VistaMe


"Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
news:uWNw1HmJHHA.2232@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/te...erland&emc=rss
>
> December 14, 2006
> State Of The Art
> Vista Wins on Looks. As for Lacks ...
> By DAVID POGUE
>
> "After five years of starts, stops, executive shuffling, feature rethinks
> and delays, Windows Vista is finally complete. It's available to
> corporations already, and starting Jan. 30, it's what you'll get on any
> new PC. Its programmers, who probably haven't seen their families in
> months, will have an especially merry Christmas this year.
>
> So after five years, how is Windows Vista? Microsoft's description, which
> you'll soon be seeing in millions of dollars' worth of advertising, is
> "Clear, Confident, Connected." But a more truthful motto would be "Looks,
> Locks, Lacks."
>
> Looks
>
> Windows Vista is beautiful. Microsoft has never taken elegance so
> seriously before. Discreet eye candy is partly responsible. Windows and
> menus cast subtle shadows. A new typeface gives the whole affair a fresh,
> modern feeling. Subtle animations liven up the proceedings.
>
> If the description so far makes Vista sound a lot like the Macintosh,
> well, you're right. You get the feeling that Microsoft's managers put Mac
> OS X on an easel and told the programmers, "Copy that."
>
> Here are some of the grace notes that will remind you of similar ones on
> the Mac: A list of favorite PC locations appears at the left side of every
> Explorer window, which you can customize just by dragging folders in or
> out. You now expand or collapse lists of folders by clicking little flippy
> triangles. When you're dragging icons to copy them, a cursor "badge"
> appears that indicates how many you're moving. The Minimize, Maximize and
> Close buttons glow when your cursor passes over them. There's now a
> keystroke (Alt+up arrow) to open the current folder's parent window, the
> one that contains it.
>
> Some of the big-ticket Vista features and programs are eerily familiar,
> too. The biggest one is Instant Search, a text box at the bottom of the
> Start menu. As you type here, the Start menu turns into a list of every
> file, folder, program and e-mail message that contains your search phrase,
> regardless of names or folder locations. It's a powerful, routine-changing
> tool, especially when you seek a program that would otherwise require
> burrowing through nested folders in the All Programs menu.
>
> A similar Search box appears at the top of every desktop (Explorer)
> window, for ease in plucking some document out of that more limited
> haystack.
>
> New programs include the Sidebar, a floating layer of single-purpose
> programs called gadgets ( Apple called them widgets) like a weather
> reporter, stock tracker, currency converter, and so on; Photo Gallery, a
> deliciously simple shoebox for digital photos; the bare-bones DVD Maker,
> for designing scene-selection menus for home-burned video DVDs; and Chess
> Titans, whose photorealistic board can be rotated in three-dimensional
> space.
>
> Flip 3-D, which presents all open windows in all programs as cards in a
> floating deck, seems to be modeled on Mac OS X's Exposé feature - minus
> the ability to see all the windows simultaneously. You have to flip
> through the "cards" to find the one you want.
>
> Now, before the hate-mail tsunami begins, it's important to note that
> Apple has itself borrowed feature ideas on occasion, even from Windows.
> But never this broadly, boldly or blatantly. There must be enough steam
> coming out of Apple executives' ears to power the Polar Express.
>
> Even so, brazen as it was, the heist was largely successful. Vista is
> infinitely more pleasant to use than its predecessors. There's more logic
> to its folder structure and naming scheme. Things are easier to find.
> Fewer steps are required to perform common tasks, especially when it comes
> to networking.
>
> And besides, not all of the new goodies fell from the Apple tree. The new
> grouping, stacking and filtering options give you efficient new ways to
> parse the masses of files in a window. If you have a spare U.S.B. flash
> drive, your PC can use it as extra main memory for a tiny speed boost.
> Windows Speech Recognition isn't as accurate as, say, Dragon
> NaturallySpeaking, but it's beautifully designed and much better than
> previous Microsoft attempts.
>
> Laptop luggers will love the clever new Sleep mode. It combines the best
> of the old Standby mode (everything stays in memory so it's ready to go
> when you reopen the lid) and the old Hibernate mode (after several hours,
> Windows commits all this to the hard drive to save battery power).
>
> And then there's Presentation Mode, the answer to a million PowerPoint
> pitchers' prayers: it prevents your laptop from doing anything
> embarrassing during your boardroom presentation. It won't go to sleep,
> display a screen saver, pop up dialog boxes or play any beeps. It can even
> automatically change your desktop wallpaper to something uncontroversial,
> so your bosses won't unexpectedly glimpse the HotBikiniBabes.com photo
> that you usually use.
>
> Locks
>
> The visual and feature upgrades are nice, but for Microsoft, security was
> an even more important goal. As well it should be; Internet nastiness like
> viruses and spyware were sapping the fun out of Windows PCs.
>
> The list of internal fortifications could fill a stack of white papers
> (and does), and the technical language could put the Energizer bunny to
> sleep. But examples include Service Hardening, which prevents background
> programs from tampering with essential system files, and address-space
> randomization, which makes it impossible for viruses to find important
> software bits in predictable places.
