I'm curious to know how an experienced user can feel that the speed
improvements, tighter security and increased levels of compatibility and
productivity are a step backwards.
Well, it's quite possible that the speed improvemnts mean nothing as this
may be a new PC that came with Vista......
The 'tighter' security is not seen by the user other than UAC prompts, and
problems installing s/w.....
You've got me on the 'increased level of compatibility' (which sounds like
it is just copied & pasted from a MS marketing blurb).....
Increased levels of productivity is another marketing phrase. If it takes
twice as many clicks to do things as before, how can that be *more
productive*, if it takes the user 5 times as long to do something else
because MS moved it from here, to there, just for the sake of moving it,
and the user has a hell of a time finding it's new location, how can that
be more efficient.
Of course, (it wasn't stated but I'm assuming the OP is new to Vista) maybe
after using Vista for 6 months, the OP may get used to it, and at that
point, Vista may seem fine for their needs.
And how, exactly, is Vista counter-intuitive and hidden from the user?
Using the new Control Panel is great.
A control panel's a control panel. Typical home users don't even go there
much.
The visual presentation and
user-driven filtering of files in Windows Explorer makes working with
files an absolute breze. The new Search Index works so fast, I can't
type fast enough to keep up with the results being returned.
Yep, as fast as Google Desktop Search.
The
presence of no less than 11 virtual user folders (as opposed to XP's
single "My Documents" folder) is a boon to file management.
That is completely a personal opinion, and quite frankly, could be
extremely confusing to the slightly computer literate users.
Media Player
11 is the best yet, and knocks the socks off of all other media-player
type utilities.
I can't comment on that, since I have virtually no media files, and
wouldn't use MP if my life depended on it anyway.
Shall I go on?
XP feels archaic in comparison to Vista, and had indeed become a
nightmare to work on after having used Vista for now about a year.
Archaic might not be the correct word.
Pardon the snide remark, but the only way to get Vista to look and act
like XP is to format your hard disk and install XP.
Hmmmm. Does XP's explorer.exe work in Vista...probably not.