Wednesday, August 22, 2007
My Vista Top Five: Some Ugly Things, Some Good Things
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 03:00 AM
I'm involved in a private forum as part of the Microsoft Featured Communities program that Digital Media Thoughts is a part of, and someone posted a link to this article and asked us to post our own five. So here are my top five mistakes I feel Microsoft made with Vista:
1. Drivers: So ugly I can't even speak about it. The first few months were SO painful, and seven months in I'm still trying to get stuff working properly. Software too - Vista wasn't baked long enough for developers to prepare their software for it.
2. Too many SKUs & Pricing Was Too High: No matter how many Microsoft people showed me shiny PowerPoint slide decks, the number of versions of Vista available is just silly. It's also too expensive - though I suspect that Microsoft made it expensive on purpose because they knew people using older hardware might have a less-than-great experience and it was better for people to buy systems built for Vista.
3. Assorted Media Center glitches: I use my Vista media center computer daily - probably 8 hours a day - and there are still so many bugs and performance problems it's sad. Media Center 2005 was much faster, more stable, and an all-around better product.
4. UAC (User Account Control): For most users, it's not such a big deal - my mother in law doesn't do anything to trigger UAC prompts, but day to day I bet I trigger 30+ of them. It just ticks me off to no end - but I don't want to turn UAC off because I've read about programs having problems with UAC being turned off...and UAC turned on is the assumed mode that everyone programs for, so I'm forced to click ALLOW a hell of a lot.
5. Performance & Bugs: Some aspects of Vista are fast, but there are so many slow-downs and strange things that happen (yes, even with the latest two "super patches"). For instance, on my Velocity Micro Media Center PC, if I have System Restore turned on, the hard drive will grind...endlessly...forever. No, it's not indexing. No, it's not anything else - it's System Restore. Using the Performance Monitor I can watch the hard drive BLAST away, reading and writing 10+ MB/s. That's LOUD when it never stops. I turn off System Restore, and it stops. It's pathetic that even with a high-end video card and the latest video drivers, the UAC "black screen" comes up chunky and slow.
<whew> And to think that at first I didn't think I'd be able to make it to five. I must have repressed some things. ;-)
Now in the interest of fairness, here the top five things I like about Vista:
1. Better Networking Performance: I love that I can browse my local network and the other PCs appear within 1-2 seconds. So much better than XP!
2. Integrated Search: It rocks. Period. Works great, is super fast, love it. I no longer need to organize my start menu manually, I just type what I want to use.
3. Windows Mail: I actually like the little guy - I do my personal email (and NNTP) using Windows Mail and it works quite well. I like the Contacts approach where each contact is a single file - I sync that folder using FolderShare and all my PCs have the same set of contacts. Works like a charm. It has it's share of idiotic problem though - why can't I select English (Canada) as my spell check language? <sigh>
4. Performance: Always a double-edged sword. When Vista performs well, it performs REALLY well. I love how Vista aggressively uses all my system RAM rather than leaving it mostly alone like XP did. With 3 GB of RAM, everything kind of "floats" in Vista. I also love that if an application is open Vista doesn't purge it from RAM forcing the "disk grind of death" that would happen under XP when you restored a minimized application.
5. Windows Movie Maker Can Edit DVR-MS files: I record TV shows frequently on my Media Center PC, and I want to be able to edit them easily and grab clips. Windows Movie Maker FINALLY can help me with that!
What about you? What are you "Top 5" lists with Windows Vista?
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He likes Vista...mostly.
1. Drivers: So ugly I can't even speak about it. The first few months were SO painful, and seven months in I'm still trying to get stuff working properly. Software too - Vista wasn't baked long enough for developers to prepare their software for it.
2. Too many SKUs & Pricing Was Too High: No matter how many Microsoft people showed me shiny PowerPoint slide decks, the number of versions of Vista available is just silly. It's also too expensive - though I suspect that Microsoft made it expensive on purpose because they knew people using older hardware might have a less-than-great experience and it was better for people to buy systems built for Vista.
3. Assorted Media Center glitches: I use my Vista media center computer daily - probably 8 hours a day - and there are still so many bugs and performance problems it's sad. Media Center 2005 was much faster, more stable, and an all-around better product.
4. UAC (User Account Control): For most users, it's not such a big deal - my mother in law doesn't do anything to trigger UAC prompts, but day to day I bet I trigger 30+ of them. It just ticks me off to no end - but I don't want to turn UAC off because I've read about programs having problems with UAC being turned off...and UAC turned on is the assumed mode that everyone programs for, so I'm forced to click ALLOW a hell of a lot.
5. Performance & Bugs: Some aspects of Vista are fast, but there are so many slow-downs and strange things that happen (yes, even with the latest two "super patches"). For instance, on my Velocity Micro Media Center PC, if I have System Restore turned on, the hard drive will grind...endlessly...forever. No, it's not indexing. No, it's not anything else - it's System Restore. Using the Performance Monitor I can watch the hard drive BLAST away, reading and writing 10+ MB/s. That's LOUD when it never stops. I turn off System Restore, and it stops. It's pathetic that even with a high-end video card and the latest video drivers, the UAC "black screen" comes up chunky and slow.
<whew> And to think that at first I didn't think I'd be able to make it to five. I must have repressed some things. ;-)
Now in the interest of fairness, here the top five things I like about Vista:
1. Better Networking Performance: I love that I can browse my local network and the other PCs appear within 1-2 seconds. So much better than XP!
2. Integrated Search: It rocks. Period. Works great, is super fast, love it. I no longer need to organize my start menu manually, I just type what I want to use.
3. Windows Mail: I actually like the little guy - I do my personal email (and NNTP) using Windows Mail and it works quite well. I like the Contacts approach where each contact is a single file - I sync that folder using FolderShare and all my PCs have the same set of contacts. Works like a charm. It has it's share of idiotic problem though - why can't I select English (Canada) as my spell check language? <sigh>
4. Performance: Always a double-edged sword. When Vista performs well, it performs REALLY well. I love how Vista aggressively uses all my system RAM rather than leaving it mostly alone like XP did. With 3 GB of RAM, everything kind of "floats" in Vista. I also love that if an application is open Vista doesn't purge it from RAM forcing the "disk grind of death" that would happen under XP when you restored a minimized application.
5. Windows Movie Maker Can Edit DVR-MS files: I record TV shows frequently on my Media Center PC, and I want to be able to edit them easily and grab clips. Windows Movie Maker FINALLY can help me with that!
What about you? What are you "Top 5" lists with Windows Vista?
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He likes Vista...mostly.
