Vista Experience

[Nigel Bufton]

As many readers may not have "upgraded" to Vista yet, I thought that I'd log
some perspectives.

FWIW, I have used scores of operating systems over the past forty years -
including Digital's VMS from which WNT (the forerunner of XP and presumably
Vista) was "lifted". For those who are not aware, V+1, M+1, S+1 = WNT =
Windows NT. (Microsoft's well-documented equivalent of the HAL/IBM pun.)

Observations:
1. Vista is very pretty. Far prettier than XP. If you like pretty, Vista
is for you.
2. Windows Mail is truly awful. After importing my ONE mail when I upgraded,
WM decided to drop all the "Account" data fields in the import. It was
quite happy to include this column for mail I received subsequently, but as
I have 8 mail accounts and imported over 2,000 important emails, the loss of
into which accounts each of the previous emails came was a surprise for me.
Of course I am now stuck with it. I also used the "Outlook Bar" extensively.
Not permitted in WM though - Microsoft removed this capability.
3. Windows Mail "Junk E-mail" filtering has the intelligence of a
three-year-old. (No offence intended to three-year-olds.) I am still
telling it what is junk and what is not junk after seven weeks of training.
Even Norton's Anti-Spam took only a few days of training to get 95%
correctly sorted. If Microsoft wants to serve its customers, they should
provide Norton (and others) whatever is needed so that these other companies
can apply their far superior methods for those of us who need intelligent
spam filtering in Windows Mail.
4. Vista freezes and gets itself confused much more than XP. It's like
going back to Windows Me. It is years since I have had to restart Windows
so often.
5. User Account Control is a real pain. For a single-user home system, its
paternalism is the most intrusive idiocy that I have ever encountered. Its
like walking around one's home with a little voice saying "do you really
mean to do this?" every time you do anything. It's enough to make one
consider leaving home.
6. So many features have been removed. I used to press the "sleep" button
on my keyboard to turn the system off. Vista won't let me assign power-down
to a sleep button. I guess Microsoft think I might get confused?
7. And so on... Removed features, inferior performance, little progress towards a good operating system. (It is truly amazing how many third-party utilities one has to purchase in order to get a decent "operating system" environment.)

Microsoft, forget Windows 7 for now. My mother taught me to finish what was
on my plate before I could even think about afters. You certainly have a
lot of work to do to finish what is on your Vista plate. Get to work,
forget prettiness for a year or so, and get Vista SP2, SP3, etc. released
asap.

Nigel

 

[Not Even Me]

Try Windows Live Mail instead. You will like it.
Is yours an OEM install? If so remove trialware and crapware. It solves
most issues.
Windows 7 is being built on Vista; so in a sense it is expected to address
most Vista disapointments.

Of course, and MS will want the price of an upgrade for what will
essentially be a major service pack.
I haven't been happy with Vista since the first BETA build; and I was fairly
vocal saying so.
But MS doesn't care what customers actualy want; they want to put out what
their marketing people tell them people want.
They may be several thousand miles off the mark, but that is what they
believe is desired.
I just wonder where they get the people they use in these focus groups?
Maybe they use former members of OJ's original jury?

 

[Gordon]

As many readers may not have "upgraded" to Vista yet, I thought that I'd
log
some perspectives.

FWIW, I have used scores of operating systems over the past forty years -
including Digital's VMS from which WNT (the forerunner of XP and
presumably
Vista) was "lifted". For those who are not aware, V+1, M+1, S+1 = WNT =
Windows NT. (Microsoft's well-documented equivalent of the HAL/IBM pun.)

But obviously new to Usenet. Do NOT post to Usenet in HTML. Usenet is a
TEXT-based system.

Observations:
1. Vista is very pretty. Far prettier than XP. If you like pretty, Vista
is for you.

Just set it to Windows Classic.......

