VISTA is like BIG BROTHER!

[Dek]

Vista is like an arrogant big brother, while XP is more like a best friend.

What I'm alluding to is the fact that Vista arrogantly forces you to use the
OS it's way. Vista thinks that it alone knows best and restricts the changes
you can make. XP on the other hand allows you to set up the OS just how you
like it.

Examples:

XP: In the "My Documents" folder I have many custom folders besides the
preset MS ones and I'm able to change the file location of the entire "My
Documents" so that it points to a separate hard drive.

VISTA: In the "Documents" folder Vista only allows me to change the file
location of the individual preset MS folders such as "Music". My thirty-five
custom folders, some of which are very large, are forced to reside on the C
drive. I don't want bury my folders away in Vista's neato preset folders.
Vista won't let me do things my way so it doesn't feel like a friendly OS
the way XP does. Vista annoys the way big brothers do!

I have a similar issue with IE6 vs. IE7. IE6 allows me to squeeze the
settings I want into as few tool bars as possible leaving more space for the
web page. IE7 like Vista arrogantly forces me to use the app it's way only.
I like to use things like the "Links" folder which must have a whole toolbar
row to it's self under IE7. I'm left with two inches of tool bars for little
additional functionality.

IE7 should have offered additional flexibility not less. For example: more
people have widescreen monitors, IE7 should have allowed the toolbars to run
down the side of the window if the user so wished.

I assume that less flexibility also means less chance that less advanced
used will screw their system up. My fear is that future generations of
Windows and other MS apps will become more and more prescriptive and less
and less flexible to power users.

How about the option to run the next Windows OS and IE8 in either default
mode or advanced mode with the ability to easily switch between the two.
Many apps such as Nero already do this. Perhaps it's time for MS to realise
that one size no longer fits all.

Two modes of operation would allow the Windows OS to be more fully developed
for the two types of user. Users who want the OS to be as simple and easy to
use as possible and power users who would make good use of more flexible
settings.

If you read this far, thanks. Comments welcome.
Derek B

 

[Jon]

Fortunately you're not currently sent to Room 101 for attempts to tweak the
operating system. This feature may however be included in a future version
of Windows.


Singing "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."......

 

[Michael Walraven]

Unless you have done something to your file structure 'Music' is not
supposed to be in 'Documents' it is alongside it. Also in my Vista Home
Premium I can change the location of 'Documents' to wherever I want with the
'location' tab.

Michael

 

[RMZ]

Vista is like an arrogant big brother, while XP is more like a best friend.

I'm feeling the same love (eh... hate) for this OS, lol... I had two
close friends who took the blue pill and bought a Mac last summer and
they have both been trying to get me to cross over and sadly I'm
wishing I had. I'm such a penny pincher I have tried to avoid Mac's
but some things are worth paying for. As an engineer my perspective is
that Microsoft has just really made some very poor design choices with
Vista. It's as if they didn't quite know where to go and ended up
giving us

* A "pretty" new UI that often does more harm than good
* An improved security model that does good, but from a users
perspective is often restrictive and intrusive
* Improved driver stability model at the cost again of restricting the
user in terms of breaking compatibility with XP devices

It seems most of Vista's "improvements" come at some cost to the user
and that's really unacceptable. Microsoft should have known better in
my opnion and I think the result is more people are just going to stay
away from it, the path forward is obviously not with a Microsoft
branded OS at this point. Vista won't be the first Microsoft OS to get
criticism (anyone remember Windows ME?) they need to kill Vista
quickly and come out with whatever is next... Vista won't tank
Microsoft, but there is this line being drawn with computers, similar
to what happened with the auto-industry.... I think Microsoft's Vista
Home Basic is more like the Ford Focus or Honda Civic, the premium
Vista 32-bit is perhaps like a decked out Toyota Corolla, but the
competition (Apple) is offering the Lexus, BMW of computers.

I've spent almost two days trying to troubleshoot what should be a
simple brightness control issue. It's an issue not effected by Windows
XP Pro, do I blame Microsoft's engineers, you bet Is this painful
experience going to influence my decision next time to maybe pay $800
more and get that Mac instead of a PC, absolutely! I think a lot of
people will find themselves on the same boat. Apple should send
Microsoft money for putting Vista out because the headaches it's
causing are making me consider boxing everything back up, sucking up
the restocking fees and buying a Mac and never looking back. If I
don't do that, I can only blame myself. A better product is out there,
I just choice the lesser, I made the choice to go with a Vista PC so
it's mine to regret.

