I did not see these ragging reviews that you speak of, when vista *first* came out. I followed the development of vista, closely, for years.. set back after set back.. I specifically followed Paul Thurrott's
Window's Supersite
,and in his final review of vista, the review largely aligned towards the positive. Believe me, if you read his articles regularly, you know he's not a shoe in for microsoft.
Nope, I have to agree with PhreePhly here, because I too recall plenty of belly-aching when Vista first came out. I was using it myself since RC2, and there were 'hacks' for trying to make it more like XP before Vista even went RTM (Nov. 2006). The major issues with Vista at the time of release were the lack of driver support from vendors-- yes, despite what you may think (or have implied), MS can't force nVidia and HP to write drivers for the hardware they put out-- a serious lack of software support from developers (who didn't want to rewrite their software... Roxio was a big offender), and what many considered a hair-trigger with UAC. By the time the first service pack was released, driver support was much better, software developers had begun writing for the newer system, and SP1 loosened the triggers for UAC. Yet now, a year and a half since SP1 was released, I still continue to hear the gripes that applied to when Vista first released, as if nothing has changed from Nov. 2006 to now. Suggesting that little or nothing has changed or that the most common gripes haven't been addressed on Microsoft's side as best as they're allowed-- again, they can't force hardware and software vendors to update their code-- is ignoring way too much for me to take any more seriously than those ridiculous "I'm a Mac" advertisements.
GreNME said:
Actually, the newer ways to get to the same old areas require fewer clicks on the whole for an average user and are more plain and clear about what they're for, whereas in XP/2000 it was constant drill-downs. Breaking tabs off into their own section was probably one of the smarter UI moves for Vista. The only other option would have been to put everything into a single integrated preferences table (like OS X), which would have been even more confusing. All in all, in my experience the main group of people who have had a problem with the menu and preference window structure in Vista are the ones who expected it to be like or had gotten used to the convoluted structure of XP.
Couldn't disagree, more. Navigating, and getting to network connections is a nightmare... And this is coming from someone who used to do internet tech support, so i worked with this specific area in vista on a very regular basis.
You're allowed to disagree with me-- that's fine. It doesn't change the fact that there's very little I can't show the average user how to do that isn't umpteen times easier than showing them on XP. All it takes is specifically
not treating Vista like XP in the first place-- a mistake the 'enthusiast' community can often make (they also made it going from 2k to XP). I sympathize with your experience, I really do, but please trust me when I say that I have a few years of supporting users under my belt as well and I'm not just making my claims up from thin air. The main obstacle to finding the easy ways to do things in Vista is the muscle (or action) memory people developed from using XP for 5 years.
GreNME said:
Oh, and: I'm comfortable calling myself a power user, and the only times I run into UAC are when I install software or am making a configuration change to the system. That's it. The claims about UAC are pretty much bogus. I've even attempted to get people to prove it to me by duplicating the behavior in front of me, and it always falls back to making system changes or installing software.
You've tried to get people to prove it? I do spyware/virus cleaning scripts on Vista computers every day of my work week.. Firstly, this fact is indicative that UAC obviously ISN'T serving it's purpose for the general user, very well.. and for two.. i have to click the UAC at least five times while I'm running my script. It is nothing, but an annoying ornament to me.. and a laughable joke to a great deal of spyware/adware/viruses that confront it.
Yeah, I've asked people to repeat the results they are telling me they get-- sure, it's a typical troubleshooting approach, but when it comes to separating hyperbole from reality on things like this issue the approach is highly effective. I've done it before on other issues, such as people claiming running without a page file provides better performance (it doesn't, I tested it) or when QuackViper's service disabling guide was all the rage (again, tested it and found no improved performance, but did lose features), and the most common theme with these widely-used claims is that they sound reasonable in the presentation but either have no effect or can even have adverse effects when actually applied to a real computing environment. But I digress on that point...
You seem to be under the wrong impression about UAC and what it does, what it's for, and how it works. It's not there to stop malware from installing, but it does slow malware down. Unfortunately it's not going to matter if the user is clicking 'Yes' or 'Continue' at every prompt that comes up, which is the number one reason why there are so many problems with malware-- to high of user privs and too little attention paid when prompts pop up. Where UAC
is helpful, however, are times when all of the users on the home computer aren't running as admin, or on a business network where UAC gives me greater ability to handle software installs, updates, and configuration changes by essentially giving me a Windows equivalent to
sudo that works.
