Two Slashes

A day or so ago, Gizmodo ran an article explaining some of their beliefs of why Windows Vista isn’t bad.  It’s their site, and their beliefs, but I’m not crazy over the arguments they picked, and decided it was worth at least a mild post about.

1. It’s more secure than Windows XP.

Excuse me a moment while I laugh, then point out that Windows XP has more security bulletins (at least, as far as I’m aware) than any other platform, be it OS X, Linux, Solaris, or anything else.  Then let me point out that XP also has the largest market share.  Make sense yet?  Notice the correlation?  I thought so.

I’ll give Gizmodo credit for actually acknowledging that little tidbit in their article, but there’s no reasonable way to compare the security across all of these platforms.  So what if there are fewer bulletins?  For example, if I code a CMS for a site, and that site is the only one with that CMS, is it necessarily any more secure than a common platform like Drupal or Joomla?  It could have all the holes in the world, intentional holes even…but the fact that it’s one site in the shadows means that there’s probably only a handful of people in all the world who would even attempt such a pointless endeavor.  Those holes would remain, my CMS would have no security reports – so by all means, I’m coding the most secure platform, right?

There are some things that can be compared…but the “amount of security” is not one of them.

2. It’s the best-looking Windows yet.

This is a matter of opinion.  While I’m not a fan of the Fisher-Price stock blue Windows XP theme, I’m not a fan of Aero either.  The transparency is a little much for my taste, and I prefer a full Start button to something that makes me feel like I’m trying to predict the future with it.  And most of the other stuff, like the 3D task switching, is just overkill.

Instead, I prefer Windows XP (*cough*) with this theme (though I use the alternate version with the actual start button instead).  It’s a lot cleaner looking, and it looks professional and sleek enough to me to at least not look like I’m messing with some virtual preschool toy.

3. Games work just about as well as under XP.

This one’s a tough one, because it really depends on the game and the system configuration.  Some games experience drags on one or the other, others need to be hacked to work on one or the other platform; all in all, it’s a real mess.  But in my case, I’m fine with Hover! and a 486.  (Nobody ever said “gaming rig” meant top-of-the-line specs.  And if they did…well, they should be forced to play Hover! for a while.)

4. Vista Media Center is a fantastic DVR.

Not everybody’s even hopped on the DVR bandwagon yet.  First, you need to teach people how to make their clocks quit blinking 12:00am.  Then, you need to explain to these same people why using their computer over a subscription box or the cable converter gives them an advantage.  Good luck with that.

My dismay with the lack of intelligence among people today aside, there’s also the issue of lock-in here.  There are plenty of great and reliable alternatives that AREN’T Media Center, and have a lot more expandability (namely MythTV for the experienced, and MediaPortal for the faint-of-heart).  One also has the benefit of working under…Vista.

If I had to recommend a DVR, I’d actually probably end up recommending a Tivo over a PC solution for the people who can’t read manuals.  I did just suggest MediaPortal, but Tivo at least has the benefit of being dumbed down and friendly enough that anyone with a moderate English vocabulary or the ability to recognize a thumbs-up or -down could pick up the remote and start using it.  And people can understand and recognize a Tivo box much faster than they will a PC sitting in the entertainment center.

5. The sleep mode works.

Funny…I’ve only ever had one problem with a computer sleeping while using Windows XP.  And you know what the funny part is?  It’s a hardware problem, an issue on my motherboard designer’s part that causes the Ethernet jack to disable itself (and an issue easily circumvented with a separate LAN card, I just haven’t bothered to put one in).  My laptop’s actually sitting here, also in a state of slumber, awaiting me getting back to updates.

If you need further proof still, I’ve been kicking the power button to my Gateway Mini-PC for the past hour now.  And I can still see it lighting up in my management console.

6. Built-in search is better and more useful.

Perhaps if Microsoft had thought to default indexing to ‘on’ in XP, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.  Not that it matters; a properly-organized work environment means you’ll still be able to find things faster than that search box.

7. User Account Control is useful for some people.

Wait…what did they say?  Let’s look again:

7. User Account Control is useful for some people.

That’s what I thought.  And the problem is that they’ve just shoved their foot in their mouth.  Yes, UAC may be useful to some people…but most often people get too annoyed.

Microsoft tarnished their “plug-and-chug” image as far as usability was concerned when they implemented UAC.  What I mean is that rather than people have their all-authoritative power that they’re used to, with nobody and nothing asking them what to do, suddenly the computer is the boss.  “Are you sure you want to do this?”  “Are you sure you want to delete that?”  “This wallpaper looks nice, so you’ll need administrative privledges to change it to something else.”

Understandably, there’s going to be the phase where everyone hates it, then slowly warms up to it and the idea that it “helps”.  Right now, this is the hate phase, and everyone’s turning it off.  OS X does something similar, requiring the user to enter their password as additional confirmation…but the users are over it because there’s no setting to turn it off.  (If there is, please correct me.  But my voyages through the cat-flavored fruit haven’t turned up any.)  Microsoft, perhaps the checkbox should have waited?  Or been included only for enterprises?)

If you want all that in a nutshell, I’m actually commending Microsoft for this move.  But the implementation…it’s missing something.

8. Drivers support isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be.

Wow.  Finally an argument I don’t have enough experience with to debate completely over.  Why couldn’t Gizmodo have brought this up sooner?

I actually think the driver support is backwards at this point.  I’ve purchased “Vista-only” devices before, and had to hack them into submission for use with XP (namely, a Pinnacle remote control).  I understand that Vista’s the newer, shinier consumer sibling in the Windows family, but too many people are complaining and stalling their move to Vista to warrant products with no compatibility on older platforms.

9. It’s not any buggier than XP.

Once again, this is a matter of opinion in relation to the level of mishap you’re willing to accept before something becomes buggy and unusable.  And it’s already known that the biggest issues come from driver bugs - the more people using those “bugs” the merrier.

10. Vista is not slow if you have enough RAM.

Alright, complaining about this one is probably a little overkill, especially given that Microsoft has finally realized that free RAM is wasted RAM, and decided to stuff it with the morsels you might need to use the most.  Some of the slowness can be alleviated by turning off things like Aero…wait, did I just suggest turning off bloat?  Alright, that’s it.  Vista needs to get on the StairMaster now and lose some weight.

I tend to agree more with the complaints they brought up, including the painfully slow file transfers from h*** and the requirement to categorize every wireless network you see as something like “Home” or “Work”, .  But those are common and heard just about everywhere anyway, so it really wouldn’t be missed if Gizmodo hadn’t bothered at all.

For a computer science major, software developer, and someone who generally is known to stick with everything needed to get stuff done…it’s nearly 1.5 years since Vista was released, and I’m still running on the previous generation.  And for once, I would rather wallow in the history than leap into the future.