Not everyone will have problems with Vista out of the box, I changed
out a graphics card immediately so I was thrown right in, some may not
experience a compatibility issue for months down the road, but
eventually I bet they will have a minor or major regret with this OS,
that would fine, no OS is perfect, but the problem I have with Vista
is there doesn't seem to be ANY advantage to having it, except for the
for mentioned security enhancements and for most I think XP's security
model is good enough.

 

[Derek]

I guess I meant the folder that Music and Documents is in!
I only had a friends Vista laptop to play with for a few days before xmas.

Derek

 

[Derek]

The Mac OS does feel very well designed. I don't think I'd even suggest that
Macs need an option for power users as I did for Vista. The better something
works the less it needs to be tweaked.

I'm a gamer so I need DX9. I haven't upgraded to Vista on my personal system
yet and so far DX10 isn't enough to tempt me to put up with Vista . Also I
enjoy building my own systems which isn't really an option with the Mac.

Yes I do remember ME, that OS taught me so much about troubleshooting PCs!
Thankfully I could forget it all again when XP came out.

XP, it's the OS you can upgrade to(from ME) or downgrade to(from Vista) and
it will always leave you feeling happier.

Derek

 

[Tom Lake]

Vista is like an arrogant big brother, while XP is more like a best
friend.

What I'm alluding to is the fact that Vista arrogantly forces you to use
the OS it's way. Vista thinks that it alone knows best and restricts the
changes you can make. XP on the other hand allows you to set up the OS
just how you like it.

Examples:

XP: In the "My Documents" folder I have many custom folders besides the
preset MS ones and I'm able to change the file location of the entire "My
Documents" so that it points to a separate hard drive.

I can do the same with Vista. I have the Documents folder on a separate
drive
from the OS install. It's done the same way as in XP except you have to
open the
folder named with your username first. The Documents folder is in there.

Tom Lake

 

[DP]

OK, so judging from the responses, your comment about Vista itself was
wrong. You made a statement based on using a friend's Vista laptop for "a
few days," right?

So the only remaining complaint of yours is about IE7, which works on both
the Vista and XP platforms.

So... Don't you feel kind of silly now?

 

[DP]

OK, so judging from the responses, your comment about Vista itself was
wrong. You made a statement based on using a friend's Vista laptop for "a
few days," right?

So the only remaining complaint of yours is about IE7, which works on both
the Vista and XP platforms.

So... Don't you feel kind of silly now?

MEANWHILE.......
I just checked IE7 under Vista, and it allowed me to move the links row onto
another toolbar. In other words, it "shared" the toolbar with another one.
I'm not sure how you determined that it doesn't work that way. Are you sure
you right-clicked and unchecked the "lock toolbars" option?

 

[David]

So you are tell us that you wrote a post condemning Vista after just a few
days experience?

Go away.

 

[non flammable on Ubuntu 7.10]

Vista is like an arrogant big brother, while XP is more like a best
friend.

What I'm alluding to is the fact that Vista arrogantly forces you to use
the OS it's way. Vista thinks that it alone knows best and restricts the
changes you can make. XP on the other hand allows you to set up the OS
just how you like it.

Oh you are SOOOOO correct! I have been saying the same things for more
than 15 months!

Congrats.. you are superior to ALL vista nerdy boys in here!

Well done!

 

[RMZ]

OK, so judging from the responses, your comment about Vista itself was
wrong. You made a statement based on using a friend's Vista laptop for "a
few days," right?

So the only remaining complaint of yours is about IE7, which works on both
the Vista and XP platforms.

So... Don't you feel kind of silly now?

Well Derek I'm not the author of this thread, but I am new to Vista. I
have to say, I guess I don't hate it, I just don't see justification
for it's existance. I think a major OS upgrade should really innovate
over what we had before and not by just mimicking what was previously
available in 3rd party add-ons. Beyond some truely innovative
technology under the hood, I would have expected an OS more user
friendly.

