Vista Review

There’s all kinds of Windows news about this week, including the new version of Mac OS – Snow Leopard. It seems there was no mention of it at MacWorld, and it was Apple’s chance to beat the Windows 7 launch in mid-2009.
It seems as though in an attempt to foster good thoughts after the bungled “Vista Ready” campaigns, Microsoft will offer free Windows 2007 upgrades for anyone that buys a PC after June 2009. Is that really a deal? I mean come on – windows 7 is supposed to be out by that date. They should offer Windows 7 for free to anyone who buys a PC in 2009 period. Looks like there are 2 restrictions to the upgrades, you have to upgrade to the same language version, and you have to upgrade to the straight path (ultimate to ultimate, etc).

You know, this recent article reminds me of one Vista quirk I never wrote about, the fact the IE stores all it’s downloads in My documents -> Downloads folder. It’s funny I think that Windows seems to remind you about every GD thing in the universe you don’t want to know about (storing passwords, visiting secure sites) – but it never bothers to tell you where the downloads go. New users are just confused until they figure it out.

I read a post about Michael Dunner comparing Vista and Windows 7 security, bringing to the surface once again the problems with the evil UAC (User Account Control) in Vista. This is by far the most annonying feature that Microsoft has ever invented. I’ve blogged about this before – but how come each and every time that the IT rags write about UAC they don’t just come out and say that Microsoft was blatantly copying Linux (Ubuntu) when they created UAC? I mean, come on – in Ubuntu Linux even if you were the one that setup the PC you have your own account separate from root. If you try to do something on Ubuntu that your privelege does not allow, it prompts you for the “root” password So many things in Vista are blatant rip-offs of both Mac OS X (based on UNIX anyway) and Linux it’s not funny – from UAC, to the sidebar, Aero, screen and window effects, and more…the “new” versions of Windows are oh so….COPIED!

I came across another feature I didn’t know about in Vista this week, it’s the hidden checkboxes feature. Wish I’d known about this one awhile back.

You might also like to know about the new “Pre-Boot shells” that are coming available with some newer laptops. You can surf the web without ever entering windows and save up to 25% of your battery life at the same time. Pretty cool. My laptop has a Linux/Vista dual boot – and 95% of my time is spent in Linux anyway.

I’ve read quite a few Windows articles this week, and there is definitely a buzz about Windows 7 in the air. It just seems like nobody knows what is going on. This post Windows 7: A New Vista or a New Operating System lists some features of Windows 7 that sound pretty cool. The new taskbar and jump list features sound great, but why in the hell MS still insists on making Calendar, windows mail, movie maker, contacts, and photo gallery downloadable is beyond me. They also seem to have taken the stance that they need to remove things that Vista had that pissed people off. Like incessant UAC notifications and alerts, hardware requirements, and connection speeds.

In the meantime we are all reminded what a turd Vista is by having to remember the whole “Vista capable” debaucle in posts like there’s a class action lawsuit saying Microsoft misled consumers – where HP is highly pissed at Microsoft because the chipset they were using for “Vista capable” machines couldn’t run Vista at all. In otherwords, HP was practically forced into selling Junk PC’s! Yet another post reveals how Intel Benefited from Vista capable.

Ask the Admin had the pic above, and you know come to think of it – I have seen this Vista error (“you do not have permission to view the current permission settings”). How redundant is this? It’s incredibly stupid, I mean this isn’t even “permissions” in the normal sense like read and write. It’s “you don’t have permission to view the freakin’ permissions!!!”. AND – to add insult to injury it gives you the ability to give yourself permission to change those permissions! I think that the layers of BS in Vista permissions are approaching the ways that government has so seamlessly impacted my life…

Thank you Chris Pirillo for coming to the rescue again and showing us how to make Windows Vista automatically login (and not prompt you every damned time):

To open this in the UAC (or User Account Control) in Vista, go to the start/search area of Vista, and type in NETPLWIZ. Once you get there:

* UNcheck the box next to “Users should enter a username and password to use this computer”, and then press OK.
* Type the username and password for the user you want to automatically logon to Windows Vista when it boots up and press OK
* Reboot the computer

It’s that simple. Vista will remember the username and password, and you won’t have to log in every time you boot the computer.

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

In Windows Vista, the UAC is “User Access Control”. This is basically where you can have fine grained control (finally) over what users can do when they are logged into your PC. What you get to is based on your access priveleges, and part of UAC is the basis for those hilarious Mac vs. PC commercials where ‘Vista’ keeps asking PC “Allow or Deny” to every single thing he wants to do.

While UAC allows you to restrict other users, even though you (as the owner) are an ‘administrator’ – you are constantly plagued with the “allow or deny” prompts over and over again. If you read this ZDNet article it talks about people disabling the UAC because it’s so annoying. Basically – for many users Vista will be less secure than Windows XP was for them because they can’t stand the annoying UAC prompts. So a “security feature” is so non-user-friendly that it makes people take adverse action!!

I have to say though – I had to turn UAC off, and it had nothing to do with all the crazy prompts. I login to work through VPN, and the work using “remote desktop” the browser has to download a very small (signed) java file to securely connect. The browser WOULD NOT install and run the java applet unless I turned all security down to low and turned off UAC. In other words – I HAD TO BE MORE INSECURE just to CONNECT to WORK the same way I had in XP for years.

So I guess – Windows Vista is now less secure for me too!