>
> Other security-suite components are more visible. The much improved
> Internet Explorer 7 (also available for Windows XP) alerts you when you're
> visiting one of those fake bank or eBay Web sites (called phishing scams).
> Windows Defender protects your PC from spyware. Parental Controls lets
> you, the saintly parent, dictate what Web sites your children can visit,
> which people they correspond with online, and even what times of day they
> can use the machine.
>
> Then there's User Account Control, an intrusive dialog box that pops up
> whenever you try to install a program or adjust a PC-wide setting,
> requesting that you confirm the change by entering your password. This
> will strike most people as an unnecessary nuisance, and you can turn it
> off. But it's actually one of Vista's most important new protection
> features; when the day comes that a virus is making changes to your PC,
> and not you, you'll know about it.
>
> Lacks
>
> Various Microsoft divisions split up the duties of writing the 50 million
> lines of Vista code, and they didn't always share the same vision. The
> most visible areas received the most attention, but many darker, less
> visited corners weren't visited by the Microsoft Makeover fairy at all.
>
> As a result, Vista has something of a multiple-personality disorder. Links
> for common tasks sometimes appear at the left side of a window, sometimes
> the right and sometimes across the top. In wizards (step-by-step
> "interview" screens), the Back button is sometimes at the lower-left
> corner of the dialog box, sometimes at the upper-left. Microsoft has
> hidden the traditional menu bar in some programs (you can summon it by
> tapping the Alt key), but not in others.
>
> Here and there, you'll find some jaw-dropping misfires, too. For example,
> Photo Gallery can play slide shows - but if you want music too, Microsoft
> cheerfully suggests that you first switch into another program and start
> some music playing there.
>
> Windows finally comes with a prominent backup program. That's great,
> except that you can specify only which categories of things to back up
> (pictures, e-mail, and so on), not which specific files or folders.
>
> And then there's that Sidebar, the floating layer of mini-programs. If you
> close one of the gadgets, you lose its contents forever: your notes in the
> Post-it Notes gadget, your stock portfolio in the Stocks gadget, and so
> on. You couldn't save them if you wanted to. How could Microsoft have
> missed that one?
>
> Some useful XP features have simply been removed. NetMeeting, a program
> for collaborating across a network, has been replaced by a Vista-only
> program called Meeting Space - which lacks its predecessor's voice- and
> video-chat features.
>
> And WordPad, the built-in word processor, can no longer open Microsoft
> Word files. That, evidently, is a ham-handed attempt to force you into
> buying Microsoft Office. (Let's hope the masses realize that they have a
> free alternative at docs.google.com.)
>
> What to Do
>
> Windows Vista is not, as the Web's chorus of caustic critics claim, little
> more than a warmed-over Windows XP. Its more intelligent navigation and
> more powerful file-manipulation tools provide you with greater efficiency
> from Day 1. And while the more secure plumbing doesn't guarantee a
> virus-free future, it will certainly make life more difficult for the
> sociopaths of the Internet.
>
> That's not to say, however, that Vista is worth standing in line for on
> Jan. 30. Moving to Vista means hunting for updated drivers for your
> printer, audio card and so on, not to mention troubleshooting incompatible
> programs. It also means some relearning, thanks to features that Microsoft
> has moved, removed or rejiggered.
>
> Microsoft isn't helping the confusion issue by releasing Vista in five
> versions, each with different features: Home Basic, Home Premium,
> Business, Enterprise and Ultimate. For example, the latter three offer
> Complete PC, a feature that backs up your entire computer, programs and
> all; Home Premium and Ultimate offer Media Center, which plays music,
> videos and photos on your TV. You practically need an operating system
> just to choose an operating system.
>
> The prices range from $100 (for an upgrade version of Home Basic) to $400
> (for the full version of Ultimate). Most people will probably wind up
> paying $160, the price to upgrade to the Home Premium edition from an
> earlier version of Windows. (Avoid Home Basic, which is too stripped-down
> to be worthwhile.) For a fee, you'll be able to upgrade from one edition
> to another.
>
> Of course, none of this factors in the price of the new PC you'll probably
> need. Vista requires a fairly modern PC, and unless you have a powerful
> graphics card, some of its most useful new features turn themselves off.
> You can download the free Vista Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft's Web site
> to see if your PC will be able to handle Vista.
>
> According to a SoftChoice survey, in fact, only 6 percent of existing
> corporate PCs have enough muscle to run all of Vista's goodies. No wonder
> Microsoft expects that only about 5 percent of PC users will upgrade their
> existing computers to Vista.
>
> Online, there's much talk of Vista's place in the universe. Is it too
> little, too late? Does the Mac's uptick in market share threaten the
> dominance of Windows? Does Web-based software make operating systems
> obsolete?
>
> None of the above. Windows isn't going anywhere, the landscape won't be
> changing anytime soon, and the corporate world will still buy it 500
> copies at a time.
>
> In other words, it doesn't matter what you (or tech reviewers) think of
> Windows Vista; sooner or later, it's what most people will have on their
> PCs. In that light, it's fortunate that Vista is better looking, better
> designed and better insulated against the annoyances of the Internet. At
> the very least, it's well equipped to pull the world's PCs along for the
> next five years - or whenever the next version of Windows drops down the
> chimney."
>