5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

happyandyk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 04:11:05 GMT

New download link http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=34f40386-9661-49b1-87ce-6d4a39e83747&displaylang=en&tm

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

SEADOT — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:50:11 GMT

I use VISTA Biz and HomePremium on my laptop. I am concerned how my disk space is dropping due to VISTA updates. Does anyone know WHERE the KB updates reside? I want to delete them. Once they have updated the O/S they are merely .txt files taking up space. In XP I could delete them and $UtUninstall files also. This save allot of disk space. If anyone knows where these files reside in the VISTA enviornment It would be helpful. What I fear is a system up to date with VISTA and no room to do intended applications such as MS OFFICE 2007 and my yacht design software.

Thanks

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

djlosch — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:09:21 GMT

I just registered to let some of you Vista guys know my headaches. I will keep the flaming to a minimum.

I caught wind of this article through http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/05/19/vista_misunderstandings/ <-- they generally bashed Vista, and some was warranted but some was not. I read through their friends' headaches with the Vaio. I have an IBM X61s 1.6ghz core 2 duo, 1gb ram, intel integrated graphics. It's not a ferrari, but it's not a sleeper either. It's the tiny thinkpad that gets 11 hours on the extended + slice batteries. I have Vista Business. I try not to troll/flame, but I have many of the same sentiments as Tim Anderson and the Vaio guys. I also have a headless server (2.6 core 2 duo, 8gb ram), and I've run the gamut of linux distros from Mandrake to Redhat (pre-enterprise) to Gentoo and now Ubuntu. I've got a few years of software engineering under my belt, and a few more in IT, so my feet are at least wet. Despite my linux background, I generally have held that the MS desktop experience was much better than the linux counterpart. So for years, I stuck with linux on my home server (and work servers) and I had XP on my laptop, and XP on all our workstations.

I bought my thinkpad in August, so I endured through the pre-SP1. SP1 significantly improved many unresponsiveness issues, but this rant comprises of the remaining annoyances. The "near instantaneous search" is a flat out misstatement of fact. The dynamic start menu search is a nice idea, but it literally takes 5-10 seconds before ANYTHING shows up. Sometimes, the start menu will just disappear while searching. The search boxes in the top right of the file manager are not "near instantaneous" either. I did not disable indexing, and would frequently leave my laptop plugged in overnight so that it could hopefully index at least my local files. If it did index them, the response time was never "near instantaneous", and none of my email attachments or email contents in Outlook 2003 were ever detected. I'm guessing that claimed feature only works in Outlook 2007, because otherwise, it's just broken.

Booting would take a nice 15-20 seconds, but I'd still get trademark Windows-showing-desktop-but-things-still-loading-in-background... can't-do-anything-for-another-minute-or-so. I disabled EVERYTHING in msconfig->startup, and I'd still get the wait time. This has been in every Windows distro since at least Win95, so I'm not surprised.

UAC is a trainwreck. Whenever an admin level function was required, the screen would "spotlight" the UAC window, but after the screen dimmed, it would take anywhere from 10-30 seconds for the UAC dialog box to come up. Then, for some ridiculous reason, I'd always get a second UAC dialog box (Ubuntu's sudo/gksudo/kdesu doesn't have this problem, why does UAC?), and the slow dialog box loading would repeat itself. Some of the guys I know who are like myself (neither linux nor MS zealots) recommended a few tweaks which lightened the slowing, but it's still significantly slow. To make it usable, I'd have to disable UAC. Too many apps from big reputable software companies nag via UAC even for simply running the program. I know that's not MS's fault that software companies can't operate without escalated privileges, but bugging the user because software companies violate specs is a ridiculous solution.