2. Windows Mail is truly awful. After importing my ONE mail when I
upgraded,
WM decided to drop all the "Account" data fields in the import. It was
quite happy to include this column for mail I received subsequently, but
as
I have 8 mail accounts and imported over 2,000 important emails, the loss
of
into which accounts each of the previous emails came was a surprise for
me.
Of course I am now stuck with it. I also used the "Outlook Bar"
extensively.
Not permitted in WM though - Microsoft removed this capability.

"Outlook bar"? What's that? Never heard of it. And of COURSE you're not
"stuck" with it. There are planty of free replacements out there.
Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail to name two.

3. Windows Mail "Junk E-mail" filtering has the intelligence of a
three-year-old. (No offence intended to three-year-olds.) I am still
telling it what is junk and what is not junk after seven weeks of
training.
Even Norton's Anti-Spam took only a few days of training to get 95%
correctly sorted. If Microsoft wants to serve its customers, they should
provide Norton (and others) whatever is needed so that these other
companies
can apply their far superior methods for those of us who need intelligent
spam filtering in Windows Mail.

If you get that much junk email yhen you are doing something very wrong - I
assume the email address you used to post this mis your real address? Then
get ready for LOADS more spam.

4. Vista freezes and gets itself confused much more than XP. It's like
going back to Windows Me. It is years since I have had to restart Windows
so often.

Then presumably your machine is not up to the job. My machine hasn't
"frozen" once in the six months I've had it...

5. User Account Control is a real pain. For a single-user home system,
its
paternalism is the most intrusive idiocy that I have ever encountered.
Its
like walking around one's home with a little voice saying "do you really
mean to do this?" every time you do anything. It's enough to make one
consider leaving home.

<sigh> all the REALLY secure Operating Systems have some sort of UAC. Unix,
Linux etc etc. The fact that you have a "single-user home system" is totally
beside the point. The point, and if your OS experience is as good as you say
it is it doesn't show, is to prevent unauthorised access to system areas by
things like malware and viruses.
Besides unless you are CONSTANTLY tinkering with your OS rather than doing
work with it, the UAC only happens rarely. Mine comes up only on my weekly
Adaware scan. that's all.

6. So many features have been removed. I used to press the "sleep" button
on my keyboard to turn the system off. Vista won't let me assign
power-down
to a sleep button. I guess Microsoft think I might get confused?

How about Start-Sleep with your mouse? (It takes all of errr 0.5 seconds
longer than pressing a key....)

7. And so on... Removed features, inferior performance, little progress
towards a good operating system. (It is truly amazing how many
third-party utilities one has to purchase in order to > get a decent
"operating system" environment.)

It's truly amazing that I have purchased NO third-party utilities to get a
good stable working environment.

 

[Peter Foldes]

You feel better now Nigel.

Just my 2 cents. Everything that you describe as not working or missing or whatever on your Vista install is most likely user induced since those do not happen at this end

--
Peter

Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.

As many readers may not have "upgraded" to Vista yet, I thought that I'd log
some perspectives.

FWIW, I have used scores of operating systems over the past forty years -
including Digital's VMS from which WNT (the forerunner of XP and presumably
Vista) was "lifted". For those who are not aware, V+1, M+1, S+1 = WNT =
Windows NT. (Microsoft's well-documented equivalent of the HAL/IBM pun.)

