Despite Scott’s slagging of Vista today, I like it – especially now that I’ve got 2GB RAM. Don’t tell anyone. I’d hate for Jeff Putt to hear about it.
Okay so, as I said on the show the other night, it isn’t the major new paradigm that was promised over those long, long, Longhorn years. Remember quotes like these from BillG?
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And let’s forget about WinFS….
But as an operating system, it’s pretty “neat” (I can imagine BillG calling it that… isn’t he just the child of the 50s??).
Here’s my desktop at the moment:
What do I like?
1. It’s prettier than XP.
2. When folders open and close they do this little.. shrinky… thing. It’s… neat.
3. Ummm… having the sidebar pre-installed is nice but I’d been running Yahoo Konfabulator for a few years on and off so it’s not an entirely new experience. It is, however, packaged. The widgets I’ve got installed are currently:
4. The little clock thing in the taskbar allows multiple timezones!! Now I can see what time it is in Scotland and Washington when I’m hiding from Ewan and Scott on Skype. I can wait until I know they are asleep before I stop lurking.
5. Most nearly everything I need is running. All except my printer. I had trouble with the scanner but Photoshop figured out how to make it work.
6. The “snip” tool from Windows XP Tablet PC Edition ships with it and that is VERY handy.
7. It’s pretty (did I already say that?)
8. The new Win-TAB is old technology (I can’t remember what it was called but I used to have an app which did that years ago) but great to have in the OS.
9. The way the little previews of the windows you have open pop up when you hover your mouse over the taskbar.
10. ummm. it’s pretty?
The list of things I don’t like is shorter…
1. The integrated search is better but not, IMHO, as good as Google Desktop. Come on Microsoft. Catch up.
2. Hmmmm… no podcast support?
3. It doesn’t swallow?
4. Oh yeah. Google Desktop searches open in IE and not FF. I haven’t been able to figure out how to stop that. Anyone know the secret (no, not the stupid new agey documentary which says “whatever you conceive and believe you can achieve”, but just… the regular type secret)?
5. Oh yeah… I had to spend the first two days turning off the stupid security features. YES – I WANT TO RUN THIS FRAKKING APPLICATION! THAT’S WHY I CLICKED ON IT STUPID!!
I don’t know. I can’t pick much fault with it so far I guess. But then again I’ve only had it four days. Give me some more time.
Would I go out and pay real shells for it? No. The benefit over XP is really just cosmetic as far as I can tell. I really cannot for the life of me tell what’s truly new and innovative in Vista apart from the prettiness and I wouldn’t shell out $600 – $1000 for that.
However, if you are getting a new PC and you have Vista as an option – and you are well aware that some of your software and/or peripherals may not work – then go ahead and move to Vista. Mum – that means you.
for uni students we get a copy of vista business free. problem with this is that the hardware we have wont support vista. eg driver problems. but because you brought a pc from a supplier with vista on it. then all hardware should have drivers, correct? do you know why they did not include wireless card?? because they might not have had the drivers for it at that moment and to stop the concafiny of phone calls because the users can’t get the pc to connect to their wireless. they just leave it out.
I don’t know about that mate. I think they just figure desktops don’t need wireless. They think ethernet is enough?
It doesn’t swallow?!?
Yeah, so it does everything Mac OS has been doing since like OS8, but it hogs three times as much RAM and processor time? Yeah, nice improvement there!
Like I said before… I won’t be installing Vista on my machine any time in the foreseeable future. And if I buy a new PC and Vista is pre-installed, I will most likely reformat and install XP.
Of course, if they’re real arseholes, they could just stop supporting XP and then everyone will have to use the crappiness that is Vista or switch to Mac.
That is what everyone says, but The thing with macs is that to get a decent one it is ~£1000 and you can buy a reasonable Pc for about £400 then Upgrade the parts you want to higher spec may cost you about ~£200 depending on if you want a Nice GFX card or not
You can buy the best PC in the world… but if the OS doesn’t work then the thing isn’t worth a piece of cheese! When will Microsoft learn that the interface is supposed to be invisible and provide the user with painless access to their programs? So you made a pretty animation on a window…whoopee!
When you have very few applications Herne, the interface is invisible because it doesn’t have to be visible! I have seen Macs and I don’t see what the big deal is.
This is just another one of those Religious debates that Cam loves!
Mac is a Computer, PC’s are computers, get over it!
Molly
yeah… linux is prettier than xp as well and cheaper too… on some flavours you can even pick how it does it’s shrinky thing ( http://www.beryl-project.org/features.php )
Molly,
There are thousands of programs for Macs. I don’t know where you get your info from. Most are free and a lot cheaper than Windows versions. Anything you can do on Windows I can do on a Mac and probably a lot more efficiently 90% of the time.
The other thing is I know you are just trying to stir the pot and I am biting but hey that’s life.
I’d like to say that I’m not a Mac fanboy.
I use both Mac and PCs interchangeably. I use the same applications on my PC as I do on my Mac, and I have to say that Mac does it cleaner and with fewer problems than my PC. Personally I don’t care which interface is prettier, I just want things to work.
maybe they don’t need wireless but my opinion sounds like they would like to but something was holding them back 😉 and i guess you paid a bit of cash to get the best. so the best should also include a wireless card. should it not??
Does anyone know which ISP’s support Vista? My sister bought a new laptop with Vist pre-installed and bigpond were the only ones supporting Vista. She doesn’t want to go through Bigpond, but can’t find anyone else. Any suggestions?
I bought a new tablet today because of chronic RSI and I wanted to see if alternative input methods would be better… I’m already in LOVE with Vista because you can use all voice as your input… open programmes, click on web links, do everything with no keyboard and no pen, straight out of the box and you don’t even have to spend hours saying words for it to learn your voice. It just works and it’s FAB!
Wendii
Shane – what do you mean by “support vista”? You mean they will provide you with technical support for your internet connection if you are running vista? or do you mean they will actually WORK if you are running vista? I imagine most would support the first scenario and ALL of them would support the second.
Wendii – the Tablet PC has supported voice commands since day one, but hopefully the Vista edition has some improvements. Will you keep us informed after you’ve played with it a while? I’d love to see ALL PCs take more advantage of voice.