April 23rd, 2007
by Michael Swanberg
Okay, I’ve been using Windows Vista on a few of my computers for the last few months, and I have to say, it’s growing on me.
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The first thing that grabs any hardcore user of PCs is the file manager and the changes there. Vista adds several features that should have been there in XP. For instance, the “burn” button. This allows you to select something and press this button to put it on a CD-R(W). Of course, all this really does is copy it to the CD drive’s temporary folder for burning. It’s nothing more than an easier way to right-click, select Send To, and then select the CD drive, which existed in XP. But still, it’s somewhat handy.
The breadcrumb thing takes some getting used to, but once you do, it is pretty good. I never used the folder tree in any prior iteration of Windows because it takes too much screen real estate. Well now, with the bread crumbs, this small area does triple duty: it serves as the folder tree, as the indicator to what folder you are viewing, and as a place to enter a location to browse to.
I have a few nits. Like if you move a folder from one location to another, where that folder already exists, Vista is very descriptive about what’s going on and allows many options. It calls this “merging” folders. But it always leaves empty folders behind when this occurs. Like say I was moving a folder called Project from FolderA to FolderB, where a Project folder already exists. Vista says, “hey, do you wish to merge these folders?” And then if there are any filenames that overlap, it pops up a very nice dialog box asking what should be done and if it should be done for all conflicts. At the end, Project still exists in FolderA, even though it’s empty. Hey, I said move it, that means I want it gone from the source location!
There are still driver issues as well. I recently upgraded to gigabit ethernet around my place, which means I have to install gigabit NIC cards in the older PCs. Well, my Vista machine at home found and installed a driver for the new NIC that worked fine, except that there were spontaneous reboots whenever there was a lot of activity. I downloaded the proper Vista32 driver from the manufacturer’s website and installed it but the reboots didn’t go away. As long as I am not trying to copy a lot of stuff across that NIC, everything is fine.
There is, of course, the slow copying and moving issue that many have noted. I assume this is for the new search functionality. Vista must be indexing as it moves. Across the new gigabit ethernet, I was getting only about 5MBps throughput. Shouldn’t it be about 20 times that fast? I also noticed it when I accidentally deleted a handful of files and folders. It took about a second to delete them, but when I pressed Ctrl-Z to undo the deletion, it took about 2 minutes to get them back. Something HAS to be done about this.
While we’re talking about the new search functionality, it is really great. And it’s a good thing too because Vista makes it, in some ways, far more difficult to find some things. The Vista “how to” articles I see are almost exclusively counseling people to press the Start button and then just start typing what they’re looking for. The Start Menu is now defunct. I have a hard time finding anything in it anyway, so the search function is a must.
But there is also natural language searching, which is great. I would love to know what the extent of it is, though. It allows you to, for instance, search for “email from bill last week”. As long as you are using Windows Mail, which has its mail indexed, this will work. Curiously, though, the search box in Windows Mail itself does not have this same functionality.
But I have to say, having a standardized and functional search function as part of the OS is great. Now third-party applications can set their data to be indexed as well. Hopefully this is possible. I would love to see Thunderbird also be able to be scanned with Vista’s search box just as easily and completely as Windows Mail.
Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t have a reputation for doing this, however. I understand why they can’t bundle awesome apps in with the OS the way Apple does. If they gave away great programs, then the third-party developers would sue them for predatory practices. Heck, this lawsuit stuff even goes so far that the antivirus authors are suing Microsoft for locking down the kernel, which is a great fix for not allowing the virii in in the first place! “Hey, Microsoft,” they’re screaming, “you can’t fix your OS now! We’ve made a lot of money trying to plug the holes in the last one!” Ridiculous.
But the bad side to Microsoft’s including dumbed-down apps is that they get them to work really well with Windows itself, but they don’t open up the same hooks to non-Microsoft apps. Again, it would be really nice if they allowed other software companies the tools and opportunity to let their applications take full advantage of Vista’s goodness.
IE7 is functional. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. I don’t do a lot of wild stuff with my browser. I like tabbed browsing, which is about the only reason, outside security, that I use Firefox. Assuming that Vista is more secure, as Microsoft is touting, and assuming that IE7 is more secure, as Micrsoft is touting, I would have no troubles using IE7. Although I do miss the download window in Firefox. It seems much better to have all concurrent downloads in one place instead of multiple windows. But that’s personal preference.
In most other ways, there aren’t that many differences in everyday use between Vista and XP. The keyboard shortcuts are all still the same. Other ideals such as double-click and right-click all have the same meaning and functionality. The vast majority of users are not going to have much trouble at all with the move to the new OS.
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