WIN key and poor functionality of Vista

K

Kristian

Dear Microsoft and users of Vista

I've used Vista Home Premium for a couple of months now, and I have to admit
that I expected more from Microsoft when it comes to functionality and
adaptability of the system. In XP Pro I could tweak the computer wonderfully
to fit my needs, but I have the impression that Vista is trying to be too
smart and it does not let you adapt the system to my needs.

One very good feature of XP was that I could define my own keyboard
shortcuts however I wanted. Now, Vista has introduced the Start Search bar to
solve most problems, but I’ve talked to Microsoft support many times about
the possibility of moving this search field and make it optional. Searching
is very good, but it prevents the possibility of using proper keyboard
shortcuts. When I was going turn off or restart XP, I could just press the
WIN key + U or R-U or something else. In Vista I am forced to use the mouse
or tabs to move around. I could of course choose the Classic Start menu, but
the new version of the menu in XP (I believe it came in SP2) has much better
functionality than this old menu offered in Vista. This should not be hard to
implement as a part of a Vista SP or a separate upgrade or program. I would
still like to keep the search field in Vista easily accessible, but if would
be sufficient to type for instants WIN + S or something. But the primary
function of the WIN key would be to start a program or command, not to go
automatically to the search field.

Furthermore, one life saver in XP has been the Copernik Winkey program,
http://www.copernic.com/en/support/faq-winkey.html. With this program I can
program the WIN key to do almost anything I want; start a program, URL or a
folder, and although it works more or less in Vista, it doesn’t work very
well. Whenever I want to define a new command, I have to reinstall the
program. This little program is has actually been a very important reason for
not switching to Macintosh, but this program doesn’t work very well in Vista.
I would very much appreciate if Microsoft could make a little program to
tweak the WIN key how I want.

I don’t know if I should say this in an official Microsoft site, but if I am
not able to adapt Vista more to my needs, I am seriously tempted to format my
hard drive and install a pirate version of XP. This would give me a much more
stabile system without blue screens, hiccups, crashing programs and system
reboots. However, I’ll wait for SP1 hoping that the stability will improve,
but functionality is also very important for me. What Microsoft did with the
WIN key in Vista, was a serious step backwards.


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http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/co...157&dg=microsoft.public.windows.vista.general
 
K

Kristian

Brink said:
Hi Kristian,

This is not the same thing, but it may work for what you want it to do.
You can create a keyboard shortcut key for any shortcut in Vista. If you
want to have a keyboard shortcut for a command, say shutdown, create a
shortcut with the command, then assign the shortcut a keyboard shortcut
key. This will show you how with this example.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/74063-keyboard-shortcut.html


Here's a list of keyboard shortcuts in Vista:

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/60394-keyboard-shortcuts.html

I hope this helps,
Shawn

Thank you for this, Brink. These shortcuts can be adapted, but I will
continue to use my old version of Winkey, even if it is a bit harder to adapt
and write new commands.

Thank you for suggesting that I can make shortcuts for commands like turn
off, restart, log off etc, but could you please help me to locate this
commands in Vista. I guess these commands are located somewhere in
C:\Windows, but I am not able to find them.

Still, if someone from Microsoft is reading this, I would ask if it is
possible to move the Start Search field to a different location and still
keep the other functionality in the menu. Are you guys in Microsoft
considering that?
 

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