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.