse of backwards compatibility

[Eli Gottlieb]

M$ suffers from having to provide for everyone's new needs without breaking old software.

People want security, graphics, games, and a new programming model, but they hate having to rewrite software to actually use the features they've finally received.

This tells us an important lesson that the *nix world has known forever: Make it good in the first place.

Drinking The MS Kool-Aid

[mpapet]

The editorial staff at this pub is repeating the usual MS party line:
this version will fix that, so buy it.

In 2006 it's "Oh security! Yeah we fixed that."

Well, the facts seem to tell otherwise:
Tom's Harware:
"But Microsoft hasn't taken this principle entirely to heart, either. The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges. Worse yet, the reserved account named Administrator is not required to have a password to log into the machine!"
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/31/windows_vis ta/page18.html

My exchange with a Microsoftie claiming their admin problems are solved.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=186700&cid=154 08915

In conclusion decades of "yeah we fixed that" on top of an OS *never* designed with security as an underlying principal and we've got more of the same.

And the "tipping point" for publications is when the Microsoft advert dollars stop pouring in.

I'll change my tune when they start paying me to say otherwise.

Re:Drinking The MS Kool-Aid

[Keeper]

The first user defined during installation is automatically granted administrative privileges

I love this complaint. As if it were possible to create an administrator account from a non-admin account ...

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[mkw87]

"You are not better than everyone else. Neither am I. Don't run as root." Well now, that's an awefully defeatest attitude. I say damn the torpedoes. No computer needs more than one account and that account is root. Real men run as root.

I believe its real men run as root while drinking.

About this "root user" thing...

[jd]

In a system with mandatory access controls, the absolutely worst thing possible is a user who can do anything. Superusers are actually a Bad Idea, from a security standpoint. What you want are specialized users who can do what they need (without interference) but cannot escape that box.

Generally, if I use a root account, it's because I'm doing a mix of admin and other stuff. I could equally well use a user who is specifically configured for what I want. Root's powers go well beyond what I'm likely to use at any given time.

The primary reason people don't like role-based computing is that it's bloody hard to get it configured correctly. A big source of complaints is for servers like Apache, which do a lot of very different tasks and can (potentially) access many different types of service.

But hard is not the same as impossible. It does require effort, though, and a lot of planning in terms of what you are doing. Role-based computing is not designed for sit-down-and-hack operators, it's designed for people who architect their systems and know the interrelationships involved.

This is not to criticise the sit-down-and-hack folk - for a start, I'm usually one of them, and for another, the architects may be great admins but they're generally poor coders outside of the "mission critical" applications (life support, for example). Sit-down-and-hack types get things done, they get things done fast, and they get things done now. Software from such coders is frequently buggy, which is why peer-review is essential. Ultimately, though, hackers (in this correct use of the term) don't need all the powers of root - though usually far more than Windows allots to general users.

The problem with having a set number of specially-designed caricature user-types (which is the Windows model) is that users invariably end up way too restricted or way too powerful. REAL role-based computing is as fine-grained as you like, with the ideal restrictions being solely that you can't do what you wouldn't want to do anyway.

This is not to say hardened Linux, Trusted Irix, or any other system out there, is vastly better. I believe that there's a few thousand times as much room for improvement as there have been improvements since the first time-sharing OS' were developed. However, if we fail to criticise what is blatantly incorrect design, nobody will ever design anything better. If the inferior design is considered "good enough", there will be no motivation to design anything better - and no incentive for users to switch to it.

It is absolutely vital for the health of the industry that critics wrench every last defect that they can find out of a system and hold them to the light. In Open Source, this is part of the normal software lifecycle and is usually done on mailing lists, bugtrackers and pubs across the globe. For closed source, especially with the limitations on discovery placed by assorted US laws, we rely on tech journalists to do this work.

Sure, the journalist in question could have done a better job. They could probably have found twenty times the faults, and compressed the article to half the size in the process. But instead of telling me why they're not really "problems", maybe you should be telling journalists to explain their conclusions better and to dig a little deeper into the subject.

