Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

tomhob — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:56:03 GMT

I've had Windows Vista Business for a few years and have never had a serious problem with it yet. The only issue at first was 'drivers' and thats been true of ever new version of Windows. I was pleased with how many drivers the Win 7 Beta automatically installed during my installation. Far better than older programs did.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

energythief — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:42:42 GMT

Photo1921: Thank you for trying to save the up arrow. That is my single biggest obstacle to productivity in using Vista. Breadcrumbs are worse than useless. Microsoft, you trained millions of users to use PCs in a specific way. People are hating having to unlearn the behaviors you instilled in them to begin with - that is where so much of this Vista hatred comes from, in my experience.

Some other annoyances:

No XP-Style Start Menu: I seriously have to go back to the 2000-era "Classic" as my only option? WTF? I hate the loss of fly-out menus, but I like the double-column Vista menu. Why can't we have options?

Changing the icon for "Show Desktop" without any warning. I discovered it accidentally days after using Vista.

UAC's been beat to the ground already, so I won't go into detail here.

Refresh icon on IE7 is moved and altered for no good reason. Again, a bit of scavenger hunting required here. Changes to fix flaws or improve user flow is one thing, but moving a perfectly good icon from one place to another place on the same horizontal line (and altering its appearance) doesn't enhance anything - it's just change for the sake of change. Again.

Shut Down options hiding behind an icon. Initial mis-clicks made me frequently unhappy. Thank god Windows 7 seems to be fixing this one.

I don't like that the little network icon in the taskbar don't flash when transmitting data anymore. That was a nice visual way to communicate information without requiring any clicking or input from the user.

Too much work to change the system date and time.

The next ones are not Vista per se, but also Microsoft design failures:

Windows Media Player attempting to "sync" with every flash drive I ever plug in, as if WMP is a horny puppy and my USB Stick is a leg. Syncing is stupid. Windows is showing Apple envy, and that's just wrong.

Ribbon Menus in Office. Where is the what again? Why did unicorns invade my PC? Nothing is where it should be. The second largest productivity killer in my new computer experience.

So that I'm not perceived as all doom-and-gloom, here's some things I really have come to love:

Moving the user folders to C:\Users. At first disconcerting, but this is an example of a change that made so much sense after getting used to it.

Also, the new solitaire games and Purble Palace are cool.

You die hard IT guys may not like it, but you all helped make computers this ubiquitous. It's not all the fault of users being too ignorant to learn their tools. Unskilled users believe the corporate hype that PCs are easy to use and understand. Since Microsoft created so much of that expectation, it has a responsibility to deliver.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

Vizyondaki Filmler — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:39:54 GMT

Good article.

good luck

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

KnoxITPro — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:49:51 GMT

Ok.

I found an error for you. The one and only error out of nearly 600 vista machines.

Upon sysprep'ing a Dell D530 Latitude laptop, to image over to ~60 others. The Intel 945 Video adapter driver somehow uninstalled itself. Like within 3 seconds of the sysprep shutdown.

Is this a Vista issue, or an Intel issue? No real way to tell without digging for an answer. But ill let you guys place the lame on Vista.

But wait...as soon as the image is applied and the box runs the setup routine and logs in, windows update finds the driver and asks to install it within seconds. So even though Vista messed up, shouldnt we give it credit for rectifying the situation before I even had time to?

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

KnoxITPro — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:19:12 GMT

Lets clear a few things up.

These were ~500 machines with Vista preinstalled from Dell. Machines designed to run Vista. Plenty of hardware.

I wiped the Dell vista install, and performed my own clean SP1 OEM install. Set up Office 2007, Firefox, some other small applications. Loaded all available windows and office updates. Sysprep'd the box, captured using imagex and deployed the 500 boxes using imagex.

I hopped hardware several times to laptop models and a couple desktop variations. No, there was not a problem from VISTA. The only problem with an application we had was an web based oracle interface application that swaps data locally in some files, those files requested to write to program files as an administrator. In the end, it was the shortfall of the company who wrote this software, not Vista.

IE Compatibility problems? Vista comes with IE7, and none of the updates failed or caused other issues. So what are you talking about?

We had Dell hardware failures. We had DOA HP Printers. We had bad cat6 runs. We had ZERO problems that were flat out caused by Vista itself. Im not lying, I have no reason to lie. Microsoft isnt going to pay me to write this blog post, im not Jerry Seinfeld.

Our environment isnt quite as locked down and doesnt use as many third party software apps as a lot of you probably do.

I'm not quite sure why so many people are so anti-Vista. So far its worked well for me and in my job. I would venture to say that perhaps some companies need to hire systems administrators that are able to roll with the changes and learn to use a new OS.

IEATPOI - Actually you are wrong. Nearly every day do we come across situations where Windows or Microsoft technologies simply trump Apple all around. Our tickets are about 70/30 Apple/Windows. That should say a lot.

Apple deloyment is decades behind that of Windows, and thats a big one when you have sites of several hundred machines.

Also, while you dont interface directly with the OS, you do need to know how to interface with its features. Do you hire a mechanic to change your radio station? Or expect your radio to do it on its own? You ask a mechanic to change a timing belt, the same way you ask Vista to defrag at XYZ timeframe, or whatever other setting. You cant blame the OS or its features when you yourself are unexperienced and unwilling to do your end of it.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

Randy A — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:08:44 GMT

and before you start in on me, I manage a 3050 user environment which currently has about 300 Vista machines deployed. I like Vista too, but your claim of zero problems did not match ours. We had many issues, especially before the service pack was released. Why do you think they release service packs? Because there are no problems?

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

Randy A — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:56:26 GMT

KnoxITPro,

I cannot believe that you deployed 500 machines and didn't have one single problem with Vista. If you did, you'd be in the guiness book of records. Just the IE compatability issues ALONE would have caused some problems.

