Impressions of Vista

This is the time of year — Valentine’s, a couple of anniversaries, etc. — that my wife and I tend to give our biggest presents to each other. This year, it was a pair of Sony Vaio FE notebook computers. My wife wanted a laptop because her disability makes it difficult for her to use her old desktop machine for any length of time…and I got mine because my machine now being retired has issues and because I’ve been lusting after Vista (which won’t run on my older machine).

So, it was a low-post weekend for me…and I’ll probably be in low-post mode for a couple more days…because I’ve been working on getting the new machine set up for my needs.

Here are some impressions of my first couple of days with the new machine and Vista:

• I salute Microsoft’s graphic designers. Vista’s Aero UI is beautiful. Windows out-of-the-box now rivals OS X and some of the customized skins available for different Linux window managers. My wife, who doesn’t mess with either Linux of OS X simply said “wow”.
   
• Detracting from the aesthetics a little bit is the “All Programs” menu accessed through the now-anonymous Start button. I’ll admit that it’s nice to not have pop-out menus appearing all over the screen as you track down a program, but it still seems rather cluttered even after deinstalling the crapware that seems to fill new PC’s these days.
   
• I am big into automating assorted little tasks (synchronizing files with an offsite server, automagically adjusting various settings based on whether I’m at home, in the office, or on the road, etc.). In Linux, cron is my friend. In Windows 98/2000/XP, I’ve survived in spite of the Scheduled Tasks.
   
  It appears that the folks in Redmond heard my cursing, as Vista is blessed with a more powerful task-scheduling engine.
   
  I still need to play some more with it, but I appreciate the ability to (for example) run a script 1 minute after I log in or unlock the machine, but only if I’m networked.
   
• Windows has a certain amount of infamy when it comes to security issues. It appears that Microsoft has attempted to address that with the quickly-becoming-infamous User Account Control. (”Windows needs your permission to continue. Continue/Cancel.”) For normal users, it’s probably not too cumbersome. However, for power users….well, I’m trying to behave and live with it because I understand the value of the precautions. However, I think I’m going to have to see if a less cumbersome implementation is available…something akin to passwordless sudo in Linux, where it still takes a conscious effort to do something privileged, but without all the annoying UAC warning boxes.
   
• Speaking of the UAC and security, it appears that Vista has toughened up on file permissions. This is another good, but extremely annoying, idea.
   
• The file structure within users’ home directories is completely changed, for the better I think. Gone are the “My” prefixes, and “Music”, “Pictures”, “Videos” and “Downloads” have all been elevated out of the “Documents” directory. Sadly, pre-Vista apps…including many of my scripts…are unfamiliar with the naming conventions, which spoils the effect somewhat.
   
• Desktop search is integrated into Vista, and the overall effect seems to be far better than it was under XP (faster, natural integration with Explorer….)
   
• While it hasn’t been quite as bad as some Vista-critics would have you believe, I have been stung with a couple of older apps that either have issues with Vista, or which Vista will simply refuse to run due to compatibility concerns. Also, my printer/fax/scanner doesn’t yet have a full set of Vista drivers, which is somewhat annoying. However in spite of that, the compatibility issues haven’t been as bad as I had feared they would be.
   
• For some reason…probably one of those compatibility issues…Internet Explorer keeps refusing to run. There’s a way to reset it (Internet Options | Advanced | Reset), but it keeps re-breaking for me. Fortunately, I’m a Firefox user, and MSIE works inside the Firefox Ietab extension even when it’s not willing to run standalone.
   
• The sidebar! It’s an idea that I had suspected would seem better in principle than in practice. My jury’s still out on this feature, but I think I’m liking it. Part of that may be a reflection of having more screen real estate (the new machine has a 1280×800 screen; I’m used to 1024×768); the screen would seem cramped with the sidebar on an older screen. Also, I was able to find widgets to display my calendar and task list from Outlook….something I love to see, and which is going to require me to rewrite my GTD pages if it sticks.
   
• One of my gripes in Office 2007 has been that Outlook doesn’t have a built-in html previewer. If you want to see an html attachment, you actually have to open it…if you’re running Outlook 07 on an XP machine. It turns out that Vista has the previwer…which in turn makes Outlook’s built-in RSS reader much more sensible…and which in turn means that I’m likely to change RSS readers again. (I had been using Outlook+Newsgator, shifted to NewsGator online, now on Google Reader…)

Overall, I’m a mostly happy camper…but one who hasn’t been able in the past couple of days to find new things to write about.