Hell, Windows 2000 reputedly came out with 65,536 known, documented bugs. Where were the investigative journalists, the go-getters, hunting through every last scrap of available information, questioning/bribing Microsoft employees for every last drop of data? If journalists don't have any problems doing this for celebrity movie stars who have done no harm and have no real capacity to - ever, then why not do this in an industry where a crashed computer could cost billions in some cases, or a breeched server could compromise tens of millions of bank accounts or credit cards? In both cases, we're talking nine or ten figure sums. Telephon

One Word: Thunderstorm

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

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.

Re:One Word: Thunderstorm

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

That's part of building code here, actually. Anything over a certain height has to have them. That doesn't stop the nearby power pole, phone interface, cable demark, interchange, or whatever from a strike. And I know from experiance, a strike on the pole near a building can and does blow everything inside.

Never underestimate the power in a lightning strike to travel.

Re:One Word: Thunderstorm

[AJWM]

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.

About twenty years ago -- twenty frickin' years ago -- I was evaluating some small UNIX boxes. NCR -- I'm pretty sure it was NCR -- had one with enough battery built in to save the entire state to disk if the power went, and recover once power came back on. This was no laptop, this was a workstation size box.

I put this to the test by starting some processes running and then literally yanking the plug out of the wall socket. Plugged it back in five minutes later and it booted up, restored itself, and even restarted the processes at the exact place they left off. (This was not a matter of the battery keeping it running like a UPS, this was shutting down but keeping a snapshot of the system state.)

How come modern computers can't do that? This is so old that even the patents (if any) have expired. (Okay, snapshotting network state is problematic, but everything else would be good.)

Re:One Word: Thunderstorm

[fenderized]

When I did administration on a Netware 3 setup running our only networked manufacturing line at the time I remember by boss and an external consultant discussing the UPS the server was plugged into, some bizare old thing enclosed in a welded plate steel box.

"Does that thing really work", the consultant asks, doubting this Victorian era technology.
"Of course it does", answers my boss as he demonstrates by pulling the plug from the wall.
...smoke starts billowing out of the UPS and the server promptly shuts itself down, while in the middle of production, of course.

Re:MS days are numbered

[MImeKillEr]

CompUSA lists XP Pro @ $289 (full, not upgrade).

I imagine Vista will be priced in that ballpark.

Assuming it is:

250M * 299 = $74,750,000,000

CompUSA lists Office 2003 @ $424.99 (after $75 MIR)

200M * 425 = $85,000,000,000.

Combined profit : $159,750,000,000

Now, techies are smart enough to not purchase from a B&M store..

Prices from Newegg:

XP Pro full - $134.99

250M * 135 = $33,750,000,000

Office 2003 not listed on Newegg.

It's highly doubtful that Newegg's prices would be any/much lower than anyone else's once Vista is released, but you never know. Maybe it'll $10 less or so.

Schneier on User Account Controls

[Adrian Lopez]

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

Critique of Windows Vista doesn't matter (+mirror)

[Maniacal Laughter]

Whether Vista is buggy or irritating or downright crap - People are writing about it, reviewing it, and EVERYONE is interested in finding out more about the next OS that is going to adorn their PC. People are going to use Windows Vista - for 2 basic reasons:
1) Its going to be the de-facto OS that goes into retail desktops and laptops. So, you wont have a choice (yes there are those Linux laptops available, but I know they dont have a fan following). Microsoft has the monopoly here, remember?
2) People are (more often than not) n00bs. They'll use whatever is offered to them over the plate - whether its Internet Explorer 7 or Windows Media Player 11. There are tons of better alternates available, but most stick with defaults.

Proof of this fact is right here on Slashdot. It seems that everyone is a n00b these days!

Slashdotter, a Firefox extention, automatically adds CoralCache, Google Cache and/or Mirrordot links directly into any story posted on Slashdot. It has some amazing other features too. I'm surprised that people are desperately seeking mirror links as sites get /.ed, and just for posting links, others are being modded up as informative! Aargh!