Peripheral drivers are a joke. Commercial grade Xerox printer/copier that works perfectly fine -- completely unusable for printing because Xerox isn't releasing Vista drivers. HP scanner that works perfectly fine -- also unusable because HP isn't releasing Vista drivers. Both work fine in linux and WinXP. For once, linux device drivers are starting to cover more hardware than the MS install base, and it will only get worse for MS as more people migrate to Vista -- more people having perfectly working hardware that they can't use because the manufacturers don't want to write drivers for Vista, and Vista refuses to accept the old ones. Add that into your TCO for Vista -- it's not there in WinXP or linux.

IE7 is completely unusable, even when you ignore the vast superiority of FF2's feature set over IE. IE7 literally takes over a minute to load the homepage. Setting the homepage to about: blank didn't help, nor google, nor a local htm file that was completely empty. Clicking the stop button when IE7 was loading so that it would stop trying to grab the homepage would lock up IE for another 2 minutes, and then I'd get an empty dialogue box with an OK button. Opening a link in a new tab would lock up IE completely while IE was loading the new tab. While FF2 has memory leaks, IE7 has wait times that render it unusable. IE6 doesn't have any of these problems -- Why does IE7?

Suspend awesomely only takes 5-10 seconds to get to the login screen, usually on the lower end. HOWEVER, after coming out of suspend, the wireless card would fail to load frequently. I check device manager, and the wireless card wouldn't be listed at all. Running the thinkpad wifi manager wouldn't help. The only remedy was a reboot. Rebooting in itself takes for what seems like FOREVER. The blue-green "Shutting down" screen frequently sat there for 30+ seconds before restarting.

After shutting down virtually all user level processes and aero, I'd be lucky to get below 700 MB of RAM. Add in any combination of FF, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, MS Word, or Excel, and the machine slows significantly. Add a third app and the machine slows more. Turn on aero and there goes another 40-60 MB of ram, and the machine slows to a crawl. WMP slows the machine to a crawl just to play some mp3s, whereas WinXP had no problem doing the same. And the SearchIndexer executable has a nasty habit of loading when I'm doing a lot of things -- not idling, and every time it loads, the machine slows to a crawl. And when the machine slows to a crawl, I check resources via the ctrl+alt+del security panel -> taskman, and killing processes (from the 60+ of them) is a chore. When I want to end task, I don't want Vista to pat me on the head and coddle me while it tidy's up and tries to recover the task or figure out what went on. WinXP did this too. Ctrl-clicking end-task should be like ctrl-clicking the shutdown button -- instant shutdown. Linux has force quit and kill -9. Why is this so difficult?

Now, I'm the guy who's always defending MS on certain linux forums -- I have little allegiance to either OS. I just want the best one for the task that I'm trying to perform. I frequently defend some of MS's shortcomings in that MS can't "innovate" because every time you guys do, you get hit with another anti-trust lawsuit (I'm surprised OneCare hasn't drawn lawsuits yet), and when you don't, you're playing catchup (aero to OSX and arguably compiz, IE to FF). This week, I just got fed up with Vista's sluggishness. I decided to dual boot ubuntu 8.10 (almost everything works out of the box, and getting the rest was just a few conf mods). Of course, Vista's bootloader, the IBM recovery bootloader, and grub were all fighting for control over the MBR. I find out that to fix this, I have to chainload IBM->Vista->grub. Of course, to make the necessary mods, I have to do this in Vista... which I could no longer boot into because IBM's R/R was fighting with Vista's bootloader still. But the problem here stems from the deals that MS has with the manufacturers -- I only received recovery CDs, and only after specifically asking for them. If I want to "recover" my system, I have to wipe the whole system. Vista won't let me chainload a partition that doesn't yet exist, installing Vista wipes my entire system, and once I install linux, I can't get back into Vista. In other words, to dual boot Vista and linux, I either have to buy a Vista DVD (even though I already have a legitimate license), pirate one, or just give up on Vista. Option 1 is ridiculous. I'm not paying for the same product twice, especially when I'm not happy about it. Option 2 is not legal, which is especially improper because I'm in the process of getting sworn into the bar to practice IP law. Thus, the only option is 3, and that's why I'm posting from a Ubuntu install. I now run MS Office 2003 and Photoshop through qemu with seamless-rdesktop as I need them.