My experience has been a rather negative one so far, not to get too
far off topic of the original post, but I can state the problems that
I've delt with for two days now with Vista would be unique to this
operating system. It could be because the monitor vendor hasn't
properly tested their drivers or some other external problem, but it
boils down to (Microsoft's fault or not) Vista has played a major roll
in two days of headache.for me. Not like XP has been my best friend or
anything, but I would have expected a lot more out of Vista. This is
the tid-bit I don't think Microsoft really grasp; at the end of the
day it doesn't matter who's fault it is that my old devices don't work
so well with Vista at the end of the day it's cost me time and hassle,
when I could have just gone out and bought a Mac.

I am somewhat sympatetic to the argument "oh, but in order to improve
hard drivers we had to make these changes", it may be a valid
argument, but I don't think anyone at Microsoft stopped to really
tally the benefit these sort of features would provide vs the amount
of hassel they cause. It's as if they've made all these fundamental
changes under the hood with long term benefit at the cost of short-
term hassle to the consumer and when you combine that with an updated
User Interface that is hit and miss, it's a really hard sell. Tone
isn't conveyed in written word, but I'm about to say next is being
stated in a calm and collective way: the people at Microsoft
responsible for taking what we had with Longhorn and turning it into
Vista need to be evaluated and a good number of them terminated and
shifted to other projects. Keep in the yes-men who make it happen and
get some new talent in there in the idea department, either fix Vista
and give Vista owners something be happy about, something that really
catches the Apple folks eye even... gives us something truely
innovative or scrap Vista and build us something that is.

I can already hear people yelling "I just bought Vista", so what! As a
peace offering, MS could offer a very reasonable upgrade program or
better yet give all Vista owners the free upgrade to whatever is next,
the point is it could be done and it something should be done, because
when you have a situation so bad that the big manufactuers have
reverted back to installing the previous OS as Dell and others have,
you have a real catastrophe on your hands and that's where Microsoft
is with this product.

As a new computer owner, I wasn't thinking much about Vista going
in.... Having worked with it a few days I'm left thinking two things:
1. What's the point. 2. Why am I having to work so hard to get this
damn thing to work. I'd bet those same two questions are what a lot of
folks are asking and Microsoft is just not addressing the problem from
that angle. I don't think they will because the engineers who took the
Longhorn beta and turned it into Vista approched it from all angles
but the most simple it seems. Sadly, those are the ones who need to
go.

 

[Derek]

Yeah but I went through every thing setting it up for him as well as using
it for regular tasks myself. I set up the printer, wifi and web cam and
numerous apps. I think that's enough to know if I want to go on a second
date.

I didn't mean the documents folder, I meant the folder named with your user
name which has replaced the My documents folder. Place a new folder in that
folder and name it "test". Try to change the file location of that folder.
If you can do that then I'll admit I was wrong ...but not about Vista as a
whole;-)

Considering the speed of the laptop the whole affair felt sluggish compared
to XP. There were so many annoyances compared to XP. The ones I mentioned
were just the first random two that came to mind. I have so many more. An
other would be that MediaPlayer10 locked up the whole system and after
restarting the system the contents of the user named file had disappeared.
That was a little annoying to say the least.

Derek

 

[Derek]

"As a new computer owner, I wasn't thinking much about Vista going
in.... Having worked with it a few days I'm left thinking two things:
1. What's the point. 2. Why am I having to work so hard to get this
damn thing to work."

My feelings exactly!

Luckily I got to test Vista out on a friend's system. If I had spent £150 to
upgrade my system to Vista, I would have been bitterly disappointed. If I do
buy Vista eventually, it will only be for DX10 and even then I will probably
dual boot with XP

By the way my friends printer and web cam wouldn't work with Vista so he
needs to buy new one's of those too ...just an other gripe with Vista. Why
oh why are there so many!

Derek

 

[Derek]

edit: MediaPlayer11 not 10

 

[Derek]

Using IE6 I can squeeze everything onto one toolbar. That includes the
standard buttons, the address bar and links(with one folder showing).

I still don't believe that IE7 allows you fit all of those on to just one
toolbar.

Derek

 

[DarkSentinel]

Oh you are SOOOOO correct! I have been saying the same things for more
than 15 months!

Congrats.. you are superior to ALL vista nerdy boys in here!

Well done!

Wrong again dimbulb. Guess you didn't read the part when the OP said he only
played with a friends machine a couple of days. With the exception of IE7,
which I DO agree bites, he was wrong about everything else. But that's
right, he agrees with you, and that automatically makes it right. Wouldn't
it be nice if everything you babble were true?