Observations:
1. Vista is very pretty. Far prettier than XP. If you like pretty, Vista
is for you.
2. Windows Mail is truly awful. After importing my ONE mail when I upgraded,
WM decided to drop all the "Account" data fields in the import. It was
quite happy to include this column for mail I received subsequently, but as
I have 8 mail accounts and imported over 2,000 important emails, the loss of
into which accounts each of the previous emails came was a surprise for me.
Of course I am now stuck with it. I also used the "Outlook Bar" extensively.
Not permitted in WM though - Microsoft removed this capability.
3. Windows Mail "Junk E-mail" filtering has the intelligence of a
three-year-old. (No offence intended to three-year-olds.) I am still
telling it what is junk and what is not junk after seven weeks of training.
Even Norton's Anti-Spam took only a few days of training to get 95%
correctly sorted. If Microsoft wants to serve its customers, they should
provide Norton (and others) whatever is needed so that these other companies
can apply their far superior methods for those of us who need intelligent
spam filtering in Windows Mail.
4. Vista freezes and gets itself confused much more than XP. It's like
going back to Windows Me. It is years since I have had to restart Windows
so often.
5. User Account Control is a real pain. For a single-user home system, its
paternalism is the most intrusive idiocy that I have ever encountered. Its
like walking around one's home with a little voice saying "do you really
mean to do this?" every time you do anything. It's enough to make one
consider leaving home.
6. So many features have been removed. I used to press the "sleep" button
on my keyboard to turn the system off. Vista won't let me assign power-down
to a sleep button. I guess Microsoft think I might get confused?
7. And so on... Removed features, inferior performance, little progress towards a good operating system. (It is truly amazing how many third-party utilities one has to purchase in order to get a decent "operating system" environment.)

Microsoft, forget Windows 7 for now. My mother taught me to finish what was
on my plate before I could even think about afters. You certainly have a
lot of work to do to finish what is on your Vista plate. Get to work,
forget prettiness for a year or so, and get Vista SP2, SP3, etc. released
asap.

Nigel

 

[franks]

But obviously new to Usenet. Do NOT post to Usenet in HTML. Usenet is a
TEXT-based system.

If you change "Usenet" to "MS Newsgroups" the red got-a-clue flag
wouldn't be wildly waving.

Saying that this is Usenet equates saying this is a web forum. I can
access Usenet and get here. I can access any of many web forums
(including MS's) and get here.

Really, too bad MS let that happen, but it's their show.



Vista? No problems here.

 

[oscar]

The last resort of the inept and confused is to blame the Operating System.

 

[Ringmaster]

The last resort of the inept and confused is to blame the Operating System.

Which brings us to this:

Scott Charney, who just happens to be head of Microsoft's Trustworthy
Computing division, admitted this week that Windows Vista's User
Account Control (UAC) prompts are not intuitive and confuse users.

Over the past year I'm written extensively on UAC. Each and every
point I made over and over in this newsgroup is now confirmed to be
true and none other than by a high ranking Microsoft official that now
confirms everything I've said from the beginning.

Read it, then see it, hear it from the horse's mouth, on first link
below. Wait for ad to finish first to get to content.

http://www.builderau.com.au/news/so...ompts-need-work-/0,339028227,339289212,00.htm

http://vista.blorge.com/2008/04/11/microsoft-admits-vistas-uac-was-designed-to-annoy-users/

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/tech-news/?p=2164

 

[+Bob+]

Try Windows Live Mail instead. You will like it.

No he won't. He has 8 mail accounts. With Windows Live Mail, he gets 8
Inbox's, 8 Sent Folders, 8 Draft Folders. Windows Live Mail is
marginal for anyone with more than one email account, it sucks for
anyone with "many" email accounts.

Is yours an OEM install? If so remove trialware and crapware. It solves
most issues.

So a new install is supposed to fix the major bugs in Vista
Networking? It's supposed to fix that fact that Vista is a bloated pig
and runs twice as slow as XP?

Windows 7 is being built on Vista; so in a sense it is expected to
address most Vista disapointments.

Or, more likely, it will have all the same disappointments - once more
rearranged, dumbed down some more, and even more bugs as MS once again
rewrites the OS instead of fixing the old one.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

No he won't. He has 8 mail accounts. With Windows Live Mail, he gets 8
Inbox's, 8 Sent Folders, 8 Draft Folders.

I've never used Windows Live Mail, and know next to nothing about it.
What you state above is one of the things I didn't know, so I thank
you for posting that information. It would certainly turn me off.

 

[Paul MontGumDropped]

I've never used Windows Live Mail, and know next to nothing about it.
What you state above is one of the things I didn't know, so I thank
you for posting that information. It would certainly turn me off.

-Bob_Minus is like a black cloud. He'll piss on the Santa Clause parade
if given the chance.