Now, the worst part about all of these performance issues is that it's all after a fresh install of SP1 with all crapware disabled, behind a firewall, and this is the only windows machine behind the firewall. If you go back up through this rant and replace all MS wording (Microsoft, IE, Vista) with "Ford" (or any other car manufacturer), the Ford buyer would have returned the Ford and never bought another Ford ever again (or sued under lemon laws). There are some "tweaks" to get some of these ridiculous wait times cut down (particularly the UAC "spotlighting"). However, I expect to have problems requiring tweaks out of the box with a linux install -- I don't expect to have these kinds of problems in an OS that I paid $150+ for (or whatever the OEM licensing fee turns out to be). So when someone makes a post claiming that these kinds of MS statements are just marketspeak and twisted exaggerations of the truth, I know exactly what they're talking about. I've been through it. When MS releases these statements which are completely opposite to my experiences, how am I supposed to feel as a Microsoft customer? Do you understand what it feels like to explain to my parents, "Don't break your computer, and if you buy a new one, make sure you return Vista"? It's embarassing.

-- awaiting Windows 7.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

BobWells — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:40:34 GMT

You forgot opne more "misunderstanding"...

Namely: DRM

Every article on DRM seems to skirt the issue of what is apparently just starting to happen...and exactly what we all feared would happen. CNET is running the following article today regarding Vista:

"Microsoft is soon expected to explain why it inserted technology into its Vista operating system that blocked digital-TV viewers from recording their favorite shows. Their current excuse--that Microsoft adheres to regulations proposed by the Federal Communications Commission--makes little sense, as the only rules on controlling recording from broadcast TV were struck down by the courts in 2005.

The controversy began last week, when some Vista Media Center users trying to record from over-the-air digital or basic cable television discovered that they were barred from recording NBC TV shows American Gladiators and Medium.

In what for some was a stunning acknowledgment by Microsoft, the software maker said Windows Media Center honors the flags used by broadcasters to limit recording."

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

paurience — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:08:49 GMT

Oatman: "The only bug I ever notice is when your transfering a file and click on the explorer window that your transferring it stops responding. But really who cares? Just dont' click something thats going to crash you."

Wow. I hardly know what to say to that. That really seems like it should be OK? If your steering wheel in your car stopped changing the car's direction because you touched it while the car was moving, I have got to imagine that you would be a bit upset. (Though that is not unlikely in the future as Synch evolves.)

I am not a huge fan of Microsoft, Linux, or Mac. I don't think any of them have gotten it right. A computer functions on 1s and 0s. It should not be that hard to come up with a system that doesn't crash. PERIOD.

Personally I am working on moving to Ubuntu and moving to running MS in a VMware player for things that I must run MS for such as my wife's remote access to work. Things are not all together rosy that way either but at least I'm not paying $240 for the privlege of running software that has been crippled. (They already coded all of the features for Vista Ultimate. They aren't paying an extra $80 to press the Ultimate CDs.) The only thing that MS has going for it at this stage is the fact that no significant strides are being made in people porting games to Linux. Mac is getting better, but they are still thin.

Getting back to my original point. (I digress sometimes.) If I am paying even the paltry sum of $200 for an OS (Windows Vista Home Basic), I expect to be able to MOVE A WINDOW while a file is being copied. THAT is what ticks people off. Knowing that you had to pay for a piece of software that can't even do what should be a fundamental task reliably.

Wow. That got way longer than I planned on. Sorry about that. Not sorry enough to go back and edit it mind you, but sorry none the less.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Oatman — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:52:38 GMT

Whats ur favorite Linux OS mines Ubuntu/Sabayon.

Btw thx for the link!

