August 27th, 2008
"Why do you hate Vista so much?"
But surely all those end-user features made switching to Vista worthwhile even if performance sucked, right? Wrong. While eye-candy such as Aero doesn’t hit performance anywhere near as much as some claim it does (I would disable almost all of the cheesy visual effects found in XP, but I’ve left them enabled on almost all my Vista systems), it doesn’t add much to the overall user experience. In fact, the entire user interface is little more than an amped up version of what we had back when Windows 95 was cool.
And while we’re talking about the user interface, why do so many of the features need handholding and tweaking in order to work right. My blogging colleague Ed Bott has written extensively on how to “fix” Vista but when I read things such as the following, I know something is seriously wrong with the OS:
Using Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, the Local Group Policy Editor is not available. Instead, you’ll need to edit the registry. Open Regedit.exe (the usual disclaimers apply: if you screw something up, it’s not my fault). Locate this key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\
Policies\SystemIn the right-hand pane, double-click PromptOnSecureDesktop and change its value to 0 (the default is 1). Click OK to save the change.
Sorry, as much as I like tweaks, pawing through the registry should be a thing of the past.
TweakGuides has also published an excellent “Vista Annoyances Resolved” guide, but as I read through parts of this I despair at the lengths that users have to go through to make a modern OS usable. A few examples:
A source of frustration for most any Vista user is the ever-changing view type for various folders in Windows Explorer.
…
It’s a genuine issue, and one which doesn’t have any logical explanation - fortunately it can be permanently resolved.
Open the Registry Editor …
Ugh! More registry fun. Then there’s taming search …
By default Vista indexes your Start Menu programs along with virtually everything under your \Users directory. The problem is that this includes the \AppData directory and subdirectories, which can have literally thousands of files of no use to the average user - configuration files, cache files, setup files, log files, temporary files and so forth. Not only that, but these files are also constantly changing, both in number and content, requiring constant re-indexing by Vista. By unticking the Users directory in the indexer, and then manually only adding specific folders which you know contain files you would want to access via Instant Search, you can reduce the size of your index many times over.
So, this is a blunder that could have been fixed by Microsoft in SP1 or by an update but ends up being something users have to fix for themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I love tinkering with the OS (these kind of tips also make great fodder for blogs posts and books too), just as I love to tinker with cars, but the truth is that I don’t want to have to be tinkering all the time. I expect my car to start first time when I turn the key, and if there was some bug with it where there was sold to me with a loose wire or a poorly performing part, I’d expect that to be fixed by the dealer, for free. Any answer that involved “we want you to put the car up on blocks and wriggle the red wire” would be unacceptable and my response to that would be charged and likely include biological instructions outlining where the car should be inserted. I’ve got to the point where I now feel that if anyone at Microsoft makes a decision that means that the end user needs to go diving into the registry to make a simple tweak, then that person deserves an atomic wedgie.
Marketing –>
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
Want to get in touch? Got a tip? Feel free to drop me a note! I ALWAYS respect anonymity. I'm also on Twitter (@the_pc_doc)
Right to Reply: Should any industry representatives wish to comment on any posts on Hardware 2.0, I will be happy to publish their reply verbatim on this blog.
Subscribe to Hardware 2.0 via Email alerts or RSS.
| 08/28/08
