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?

[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?

[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: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.

10 things you wont like about Vista

[9mm Censor]

01) the price 10) the bugs

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

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.

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?!

[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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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

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)

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: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...

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!

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

[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.

Schneier on User Account Controls

[Adrian Lopez]

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

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.

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..