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Estesark — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:25:25 GMT

Oatman: "Mac is a core system with eye candy its so similar to linux its not even funny"

You're right, it's not funny... it's a serious, attractive, straightforward operating system. Linux itself is still my OS of choice though.

Anyway, here's a mirror, courtesy of The Guardian (A UK newspaper):

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/Five%20Misunderstood%20Features%20in%20Windows%20Vista.pdf

It'll be interesting to see what changes, if any, Microsoft have made to the document when it returns.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Oatman — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:27:16 GMT

I am no longer having any issues with Windows Vista what so ever. After the release of SP1 everything for me has been solved. The only bug I ever notice is when your transfering a file and click on the explorer window that your transferring it stops responding. But really who cares? Just dont' click something thats going to crash you. I've used Mac OSX and theres all these brags about how much faster it is. WELL if you would see what processes it runs Mac comes with barely any features you ahve to buy all the apps to make it feature filled. Mac is a core system with eye candy its so similar to linux its not even funny. Also with windows if an app crashes you just End task. Have you ever crashed an app in OSX??? The entire system shuts down. I really think you people need to give more credit to microsoft for all of their hard work.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Photo1921 — Tue, 20 May 2008 14:57:34 GMT

Bob-C, good analogy and I had totally forgot about the Start Me Up from 95.

Brandon, any update on the link?

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Bob-C — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:09:59 GMT

There were some features in XP that needed to be improved and Vista has improved them. But there were other XP features that were like Classic Coke. They were perfect the way they were. There was no need to replace them with, "New Coke". People naturally resent and resist it when you try to force them to give up something they thought was perfect. Nobody wants to have, "New Coke", forced on them. The Start Menu changes are a great example of how Microsoft did a poor job in recognizing that concept.

- What in the world happened to the button entitled START? I remember when Windows 95 came out and Bill Gates was bragging about how easy it was to use the new GUI All a person ever had to remember was that they click on the word START. Everyone instantly got it as the Rolling Stones song, "Start Me Up", blasted through Windows commercials every fifteen minutes. Gates paid the Stones millions to make it the Microsoft Windows theme song. It is impossible to forget just like the theme songs of Darth Vader or Rocky. "What could be more simple and intuitive than the word START?", was what Bill Gates would ask. EVEN KEITH RICHARDS GOT IT!! How could replacing it with a Microsoft logo be more intuitive than a START button? Could Darth Vader strut out of his shuttle to it? Could Rocky use it in a montage? What are we even supposed to call that thing?!? Am I supposed to tell an end user on a support call, "First click on the symbol previously known as the START button."? When I tried to use a Mac last year, I just didn't get it. I wanted to know where the heck the START button was and complained about how counter inuitive it was. The START button = Windows. It is iconic in our culture.

- I also HATE that darn scroll bar that comes up when I click on the symbol previously known as the Start button. It is NOT easier to use than XP's pop up menus. Not by a long shot. I can't even imagine what the rationale was and that makes it more aggravating. STOP FORCING NEW COKE ON ME!!!

- The Film Strip view was removed from Windows Explorer. I realized you added a similar type of view but you moved it out of the Views pulldown. Why? If people already know where something is, how does it make it easier for them to use by moving it somewhere else? People don't want their Classic Coke repackaged in some new color scheme where they are going to have to hunt for it in the Supermarket. On top of that, would it have hurt to have both the Filmstrip view and the new View? Why did it have to be one or the other? Why force New Coke?

* Having Vista automatically do defrags in the background is great because users no longer have to worry about them.

* Having a built in two way firewall is great.

* Having backups simplified and streamlined to go to other PC's is great.

* Making it easy to do editing on pictures right in Windows Explorer is great.

* Having glass windows with Aero and 3-D views and seeing realtime pop pictures of Windows running when I mouse over their minimized icons is superb.

* Being able to scale pictures to any size in Explorer is really cool.