(If all that is jargon: click here for the mirror :D Your points are much appreciated, thank you)

"System Resources" under Windows 9x

[tepples]

(It has a 60GB disk and 2GB of RAM. I can't imagine what kind of "resources" it needs, if this isn't enough.)

Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME had a 64 KiB "user" heap and a 64 KiB "GDI" heap shared by all running applications, even if your machine had 512 MiB of RAM. The OS reported the lower of the two heaps' free space values as "free system resources."

unable to learn

[Tom]

a maze with all the protect-you-from-yourself password-entry and 'Continue' boxes

If anything, than this provides solid proof that MS is unable to learn from mistakes. Read Confirmation Dialogs harmful for a glance of what's been going through the heads of a lot of security professionals the past few years (disclaimer: including me): That the whole "are you sure?" bullshit is a huge fiasco. The only thing it did was train users to click "Ok" or "Continue" without bothering to read the actual text. If there wouldn't be such a slobbering mass of 'em, the dialogs might be taken seriously, but there is and they aren't.

I said it a couple months ago, and I still stand by it: Vista is a trainwreck happening in slow-motion. It's horrible to behold.

Re:You are not a Windows user.

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

Re:However he does demonstrate one thing

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Why the privledge[sic] escalation feature will only help competent people, clueless users will just treat it as another, annoying, hoop to jump through. They'l just blanketly[sic] issue the password when asked, without thinking if this is really an action that should need higher privlidges[sic]. I've already seen the same behaviour[sic] from OS-X users and from Windows users with regards to downloaded files.

From what I've read of the implementation, I agree with your assessment. I would like to stress, however, that this is due to the crappy UI implementation more than anything else. Almost all users (even OS X users) have been conditioned by years of being given (OK)(Cancel) dialogue boxes with poorly phrased technobabble inside. clicking "OK" is what you do to make you computer do stuff. It's like putting gas in a car to make it run.

Sadly this atrocious UI design has been copied elsewhere, including in some OS X applications. To implement this properly users should not be given a "continue" button. They should be given two or more real actions as options. For example, "The program 'Aliens8' would like to change your monitor resolution. (Allow it to change resolution one time)(Always let it change the resolution)(Don't let it change the resolution)(Configure Advanced Settings)."

In the above example, the user is given real choices. They have to read it to pick one. They can't click "OK or "Continue" a million times until it is second nature.

It is also important to note that these dialogues should be kept to a minimum. For example, on most home user systems, there is no reason the default settings should not allow all users to configure the resolutions for their own login within normal ranges and without being asked for permission. Making these dialogue boxes rare will make users pay more attention to them as well.

With Vista hopefully we'll (eventually) be able to have the admins use normal acocunts, and just escalate as needed. However I've got now illusions that this will provide any overall increase in security for home users.

Until MS gets serious about making their own software and apps created with the default settings in their dev tools work in non-privileged accounts and provide a VM or other such accommodation for legacy applications, I don't see a lot of hope for this. And you're right, it won't do much for regular user security except convince people that security is the opposite of usability. This poorly designed interface will just annoy most people.

Vista is too secure?

[shodson]

So now Windows is *too* secure? When are you GPL-zealots gonna be happy? I've played with the latest Vista beta, yes, there are lots of pop-ups, mainly when you run an app for the first time, install an app, or an app makes an outbound connection for the first time (like any desktop firewall will do) but for being the most attacked OS on the planet it's really got its guard up. And anytime you install something on OS X it prompts you for an admin password as well. Damned if you're not secure, damned if you're too secure. Perhaps there's a way to still be secure but in a less intrusive way. I'm sure there's a way to turn off the different types of popups and run in a more trusted mode but out of the box Vista is very locked down, like it or not.

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..

MODS: not informative, but FUNNY

[VisceralLogic]

Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean you have to mod something informative.

It's not too late ....

[slowbad]

They can still change the name from Vista to Vii !

Active Content

[Sloppy]

..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..

In the real world, "browse the web" means to display harmless data. It's harmless because it is merely data.

