24 Hours with Windows Vista (Update A Week Later)

I bought a new laptop the other day, an HP Pavilion tx1250 which came pre-loaded with Windows Vista. Let's see how good the new Windows is.

This is a fantastic piece of equipment: a 12" touchscreen display which can be flipped over to so it can be used as a Tablet PC, 160GB Hard Drive, multi-format CD/DVD burner, AMD Turion 64 x2 1.8 Ghz, Wireless, Bluetooth and loads of other features. But enough of the laptop, this is about Vista - the new operating system from Microsoft.

My first impressions are that it is very nice looking; the Aero version has a pretty transparent "glass" window effect, which looks very nice, and a 3D task switcher (alt-tab) which shows previews of the window. There are a lot of user interface improvements and changes that are either difficult to find or have been renamed to something else, but once you do find them, you think to yourself, "Oh yeah, that makes sense now!". Other changes are so simple and so effective that they become natural.

Going back to work on an XP machine, and it feels somehow... old and outdated.

I wanted to hate Windows Vista, with all the talk of driver incompatibility, spyware, privacy (or lack of), and digital rights management issues in the press... but my first impressions are (unfortunately) quite good. I like it.

A Week Later using Windows Vista...

I have been using Windows Vista on my new laptop for about a week now... and I hate it!!! There are so many annoying "features" that it crashes often, and I want to return to XP!!!

Here are a few of my complaints about Windows Vista:

1. Hard disk is constantly thrashing... What is it doing??? Just sits there with the light flashing and the drive ticking away.
2. Sidebar - I set it up how I want it, reboot because of "Updates", reset to default, or gadgets are randomised
3. Explorer - I set the columns how I want: details view (filename, filesize, file type, modified date, attributes), select this as default for ALL folders, go to a new folder - columns change (filename, album, artist, rating, or camera, date taken etc...) even if the folder does not contain music or pictures. If I go back into the folder I set up, it is now in thumbnail view.
4. Constantly asks my permission several times to do something - e.g. delete a file "Are you sure you want to delete New Folder" YES. "Windows needs your permission to continue" CONTINUE; you must execute this command as an administrator; JUST DELETE THE ******* FILE!!!!!!
5. Turn off account control (disables above point), and the security centre constantly reminds me that "Your computer is at risk"
6. Some games (i.e. the ones that I play) will not work on Vista

I have more annoyances than I can go into here. I hate Windows Vista.

As we have always said, Windows versions are always good, followed by bad, followed by good.

1. Windows 95 - Good
2. Windows 98 - Bad
3. Windows 2000 - Good
4. Windows ME -Bad
5. Windows XP - Good
6. Windows Vista - Bad
7. Windows 7 - Good
8. Windows 8 - Bad
9. Windows 10 - Good
10. Windows 11 - Bad
11. Windows 12 - ?

Here's hoping the next version will be better.