* Having support for the latest version of IPv6 is great and will be GREATLY appreciated as Server 2008 takes off.

Now if features like the Start Menu and Film Strip view and the other Classic Coke features in XP had been left alone, all of these positives would stand out more and Vista would've been more widely appreciated.

A new OS should improve poor features and build on top of great ones. Not just indesciminately change every feature so it will look new and shiny. It is the most important lesson that Microsoft can take out of Vista criticisms. I hope you guys can use that construtively for Windows 7.

BTW, I thought that I had noticed the Start menu was unchanged in 2008 server when I saw a demo. Correct me if I am wrong.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Morph — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:23:32 GMT

@dovella

"XP First Year RTM (problem problem problem) and 60 m distribution"

Yeah but they fixed "problem problem problem" very quickly and now it works. Not perfect but on hardware we all bought in the last 18 months its fine. Month after month waiting for fixes for Vista is rather slow, it makes me suspect that the codebase is still (in fact is probably more) convoluted and messy making bug fixing very hard.

"Vista firt year rtm 100 m distribution and small problem."

Depends on your definition of "small problem" really, months waiting for "WOW" features to be made operable is not too small really.

And how many of those 100m have actually been sold and not just packaged up with a PC - have you tried to buy a PC WITHOUT Vista ?

I look after 50+ PCs here and pretty much every user has opted for the "downgrade to XP" option which came with their machine. I suspect that the 50+ unused Vistas still count as sales.

Then again http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207402157

"Microsoft Thursday revealed that sales of licenses for its desktop Windows operating systems fell 24% in the company's fiscal third quarter, a sign that the Redmond's stranglehold on the PC market is weakening as new competitors emerge."

I'm not anti MS but they botched this badly.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

Project Mayu — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:46:06 GMT

64 bit OS is the future, Microsoft should drop 32 bit support for the next OS.

But I hope the All programs must be signed to run, does not happen, its bad enough installing a non signed driver, only to have the next reboot say please reinstall windows.

And I wish the built in burning ability, had a verify option.

Vista's interface is far superior to XP's, and any of the annoying bugs and fatal flaws XP had. Love the search bar in the start menu, best thing ever added.

And I don't know what the problem with UAC is, because once Windows is setup, it only comes up when I try to install something.

And finally XP needed 4GB of ram, the 8GB I have on Vista 64, is better.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

D123451 — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:39:07 GMT

@dovella

Well I gave up on SP1.... coz its still not appearing......

ps I dun think it matters if i dun have the SP1 right!??!?!

Basically there isn't any physical change on the system so why borther then I guess.... LOL

Thx for your answering anyway. " )*

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

BobWells — Sun, 18 May 2008 05:23:45 GMT

Microsoft has nobody to blame but themselves for Vista's sad state. They completely ignored the "return on investment" for the customer while trying to please everyone. It's just a mediocre upgrade over XP. While it may be better for some, there's nothing that matches the "Wow" we were all promised.

It's not "misunderstanding" Vista that's the problem. It's trying to understand exactly what we've got.

You mention UAC. It's annoying. There MUST be a better way of handling security rather than just passing the buck to the end-user.

Windows Search is alother great example. The interface is TERRBILE and it really doesn't seem to be any better than the other (free) search add-ons out there.

The display driver was a fiasco for the first 6 months after Vista released and hardly any games utilize the new DX making it almost worthless.

64-bit architecture...do we REALLY need an OS that requires 4+GB of memory to operate properly...especially when the prevoius OS required 1/4 of that to run the same tasks?

Finally, you mention Image Management. I'm assuming you aren't referring to the icon display fiasco, Adobe pdf viewing problems, and actually being able to copy those images without having to wait 33,856 days to copy.

Again, Microsoft has nobody to blame but themselves.

re: 5 Misunderstood Features in Windows Vista

dovella — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:20:31 GMT

No!!

Vista now is the BEST s.o.

STOP!!