Revisiting the Original Reviews of Windows Vista

harrymcc writes 'We now know that a remarkable percentage of consumers and businesses decided to spurn Windows Vista and stay with XP. But did the reviews of Vista serve as an early warning that it had major problems? I looked back at the evaluations in nine major publications and found that they expressed some caution--but on the whole, they were far from scathing. Some were downright enthusiastic.'

Comments

Re:Vista

[dave420]

I don't know what hardware your friend has, or how you set it up, but Vista flies on my machines. The file transfer issue you talk about was fixed years ago - it can easily max out our gigabit ethernet at work. Backwards compatibility was indeed broken for drivers, as it uses a new driver model to increase stability. I've used vista for years, without re-installing it, and it's fine.

tl;dr, no one cares, but here's mine

[b4dc0d3r]

I have been forced to use vista at work for the past month or so. Here are the things I hate, mostly from the first week. Keep in mind this is based on using 2000 and XP, and having certain expectations about how Windows in general is supposed to work. No one's going to read this, that's fine, I'm just spitting in a hurricane.

1. Explorer - if a heavy IO operation is in the background, explorer frequently says "not responding". I want that in the background, and regardless of IO settings, I should be able to browse the disk. What if the only way to stop the IO is a control panel, or an application I have to dig for? Like a virus scanner, which you can't run Windows without. We have a deadlock. It's the shell of the OS, not some random application.
2. I still can't tell what's highlighted. Which is the current active window? Which folder is highlighted in Explorer? Should this be useful out of the box, or should every user have to adjust this?
3. Search - I don't even know where to begin. "Search in files" only finds text in a known file type with a filter for it. Search happens only in indexed locations by default. So it won't find the program I just downloaded, but it will look for that term in my e-mail? You should at least be able to click "Advanced Search" instead of having to find the non-button-looking button. I can't tell if it's looking for a file name or in the contents of files. It's just plain unintuitive. I still have no idea where I'm searching.
4. "Folder Options" used to have a tab to manage file types. Vista moved this into a Defaults control panel, and you can no longer manage behaviours. Anything beyond the default "Open" action has to be done in the registry, which Microsoft says is dangerous and could cause the OS to stop working. This is reduced functionality, affecting how the OS interacts with files, which is pretty much the definition of a GUI shell.
5. "Add and remove programs" renamed to "Programs" or "Programs and features" for classic view, invalidating millions of documents and confusing users. Going in further to Windows components, using IIS as an example. You can turn on or off IIS options, directly from the Windows Components dialog - you can turn your web server Directory Listing on or off through the operating system control panel. Isn't that just a little too integrated? We just added more places you have to look to repair a malfunctioning application!
6. Search *STILL* includes shortcuts. I search for *.vsd and I get shortcuts. What purpose does this serve? If the documents exist they will be found. Otherwise the shortcut will point nowhere and be useless. You can't sort shortcuts either, they are all type "Shortcut". So you can't remove your audio file shortcuts and leave your excel file shortcuts. If I search for "xls" maybe that should return shortcuts, but *.xls is very specific.
7. Explorer: Very hard to select a column heading to change the width, because the completely unnecessary Sort selector is right next to it.
8. Drop object into command prompt to avoid retyping it. Dropped because high-security areas do not accept messages from low-security areas, design was fixed for win7
9. "Copy as Path" and "Open Command Prompt here" are only available when shift-clicking. Also not available on left side of explorer view
10. Alt-Enter doesn't work in left side of explorer pane
11. Not clear if the highlighted folder in left pane of explorer is the currently selected one - the selected and current highlights are nearly transparent by themselves, and only slightly different from each other. Makes it easy to accidentally delete a bunch of stuff
12. Mouse scroll-wheel does not work in explorer left pane, automatic scrolling is supposed to make things easier. But so does a mouse.
13. Explorer: Backspace is the same as CTRL+Left Arrow, making users use the different "ALT+UP"
    - duplicated functionality, users have to retrain their muscle memory. Makes sense, but loyal Windows users are