Vista Experience
Went to my sister's place for a small dinner to celebrate a niece's 10th birthday.
Food was sumptuous, as expected. But that's not the point of this entry.
While I was there, I found out they tried to install a wireless router but did not finish the job. So I finished it and now they have a laptop and a new desktop (sporting the same brand) and my brother-in-law's new WiFi celphone finally sharing a wireless broadband internet connection.
Going back to this new desktop, I found out that it was sporting Windows Vista Home Premium built-in. So I finally got to experience Vista. I was withholding judgment on this new OS until I have first hand knowledge on how it handles.
My verdict: so far, it sucks! And I'm speaking from almost 20 years of experience on a PC (I was already around the PC platform since the MS-DOS, Wordstar and Lotus 123 days) and more than that around computers in general.
But to give the benefit of the doubt, the OS is still in its infancy, so it will run into a lot of bugs. The boys from Redmond are a lot less tidy than the boys from Cupertino, that's a given. Anyway, my specific peeves:
Perhaps these problems I encountered will be solved in time (and with better hardware). But keep in mind, Vista was already launched late, just to compete with Apple's current OS (Tiger 10.4). As Apple is set to leap ahead again with Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5) in October, the boys from Redmond will have a lot of catching up to do just AFTER they tidy up their new product...
Food was sumptuous, as expected. But that's not the point of this entry.
While I was there, I found out they tried to install a wireless router but did not finish the job. So I finished it and now they have a laptop and a new desktop (sporting the same brand) and my brother-in-law's new WiFi celphone finally sharing a wireless broadband internet connection.
Going back to this new desktop, I found out that it was sporting Windows Vista Home Premium built-in. So I finally got to experience Vista. I was withholding judgment on this new OS until I have first hand knowledge on how it handles.
My verdict: so far, it sucks! And I'm speaking from almost 20 years of experience on a PC (I was already around the PC platform since the MS-DOS, Wordstar and Lotus 123 days) and more than that around computers in general.
But to give the benefit of the doubt, the OS is still in its infancy, so it will run into a lot of bugs. The boys from Redmond are a lot less tidy than the boys from Cupertino, that's a given. Anyway, my specific peeves:
1. I could not install Firefox. For some reason, it stalled on me. Mozilla itself did not give a 100% assurance its product will run on Vista. I guess the machine I used was included as one of these statistics.
2. The user interface is a bit cumbersome. They still want to retain the Windows look and feel, with the eye candy of Mac OSX. But personally, the interface was more complicated than XP. Perhaps a little tweaking will make the experience easier but since the machine's not mine, I had neither the luxury nor the time to tweak away.
3. Hardware problems. One of my missions there was to set-up their webcam for Skype and YM so we could engage in video calls. And this was one of the rare times I failed my mission. And as I tried to look for a solution online, I discovered that webcams have proven to be a problem with Vista, even on alleged "Vista compatible" ones. Just imagine I was trying to install an old low-res webcam... (I want to try again some other time because I don't like to fail. Who does?)
4. It's darn slow. The machine it was running on was already Core2Duo and my CoreDuo Macbook running XP on Parallels Desktop can run rings around it.
5. I personally hated those "security features" like those multiple warnings before running installation files. For the novice user, that is a prudent feature. But for an advanced user like me, it's a time black hole. It slows me down.
Perhaps these problems I encountered will be solved in time (and with better hardware). But keep in mind, Vista was already launched late, just to compete with Apple's current OS (Tiger 10.4). As Apple is set to leap ahead again with Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5) in October, the boys from Redmond will have a lot of catching up to do just AFTER they tidy up their new product...
transcription by Punzi @ 9:03 PM
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