Vista Rant from TechReport - New comment on Microsoft 2.0, Now With Less Bubba.

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A bit off topic, but this is too good a rant to not repost. Summarizes my feelings about Vista pretty nicely, too. Thank God ITG is not pushing it.

When I tried Vista it forced my Dell 8600 laptop to run it's fan in stage 2 of 3 instead of 1/3 that XP does, somewhere CPU use was too high, no matter what I turned off (Aero etc) - on battery or powered.

The interface isn't for me, I couldn't possibly care less about a fluffy 3D interface, I've never used XP's Luna theme and I've been using XP since 6 months after release, I need a functional fast operating system with clever powerful features, I don't 'watch' my OS I _use_ it to get stuff done.

Another reason why I don't want Aero is I do a hell of a lot of RDP'ing and you can't get Aero over RDP.
I would find switching from Vista classic (or XP classic) to Aero, to classic to Aero when switching in and out of my RDP sessions to be very disorientating.

ALSO Aero seemed to offer no real actual benefits to usability, sadly I have to admit after using Mac OSX that the whole expose thing is surprisingly awesome and convienient, that operating system truely makes a mouse user damn near as powerful as a good keyboarder (wow!)
Aero's flip 3D however was ridiculously bad at actually saving you time and effort.

The widget thing / bar on the right was stupid, it should be like Mac OS - it's there, when you need it, hidden and very easily accessable, NOT a bar stuck on the side (auto hide or not, Mac OS wins that)

The search functionality wasn't as good as locate32, I think in file names, not in contents, if I want my CV I search for *resume*.doc on all drives and I'll find it because I memorise the file name (admitedly locate32 isn't native to XP)

Therefore overall Vista didn't offer me anything that honestly helped me.
I used a full retail version of Ultimate and manage to re-produce a bug where connecting to a VPN would instantly blue screen it too (fully patched)

I dislike the smaller 'stylish' min / max / close buttons at the top right, I like them square and easy to find.

Did I mention Windows Explorer sucked? I spend 80% of my time in it, managing files, doing 'stuff' and it's hard to explain but there was a lack of 'lines' and dividers and bars, showing me data clearly.
I found it difficult to quickly interpret what is on the screen because the interface looked,... weird, perhaps it is too complex but it just looked 'odd'
Also the + appearing only on a mouseover on folders is just plain dopey.

The damn silly task pane is forced on as well, which is on in XP but disable-able - I don't think you can in Vista (don't quote me)

I disliked the breadcrumb style address bar in folders at the top of explorer, admitedly just today someone found a home made patch to disable it but it's not a stock option in Vista and wasn't available when I tried it.
(Breadcrumbs done right on a web page? excellent - implimentation in Vista? feels wrong)

Further to this, I own a valid, genuine corp CD key of Vista Ultimate, I've re-installed several times with identical hardware and it picks up my key as 'in use' and I need to phone activate with them.

Even with 4gb of ram on my desktop the disk thrashes about like a fat woman in a pool, the performance is _NOT_ faster than Windows XP in general alt -tab and application usage, things are NOT more responsive, programs are NOT being pre-cached properly, it IS slower, definately with 4gb on my machine than XP is.

The menu's are so convoluted it's insane, I had to google to find out how to disable hiberfil.sys because the new power configuration menu is worse than a policy editor, it's a bloody abortion.

Did I mention explorer? I did, but I can't help but mention it again and again, the little arrows at the top (size / name / folder / date modified) frankly look stupid, consume space and confuse (Even on 1920x1200)

It stuffs up dual boot XP / Vista installs when trying to clone a disk with Acronis True Image / Disk Director, Vista install is simply not bootable.
The new boot menu takes about 4 seconds to open for no apparent reason.

Aero's live thumnails in the alt tab menu if I recall also suck.
Don't quote me on this but iirc a super fast alt tab simply doesn't register, same as the alt tab replacement powertoy for XP.
For high speed users swapping BAM one app to another this is very annoying to hold the key that .1 of a second longer.

I actually found several bugs and inconsistencies with the interface when I used it last, an example (may be incorrect - it's been 3 weeks sorry)
I like to use details view, with status bar on all folders - I set this but when I click my computer the look and feel on the right in explorer changes - it doesn't show the drive letters on the right
(or perhaps I'm thinking of when I click on desktop?)
Either way, it wouldn't stay consistent, showing folders, shortcuts and files on the right and in details view always - XP does this.

Ultimately I find Vista begins to clarify what all the linux, mac and general Microsoft haters have been saying over the years, while I never previously agreed with many slashdot nutcases, claiming MS is losing their mind, Vista is the first indication I've seen that there really is a genuine lack of communication and thought going on there.

I really genuinely find Vista's UI to be honestly a mess, as if not only 100's of people worked on it but they didn't discuss it or keep it consistent.

Windows XP (if you're a Windows user) is reliable and simple, it's fast and frankly, besides DX10 and some other small things, it 'does it all' for most of your users, home and office.

How is adoption going to pick up when most users need MS Word, IE or Firefox, Printing, Burning, Downloading and connecting their digital camera / playing mp3's - that's all most people need, XP does it very well
(it's probably been said before about 2K or 98, I won't deny)

When all is said and done, I would STILL use the thing if someone just made a shell replacement that made it look absoloutely 100% identical to XP classic mode but with a Vista 'engine'. I don't hate DX10 nor do I detest the search, I can always use my own, I don't have to use flip 3d but I do CONSTANTLY use Windows explorer and I need it looking nice, simple and clean to do shit fast, - I felt hamstrung :/

(Offtopic and just too long. A teaser and a link would be good.)