Windows Vista – First Impressions

It is fair to say that the world has not embraced Windows Vista as the all powerful thing of beauty the clever little boys and girls at Microsoft hoped it would. Indeed, the only major contribution Vista seems to have made to modern computing is a new found fondness for Windows XP. Until Vista came along no one seemed to have a good word for XP, now everyone loves it. Suddenly, the cool people are saying "Yah – I’m still using XP" instead of "Well I’ve got a Linux distro installed but sometimes have to dip into Windows to blah blah blah". XP is now cool, Vista is seen as something only naïve people would be seen dead with and Windows ME is… still in absolute obscurity. If there has ever been a less memorable incarnation of Windows than Millennium I’ve yet to try it.

Actually, as a sidebar (which I’ve just realised is a pun and one which I hope you’ll forgive me for because I really didn’t mean it), recent discussions about Apple’s Leopard OS have taken a strange twist. Apple fans are claiming it is a good thing that Apple have released five upgrades to OSX in six years (upgrades which cost about eighty quid each). They say that Microsoft have released nothing since XP in 2001. Microsoft fans counter not with "Yes and that is not a bad thing because people haven’t been spending eighty pounds a year to keep Windows current" but with "Not true – look at all these different versions Microsoft have produced". It has become a good thing that software companies are releasing more paid-for upgrades to their products. What a strange world we now live in.

Back to Vista, I’d decided not to upgrade because my PC was too flaky. It was powerful enough to run it but there were problems under the lid which meant I wasn’t at all sure it would even install. Besides, what would make getting a new computer more exciting if not a whole new OS to play with?

The first thing one notices about Vista is the "Aero" interface. Microsoft use words like "Stunning" to describe it but it’s really nothing special. You see all the blurry stuff in the title bar at the top? That’s basically Aero – the bits round the edges of windows have been made glassy. One or two of them glow slightly and there is a bit of shadowing. It looks fine – far from stunning but I’ve not turned it off.

One of the most frequently used images when trailing and promoting Vista was the cycling-through-windows thing. Again, it’s not unimpressive but it doesn’t give the "WOW" factor Microsoft were hoping for with "The Wow is Now" campaign. Scrolling through my open windows will probably come in useful but whether it will ever replace the good old ALT+TAB (which has been given its own makeover) remains to be seen. In 2007 operating systems have to compete on the basis of looks as well as functionality so Microsoft shouldn’t be shot for trying something new. They just shouldn’t use a mediocre package of gimmicks as the main selling point of what should be their most powerful product to date.

The hype for Vista went on for years and many rumours (and stronger-than-rumours) emerged about what would be in this world beating system. The sidebar was to be the key to Vista being different from all other Windows regenerations. The sidebar would be the thing which said to the world that this was new, radical, fresh and cool. Somewhere along the line they decided not to persevere with it. Gone is the sidebar as replacement for the Start Menu, the task bar, the system tray et al. Instead we have the sidebar as a blank canvas onto which people can put "Gadgets". These are basically the same as Mac "Widgets" or Konfabulator "Widgets" – little applications which do a simple job in a more or less efficient way. The key technology in Windows Longhorn became a desktop toy in Windows Vista. Microsoft produce a handful of Gadgets but most come from ordinary computer geeks who show their wares on the Microsoft website. Few are of any use. Luckily I’ve found one which I really like. It’s called "AppLauncher" and it is just that – an application launcher. The joy of having a widescreen monitor is that the sidebar can sit on a part of the screen which I never used to have and give me instant access to any application I want.

The sidebar is multi-page too so I can have a second version of AppLauncher open with frequently used folders and documents. It is a little telling that my favourite part of Vista is one Microsoft had little to nothing to do with.

The Start Menu has been redesigned as part of Vista. Instead of expanding when you click on All Programs it now shows them as part of the Start Menu (which, incidentally, has lost the word START in large friendly letters). It makes it harder to find things and is one reason why I’m so pleased with my sidebar launcher. If I had to rely on this new Start Menu I wouldn’t be happy. You can turn it off and return to the "classic" start menu but that would be like accepting defeat.

It does have a search facility built in – searching being the new rock and roll for operating systems. As people have more and more on their computer so OS manufacturers battle to find ever more impressive ways to find things. Let’s search for "back up" and see how the results change the more I type.

So the Start Menu search is a smart search – initially is searching only programs. Then it broadens it to the names of files and finally searches within files to bring back those containing the search text within them. It failed my little test, obviously, because it considers backup to be one word instead of two. But, as Pertwee once so neatly observed, it provided a useful little object lesson.

The Windows Explorer interface has been given a makeover. There are now more view settings and organisational tools on offer. In practice I’ve found this fairly useless as – like all other versions of Windows – it never remembers my preferences. I can tell it I want this folder to be list view, this folder to be thumbnail view and this folder to give me the relevant details but next time I open it I find it has reverted back to whatever random choice it made. There is probably a knack to it but I haven’t found it.

Vista comes with more bundled software than previous versions of Windows. Some – like Windows Photo Gallery – are genuinely useful (even if it is blatantly "inspired" by iPhoto) while others are less so. I will admit to not having tried many of the applications hidden away on the badly designed Start Menu. I’ve tried the automatic backup program and it seems to work well. I’ve no way of knowing whether it has actually worked though as I’d probably have to restore everything to last backup to test it. Shadow Copy (only available in certain versions) lets you restore incremental versions of documents and might come in handy. But Microsoft have released a new version of SyncToy which copes with Vista so I’ll continue using that for proper backups.

Application compatibility is a known issue with Vista and is the reason so many people have chosen not to upgrade. From my own experience I have had one issue – the RM to MP3 converter I use occasionally doesn’t work properly any more. I also bought a new version of PowerDVD because the internet implied v6 wouldn’t work. Aside from that (touch desk) everything has been ok.

My overall impressions of Vista are that it is a good try but it should’ve been much more. It has a lot of new features and the more you use it the more you discover. I’ve only been using it for five days and keep finding new bits and pieces. Not all of them world shattering but none of them detrimental. If anything it undersells itself by promoting disappointing graphical touches ahead of the less exciting but more useful enhancements. If you like Windows you will like Vista because its probably the best version of Windows yet produced. If you like OSX then Vista will not win you over. If you liked the idea of Longhorn (the codename for Vista during development) you’ll probably be disappointed. The Wow isn’t Now – a better slogan would be the short lived electronics one – "A little better but better".