Windows Vista test experiences?

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Dennis Delaney
Posts: 45
Joined: Sat Jan 24, 2004 2:03 pm

Windows Vista test experiences?

Unread post by Dennis Delaney »

Has anyone else in the H&M community been testing the recent free Release Candidate versions of Windows Vista? I have for the last couple of weeks and I must say that after all the hype I am very unimpressed and disappointed. Take away the pretty new interface and other eye candy and I see very little reason to switch to it any time soon. It's a memory and resources pig -- over 500MB and over 10,000 file handles in use straight after booting -- programs run significantly more slowly subjectively on the same machine than on Windows XP and the Release Candidates are still full of rough edges and incompatibilities.

Help & Manual runs flawlessly on Vista without any changes and the screen capture tool and TNT are also almost without problems. Free area captures with the Aero Glass interface have a small issue because Vista's windows fade out so slowly that a transparent image of the capture module itself remains on the screen. But I imagine that is going to be very trivial to correct.

The subjective slowness of Vista is definitely not only due to the not very powerful graphics card I am using to run Aero Glass (the new Vista interface is handled by the graphics card processor, not by the computer processor). Microsoft help compilers also run much more slowly -- my tests indicate a slowdown of 20-30% on the same machine for compiling the same help files.

The only new feature of Vista I've found that might be seriously worth having is the new indexed search engine, which makes searches for anything on the entire hard disk virtually instant. This search also works in individual folders, which is very nice. But you can get the same functionality on Windows XP with free products like Google Desktop Search or the even better Copernic Desktop Search, which is what I use.

Otherwise I only see reasons not to switch to Vista anytime soon: It's much slower on the same machine, it doesn't provide any new functionality that I really care to have and until it's been tested for around six months "in the wild" it's also a potential reliability and security risk. This applies in particular because Microsoft has completely rewritten the entire network stack (everything that handles networking and Internet access), which means that it is by definition insecure until it has been hammered on in the wilds of the Internet for several months.

In addition to this some of the new security features are very poorly implemented. This applies in particular to the already infamous User Account Control, which is supposed to make it possible to run as a restricted user all the time. Unfortunately it's still so annoying to use that I am sure that most users will either turn it off completely or just get so used to clicking away the warning screens that they will never actually read them, with the result that it doesn't provide any real protection. For example, to create a new folder in Program Folders and copy some files to it you need to enter your administrator user name and password four times in four different dialogs, each of which blacks out the entire screen. You get the feeling that the programmers at Microsoft didn't even bother to look at how it's done right in operating systems like Linux and Apple OSX. Also, the warning dialogs almost never tell you what sort of dangers you are going to be faced with if you accept. For example, when a web page tries to install an update to the Macromedia Flash player you get exactly the same warning as when a phishing page is trying to install a a dangerous application -- and in both cases you get no information about what program is to be installed. As it is at the moment UAC sucks very, very badly and if it doesn't get fixed for the final release it's going to be a major problem.

My personal recommendation is to switch off the new interface for testing by switching to the Classic View mode. Then you won't be distracted by the slick new graphical interface and will see what you're really getting , which isn't very much.

Opinions, experiences anyone?
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C.Trautmann
Posts: 51
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 3:19 pm
Location: Aalen - Germany

Unread post by C.Trautmann »

I dont know facts or statistics....but my feeling is that especially OSX got a growing number of users.

Because of simple using and well designed user interface. So Microsoft have to answer and now they do it. Vista looks in my eyes like a bad copy of OSX, but everybody see how similar it is, how copied.

...i need so long to get my pc up to a secure level i am pleased with, hundrets of updates and hundrets of hours...I dont want to go trew this process once again and will rest in peace with my XP!

Christoph
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