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The New Windows Look
Probably the most noticeable difference between Vista and previous versions of Windows is the new look. With Vista came
the new desktop theme Aero, provided that your computer is good enough to support it. There are several new visual features
in Vista that are nice to take advantage of, but if you thought you could take advantage of them and still use your
classic Windows theme, think again.
The first visual feature I want to make note of is the ability to preview your open windows in your taskbar.
This is a nice new feature even if it is still a little buggy. By using this, you can potentially increase your
efficiency because you do not have to go through all the tasks of minimizing and maximizing all your windows. This is
one feature I can make a lot of use of because I frequently have a ton of windows open. So what happens when I try to do
this in classic windows view? If you guessed nothing, then you are absolutely correct! Instead of doing any real
improvements on the operating system, they chose to make a fancy new theme with new features, leaving everybody who
does not like the new theme or is incapable of using it due to hardware or administrative reasons left without the new
efficiency capability.
The alt tab feature also does a preview of the windows you have open as well. Once again aimed at increasing efficiency,
this is a nice new feature but it too is buggy. If you switch between classic and Vista themes, this feature stops
working and you go to a classic alt tab screen. Also as you might guess, like the other efficiency features included in Vista,
this feature only applies when you are using the Aero theme.
Once again, Microsoft decided to redo the start menu. The XP revision was excellent, but in Vista they took it
a step further. They added a search bar to the bottom of the start menu. Also depending on what you mouse
over in the start menu, the icon at the top changes. Another new thing with the start menu, instead of continually
expanding to the right, the start menu stays contained in the start menu and gives you a scroll bar. While some people may
like this because it keeps the screen from getting too cluttered, I personally hate scrolling, so this feature does not do
much for me. Unfortunately there is no way I have found short of going to the classic start menu to go back to the
expanding start menu of the previous versions.
One important thing to make note of about the start menu, the power options do not do what you may think they do.
The button with the power logo on it does not actually shut the computer down. Instead it puts your computer in standby mode.
This is more than mildly irritating. In order to actually shut down the computer, one must click the arrow over
for additional options, where the shutdown option resides.
The Search Feature
The new search feature at the bottom of the start menu is very much like the one in Google Desktop, with one very
important difference. The one in Google Desktop actually works. After two weeks of time worth of being able to index files,
I would think that Vistas database would be able to help me find what I am looking for. It doesnt. I am still unable to pull
up a simple search us as The Wall by Pink Floyd. Back to Google Desktop for me.
The Side Bar
The Side Bar was another thing I was unimpressed with. In order to make RSS feeds work in it, you are required
to add them in via Internet Explorer. For those of us who dislike Internet Explorer, this is a real pain. Also, it defaults
to MSNBC news for all of the news tickers. Not exactly my favorite site. However I do like that it hides behind the open
Windows, so it is unobtrusive. Also, the setup once you get the RSS feeds going looks nice as well. Overall, nothing on
here is new and exciting. After being spoiled on similar software, this leaves me very unimpressed.
Networking
The networking process on Vista still has a long ways to go. Fortunately it now has a network
neighborhood function built automatically into the start menu instead of having to manually add it. The downside is that it is
not very reliable sharing off of the Vista computer. On several occasions I have had to completely restart the computer to
keep the network shares available. Eventually this grew tiresome and I just moved the shares over to the server.
For the login process, Microsoft decided to carry the Welcome Screen over to Vista from XP. I personally hate
the Welcome Screen. Thus I was very agitated to find out that at this point, I am unable to get rid of it on Vista
under the control panel. So I decided to try to do a domain login. That always works for getting rid of the welcome screen
right? Wrong! Vista at this point does not support joining a domain. This is going to be a tough sell for corporations
if they do not get this fixed.
The Repair Console
After testing Vista, running it for about 3 weeks, and restarting it several times, when I booted it up. NTLDR was missing.
Now that is not an important file at all is it? Apparently it seems Vista suffers from some kind of bug where the boot loader
will disappear for no apparent reason. This gave me a chance to try the repair console with Vista. It gives several options
in an easy to read and good looking interface. I decided to choose the Startup Repair option. It ran for about 30 seconds,
told me that I had added a new hard drive (I did not) and then quit, telling me it was fixed. That obviously did not work.
I tried the restore feature. That failed too. I wound up having to go through a complete reinstall of Vista. This is all
too familiar grounds with the Windows operating system.
Vista crashed, so upon reinstalling it, I decided to try to multi-boot it with XP so that I would not have
to switch hard drives every time I wanted to use a program that was incompatible with Vista. This took two attempts to
get it work, but it does work to a point.
If you install Vista first, then when you attempt to install XP, it will give you a weird error and fail. However,
if you install XP first, then Vista, it does work, however I did encounter some problems. When I rebooted the computer,
once again, NTLDR was missing. However, if you put the Vista disc in the drive, it gives you the option to boot to a
previous version of Windows, such as XP, or Vista. It is an irritant having to keep the disc in to multi-boot, but it works.
One more thing of note, switching to daylight savings time does not work right. Upon reaching the end of daylight
savings time the clock got set back 2 hours instead of just one. Nothing major, but they will have to fix that as well.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I am very unimpressed with Vista. It is basically XP with a lot more eye candy. I do not see anything with what
I have worked with on here that is a vast improvement over XP. Though it is still in Beta, they still have a long ways
to go to make everything as good as XP. I hope they get these issues worked out; otherwise this operating system is doomed.
