Monday, January 21, 2008

Windows Vista: a Minor Review

Here's my take on my Windows Vista on my laptop I've had since April.

What's really good:
*The Start Menu. Just press the windows key and start typing the name of a program and the list of programs filters to just ones that match what you've typed. E.g., if you type "Word" you'll see "Microsoft Word, Corel Word-Perfect, Open Office Word-Processor."
*The limited user (standard) by default. Windows XP had a admin user as default. Vista also usually allows you to enter Admin password to do things needed as admin.
*searching for stuff in the control panel. Similar to Start menu, just start typing "mouse" and the various mouse options are all that's shown.
*Breadcrumb navigation. Want to go up three directories? Just click the directory name. There is thus no more "up" button into the parent directory.

What's not so great:
*Backup. The Backups are in .zip format, which is helpful, but there is no way to specify "I just want this folder" or better yet "This folder, but not files matching these names, and not this subfolder" etc. I just search for files and copy them to a zip file for my backups.
*Folder views. With Windows XP, one click would bring up the "folders" view or hide it, same with search. With vista, you have to scroll through several options before turning these "pains" on or off. Similarly, there is no name of the folder you are in in the title area, it's just mysteriously blank. This is where I'm used to looking to see what a window is. Also, the search box takes up too much space when windows are narrow, thus you lose you breadcrumbs navigation trail. Search bar should be hide-able.
*Sidebar. What's the point? There are so few programs designed by MS for them, and few others that are signed. This is a total window of opportunity for infection, so I just leave it as calendar and clock.
*Networking controls. There are so many places to work with network settings that it gets confusing as to how you do simple things like disable your wireless card. Fortunately for me, I have a hardware switch that does this.

Labels:

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home