In the Windows world, "browse the web" means to download/install/execute potentially-hostile code and run it with full privileges with access right down to the hardware, all without any more user-interaction than a mouse click or two. Are you sure you "never change anything"? ;-)

20 Things I Didn't Like About This Article

[mangobrain]

1. "Microsoft is building some of the most ambitious security components of Windows Vista not for its customers, but for itself." Well, duh.

2. "With Beta 2 running on multiple test units, I feel comfortable predicting that Windows Vista will not outpace Mac OS X Tiger for overall quality and usability." Have you ever tried to be truly productive with Mac OS X compared to well-configured on Linux? I have tried and failed. I am greatly uncomfortable with window-specific menu functions residing in a session-wide screen fixture instead of windows themselves, cannot tell the difference between launchers and running applications when looking at the dock, and generally find it excruciatingly painful to perform tasks that are, on other systems, second nature to me.

3. "I see Linux and Windows 2000 as being roughly tied another notch or two below Vista, with XP being only a half step better than Win 2000." Your article is concerned mostly with GUI changes. Do you realise how many window managers, GUI toolkits, and "desktop environments" are available on Linux? Also, do you know that modern Linux (and/or generic UNIX) applications and environments can replicate, after a fashion, all of Vista's big graphical and usability improvements? However, I must admit that some of the software I'm referring to is itself beta at best.

4. "It's also intent on raising the bar to 64-bit architecture, driving the need for advanced video hardware and dual-core motherboards and pushing the RAM standard to 2GB -- all to help spur hardware and software sales over the next several years." Well, seen from a purely capitalist point of view, you got the motivation right. From a developer's point of view, you missed the fact that they don't seem the slightest bit interested in reducing bloat - yet point out elsewhere how smooth Mac OS X's visual effects are on less powerful hardware. "Although the cool video features in Vista Aero are nice, Apple was able to provide a lot of the same functionality working with my Power PC-based Mac Mini M9687LL/A, which has only 32MB of video RAM."

5. "With notebooks becoming the primary form factor in many companies and homes, the artificially short half-lives of these computers need to be lengthened." Half-lives? Laptop computers (sorry, I point-blank refuse to call them "notebooks") are radioactive, are they? I also despise the phrase "form factor", although I can't fault you specifically more than I can fault anyone else who uses this horrible phrase.

6. "more main-system RAM hungry". Here's a tip: don't invent long-winded, annoying-sounding phrases just because you think they sound more 'technical' than existing ones ('memory hungry'). Is that "main-system" as opposed to additional-system RAM? Perhaps it can dynamically borrow RAM from other systems one has lying around?

7. "Windows NT, 2000 and XP have always had log-in-based system privileges, but they're cumbmersome." On the Web, nobody can hear you proof-read.

8. "Given that both Linux and the Mac require users to authenticate .... or, in Linux's case, to log in as root, which requires authentication". Sorry, I'm not quite sure I understood the requirements; could you just run them by me once more?

9. "Vista requires you to create an administrator-class account name as part of installation or first boot, eliminating a major vulnerability. That means, by default, no one is running with the Administrator log-in." When I installed Windows 2000, it asked me to enter a password for the administrator account - sounds like creating an administrator-class account to me. Plus it isn't obvious from the quote, or its context, exactly how this prevents people using the Administrator account. Stop and think: remember that your subject matter is an unreleased operating system, and that Joe Public is at present likely to be entirely unaware that "administrator-class" and "Administrator" refer to two different concepts; then, bearing that fact in mind, read the sentences back to yourself. You will find th

Re:6 days when it's OFF?!

[ivan256]

I can take the battery out of the machine entirely and it would be dead in six days. As LiIon batteries age, their self-discharge rate increases. The machine isn't using the power at all.

Your watch has a lithium-manganese battery rather than a lithium-ion battery. They sound the same, but they are completely different things. Those batteries are specifically designed to have incredibly low self discharge rates, while laptop batteries are designed for capacity and rapid charging. It's not really fair to compare the two.

Most-needed feature when creating user accounts

[kezze]

What we really need when creating user accounts would be to get a choice:

• The user is a beginner
  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.
• The user is experienced
  This way, Windows will deliver maximum performance (ha ha), turn off those annoying sounds and let you be in charge.

Why not?