Anyone had the opportunity to mess with Microsoft's new pet project yet?
My friend just bought a new laptop, and it came with Vista pre-installed. I kind of feel sorry for him, after spending all that money he has to deal with this... thing.
As is to be expected, Vista has all the incompatibility problems of any new OS. And although Vista is flashy and hi-tech, Microsoft seems to have locked down virtually everything, making the simplest tasks such as installing a web browser annoying as hell (a lot of it was just the typical pop ups you get bombarded with when you get a new computer, still much of it was entirely unneccessary). The security is flat out ridiculous, and extremely overbearing. They butchered the start menu. And I want my simple link to Windows Explorer back, I couldn't seem to find C: drive anywhere so I could explore it's contents. Are they hiding something?
I only got to play with it for about an hour, so I am still rather uninformed. But from what I can see, Vista can go to hell and it shouldn't come back until Microsoft gets it's nose out of my business and gives users free reign over their own damn computers! A pretty user interface is not enough to distract me! As an average college student, Vista offers me nothing that I don't already have.
It's buggy and crappy. And, last I checked, no OpenGL support or support for a lot of the drivers out there. That and the interface looks like the retarded love child between XP and OS X. I mean a lot of the things they do have no point or purpose.
IMHO, wait for about 3 months and then bother with it.
That's the crux of the matter. XP is a solid OS now, and there are no compelling reasons to switch to Vista for a while. It does have some very solid under the hood features that most people will never appreciate as long as things work correctly.
That said, there is a lot of bad misinformation in this thread.
Click "Computer" Windows Explorer will come up, and you should easily be able to find whichever drive you like. Or, Windows Key + E, like in almost any other version of Windows.
I agree, User Account Control is annoying, and I didn't enjoy clicking 5 or 6 times to install Firefox (IE7 isn't as good, sorry MS). You can make it signifigantly less agressive by going to your user account properties in this new abortion they call a control panel, which I always switch to classic view.
No, the drivers are buggy and crappy, and that lands soley at the hands of the hardware vendors. It's certainly not Microsoft's fault, they've had the vast majority of the specs frozen for OVER A YEAR. THERE IS OPENGL SUPPORT, IT'S JUST CRAPPY RIGHT NOW BECAUSE, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE FROM NVIDIA, THE DRIVERS SUCK ASS AND HAVE FOR THE PAST YEAR. ATi's OpenGL support is flaky too, but everything else works great except for several unsupported games.
I'll not be touching Vista for at least three years. Unless forced to, or if it comes free. XP Pro and Server 2k3 do just fine on my two machines. There's a second laptop in my future (because my job will pay for it), so I might dabble then, but really -- XP just got to the point of solid and reliable.
lol I have vista have no complaints what so ever. I've had my computer for like 3-4 years before this upgrade and all my hardware, new and old work just fine on it. I didn't have upgrade anything I love the things vista has, sure some of the security is a little annoying, but I don't mind it at all, I just click a few more times, its no biggie. maybe I'm just patient and don't care about that sort of thing. everything has worked perfectly fine and I love what they did with it.
If your programs of hardware doesn't work, like someone else said, its not MS fault, people just like to blame it. What I love is that MS will actually find drivers for your hardware online by itself. I only had to dl drivers for my mouse and that's it. My video card drivers were download right after the OS was installed and I've had no problems ever since.
I didn't have time to explore everything so I never discovered the joy that must be "Computer" (what kind of name for windows explorer is that anyways??) thank you for sharing, next time I can look for Microsoft's dirty secrets...
I suppose it is fair to reserve actual judgement until a couple years from now... but I think I'm still going anti Vista unless microsoft lightens up on it's security binge, it's all just so much spam... I think they are over-reaching by trying to have an OS and a full internet security suite. They can stick to OS, and norton and mcafee can stick to keeping us safe. Or maybe Windows security should become an addon pack. Just something where the more computer saavy people don't have to deal with the inconvenience.