 

[Gordon]

If you change "Usenet" to "MS Newsgroups" the red got-a-clue flag
wouldn't be wildly waving.

Saying that this is Usenet equates saying this is a web forum. I can
access Usenet and get here. I can access any of many web forums
(including MS's) and get here.

Really, too bad MS let that happen, but it's their show.

In the bad old days, the MS support pages gave the Newsreader link to
these groups first - now they give the CDO link first instead.....

 

[+Bob+]

I've never used Windows Live Mail, and know next to nothing about it.
What you state above is one of the things I didn't know, so I thank
you for posting that information. It would certainly turn me off.

FWIW - MS missed the boat on WLMail and multiple accounts - which is
disappointing, since they tout it as the product for people with
multiple accounts. They force you to have separate folders. T-bird
allows you to CHOSE to have separate folders on a per account basis or
to share as you see fit. I ended up with T-bird as the only product
that would run on multiple MS OS's and handle my dozen email accounts.

 

[Not Even Me]

FWIW - MS missed the boat on WLMail and multiple accounts - which is
disappointing, since they tout it as the product for people with
multiple accounts. They force you to have separate folders. T-bird
allows you to CHOSE to have separate folders on a per account basis or
to share as you see fit. I ended up with T-bird as the only product
that would run on multiple MS OS's and handle my dozen email accounts.

I have used Outlook and Outlook Express for years, you're right Windows Mail
and WLM are both poor replacements.
WLM seems to be a resource hog ad the interface is amatuerish at best.
I still use Outlook with my XP and just don't do mail ,unless absolutely
necessary, when booted to the Vista partition.
I tried Office 11, but that seems to have been designed by the same team
that did Vista, they decided to go with style over substance.
I suppose I could install Office XP with Vista, but that just doesn't make
sense.
What ever happened to the idea of improving things in newer versions of
software?
It sems MS has decided to cripple things in an effort to force you to buy
some of their other products.
Maybe they don't realize (or don't care) that some of us won't do that and
will find a free alternative!
And once you start down the alternative road, maybe other MS products will
be replaced instead of upgraded...

 

[+Bob+]

I have used Outlook and Outlook Express for years, you're right Windows Mail
and WLM are both poor replacements.

Contrary to popular philosophy, I liked OE. Clean, simple, got the job
done. If it ran on Vista, I'd still be using it. I know it had some
issues with it's storage d/b, but once you got used to the issues it
was OK.

WLM seems to be a resource hog ad the interface is amatuerish at best.

Seems to be the general MS direction.

I still use Outlook with my XP and just don't do mail ,unless absolutely
necessary, when booted to the Vista partition.
I tried Office 11, but that seems to have been designed by the same team
that did Vista, they decided to go with style over substance.
I suppose I could install Office XP with Vista, but that just doesn't make
sense.

Be aware the there's a major bug in Office XP/2002 on Vista - Outlook
will not save passwords for mail accounts and you have to input them
every time you send or receive.

I run that version too and I am not willing to upgrade it for the
alleged improvements in later Office versions (since Office really
hasn't changed in terms of features since Office 2K, even for an
advanced user).

What ever happened to the idea of improving things in newer versions of
software?

The fact is that there just aren't that many improvements they can
make in a product like Word. It does most of what it needs to. So,
they rearrange the interface, dumb some of it down, add some wizards,
and call it a new product. You're right, people are starting to
notice.

It sems MS has decided to cripple things in an effort to force you to buy
some of their other products.

Yes. In the case of OE they could have made it work. They chose not to
because they mover to Windows Mail in Vista (and they've already
abandoned that and moved to WLM). Corporate ambition and the world
takeover always wins at MS over the customer's needs.

Maybe they don't realize (or don't care) that some of us won't do that and
will find a free alternative!
And once you start down the alternative road, maybe other MS products will
be replaced instead of upgraded...

Agreed. They didn't give me what I needed for email - a product that
worked across their recent OS's like Vista and XP. I found an open
source product that's actually a lot better and meets that need.