Anyone else care to claim a 500+ user OS deployment of Vista that didn't have ANY OS problems whatsoever? Anyone? EVERY computer install of that size is going to have SOME kind of issue.

Anyone else dare to claim that 99% of the computer problems are caused by end-users? Only 1% is caused Vista?

If this is indeed true, then please provide us the link to your deployment whitepapers and process. The Microsoft Consolting Services and their Critical Situations (critsit) team will be knocking at your door to get you hired because you've achieved what nobody else on the planet has been able to do.

Bottom line: prove it.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

ieatpoi — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:14:11 GMT

"99% of computer problems are end-user related."

That's simply a cop-out. An operating system should make things transparent for it to succeed. Your grocery analogy isn't quite right. A better analogy would be that you go to the car dealership, but are then forced to change the tires, wire the radio, and tune the engine yourself to get it to work right.

If this were 20 years ago, then yes. That was expected. But to really have gotten nobetter off than we were then is really a knock to Microsoft and the only thing us customer are to blame is that we've accepted this sad state of affairs as the norm. I should not be expected to understand my OS in order to get my job done. That is the entire point of the OS.

You don't see people hacking and tuning a Mac to work. It just works out of the box. That's progress. Vista is the same as XP is the same as 2000 is the same as...DOS really. If Vista had autoexec and config.bat files, I'm sure we'd be having to tweak those still too.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

KnoxITPro — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:21:05 GMT

Vista does work. Don't insult those responsible enough to learn how to use their machine.

You dont goto the grocery store and buy a pack of chicken and the chicken cooks itself for you. You dont buy a car and the car drive itself. You learn to cook, you learn to drive. In the same way you should learn to properly operate and maintain a computer operating system and your experience wouldnt be so unsatisfactory.

99% of computer problems are end-user related. Think about that.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

alexanderw — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:05:55 GMT

okay look. i dont know any of this high end techinical stuff, i'm a regular computer user who's just trying to get my work done, and windows vista has been a source of no end of annoyance and irritation since the day i got it. It keeps asking me unneccessary questions, windows keep popping up when i'm trying to do something in a hurry, all of my favourite programmes have some sort of compatibility issue with vista and worst of all, its slower than xp on a pc that's 3 times more powerful then my old platform. My dad cant open hisbank websites, my mum cant install her favourite games and I cant even figure out where the damned print button is in ms office 2007. Its bloody unwieldy, hard to use and troublesome. I've actually been AVOIDING using my new pc since i got it because it has so many compatibility issues. XP never had problems like this. Hell, dos never had problems like this.

Look there's no point creating a fancy "secure" programme if i cant even use it without yanking half my hair out. Windows vista needs some serious fixing. And real quick. Right after i type this i'm going out to the pc shop to try and find a retail version of xp, because i can take this crap anymore.

Take your technical geekspeak elsewhere, the rest of us just want a pc that WORKS.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

KnoxITPro — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 13:55:12 GMT

No, i dont work for Microsoft. That isnt to say i wouldnt consider it a great honor.

Call me a "butt kisser" if you want. The fact remains that I recently deployed over 500 new machines at a new facility and did not have one single VISTA related problem. Dell sent a couple DOA machines, HP sent a couple DOA printers. The new ability to Vista to hop HAL's was trememdously helpful because we had 3 different form factors to deal with, all with differneces enough to hose an XP image trying to hop from one to the other. Not Vista, though. Lets not forget that it was all done using WinPE 2.1 which is run off the core of Vistas kernel.

If you know what you are doing, Vista is a great OS. There is a slight learning curve for those coming from XP, but then again if everything was identical it wouldnt be a newer OS. Self-healing NTFS, scheduled defrags, volume shadow services, synch manager and a plethora of other options that come standard on Vista have reduced quite a few problems and saved us lots of time, in my IT Dept.

The only "problem" we HAVE had, is that the company who's programs we use for a DB interface wont update their code to work in conjunction with UAC. Its not MS's fault, its the fault of the software maker who violated MS's instructions on where to set user-editable files when they are run as a user. Its NOT Microsofts fault when every software programmer is sloppy and wants a user to run as admin 100% of the time.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

woodyelf — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:43:37 GMT

Great article I finally read all of it. It's really a fresh unbiased view of how things really are. If you check a few posts back you'll note that I have been saying for a long time that XP and Vista adoption rates are very similiar, and even leaning in favor of Vista.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

WhyblockLoBi — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:57:19 GMT

the vista vs xp is actually part of the initial post, almost half! A lot of peaple without heaps of computer science under their belt rely on things like tweakguide to provide better service to clients, not all working in the industry are MSCE! Also not all hardware works under XP and some only partially. (anyone else got old 98 hardware under the house?) so just-etc- that is not that. configuring the os to run according to specific needs is somthing that a lot of end users need all the help they can get. thankyou to everyone that takes time to share their knowledge and make computer use more enjoyable for the rest of us.

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

Justalicious6989 — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:19:51 GMT

How did this end up an XP-Vista arguement?

Vista works well on great hardware

XP works Great on all hardware!

that is that..

re: Tweakguides.com: Breath of Fresh Air

JustDavid — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:52:53 GMT

I've been using Vista X64 on two HP laptops for several months, and haven't had any problems at all. HP has provided the 64 bit drivers for everything, including the tablet digitizer and fingerprint reader on the tablet PC. I've NOT found anything that wouldn't run on X64, with the exception of Cisco VPN client but they say they will never support Vista X64. One laptop has 2 gigs of ram, the tablet has 3 gigs, and both run great. Use both for multitasking a lot, picture editing, video editing, listening to music, surfing the web, etc.

No complaints about Vista here, either 32 bit or 64 bit version.