Windows Under Construction

Windows Vista Review / Rant

Monday, December 17 2007

I truly was trying to stay out of the Windows Vista bashing fest. But lately I have had to work on several vista systems for customers. Every time I sit down on a Vista machine, I find myself wishing I was a history professor rather than an IT guy. Vista truly is unbelievably bad. Not only does the system feel really clunky and buggy, it is terribly slow on all but one machine I have ever run it on (macbook pro running bootcamp).

Even worse, Microsoft has changed so much of the control panel gui that is it really difficult to find stuff quickly. Things such as add/remove programs which used to be available by a simple double-click in control panel is now several levels deep. In fact, I really don't know exactly where it is. There is so much stuff to read through that I have pretty much given up on finding its real location and instead I use the search bar at the top every time. While I think the control panel interface could have used a drastic reworking, Vista's is sure not a simple and intuitive interface.

The new UAC prompt is really a terrible addition as well. Why does it have to take over the entire system input? When I set up a customer's computer I usually try to have several things running at once. So I will be installing software, downloading drivers, researching how to get an XP driver to work with Vista, etc., and the stupid UAC prompt will popup right as I am trying to click on something else totally unrelated to the install or the uninstall process. While increased root level security was crucial for the next release of Windows, why did they not implement a system similar to sudo like unix and OSX use? These systems require the user to authenticate themselves to gain root level privileges but once authenticated remember their authentication for a period of time, thus one can get through an installer (or two) without having to deal with security restrictions more than once. Even more, if you are working on something else, the authentication prompt will not block you from continuing your work. The Apple commercial that pokes fun at this system really is not that blown out of proportion. Link to the ad.

The next thing that really irks me is compatibility with older hardware, especially printers. I have never in my life left a customer with a piece of hardware not working properly until I worked with Vista. I had one customer who had 2 Dell printers that came with her Windows XP machine. While the printers were not that nice, they were relatively new (usb interfaced) and got the job done for her needs. After downloading Vista drivers from Dell.com and spending 3 hours installing, uninstalling, and waiting for the print setup program to reopen every time it crashed (many many times), I finally gave up and told her to either wait for Dell to release new drivers, for Microsoft to fix their os, or to buy a new printer that is sure to be compatible.

On another customer's machine, after spending 4 hours trying to get the machine in shape (running smoothly, antivirused, updated, and all data files copied to the machine), I was asked how to access project files from Windows Movie Maker. My customer had created a nice little slideshow with the program, but it had randomly decided to corrupt its data files and the project refused to open. In fact, all of the important data files associated with the project were either corrupted or deleted. So now, not only did I have to leave this new computer (2.2 dual core proc, with 1.5 gigs of ram) running incredibly slow due to virtual memory usage, I had to tell her that her machine had corrupted her nice slide show and that it would take quite a bit more work to try to fix the corruptions in the project rather than just starting over.

On the whole, my experience with Vista has been poor at the very least. The system feels like it has not cooked near long enough. But what I am really worried about is the basic interface design itself. Even if Microsoft gets their act together and fixes all of the numerous bugs, it still has a feel that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Some people have tried to compare Apple's Leopard release to Vista, saying that Leopard has some bugs left in it and that people should stay away from it as well. But from my experience, the bugs in Leopard are very mild and are mostly experienced by people who upgrade their existing installations rather than formatting their machines and starting with a fresh install. It seems like the other bugs have been pretty much squashed in the first 2 months of the OS' release. But the overall feel of the system is nice and on the whole it is a much more productive system to use than its predecessor. I only wish I could say the same for Vista.

If you are one of my customers, and are thinking about upgrading your computer be very wary of buying a Windows Vista machine. If you must stay with Windows, Windows XP is still the best Microsoft OS. But also consider upgrading to an Apple computer. New Apple computers have the capability of running Windows "in a box" while letting the stronger and safer OSX operating system run the actual computer and manage most of your data files. That way you can run windows applications side-by-side with Apple applications, but can keep windows much more contained. Then you don't have to worry near as much about constant computer crashes, viruses, spyware, hardware compatibility, and all the other problems that come with the windows platform (especially Vista).

While I think it is nice that Microsoft is trying to keep guys like me in business by creating bad software, I really get tired of such an expensive piece of engineering always failing. Also, what is with all the different versions of Vista anyway?

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