Is Vista the operating system you love to hate, or the one you hate to love? Those conflicting thoughts surfaced as I followed Ed Bott’s provocative post on whether Vista scare stories are distorting user perceptions. My take: Vista wouldn’t be my primary OS if I didn’t really like it, but it’s still got issues. Five in particular stick in my craw.

Applications “Not Responding”
When Windows XP doesn’t want to do stuff, it simply locks up in what I call car-crash mode. You know: Those 15 seconds when XP isn’t responding to your mouse click (and 20 re-clicks) seem like a couple of hours. When you get several mini-lockups in a row, you know it’s time to reboot and shake free whatever process (often, rundll32.exe) that has run amuck.

Standard operating procedure in Vista is both better and worse. I call it the “stutter-start” response. When Vista’s flummoxed, it doesn’t outright up and die on you. Instead, you get that little swirling circle and a “Not Responding” message in the title bar of Internet Explorer, Mail, Search, or whatever window you happen to be in.

My criticism here is not so much about how Vista is notifying the user, or the more gentle lack of response as compared to XP. Both amount to graceful degradation, which is the proper way to design systems software.

Rather, my issue is that Vista often goes into “Not Responding” mode when it’s not really locked up, but rather loading an app and launching its executable. I’ve repeatedly observed this with Windows Mail, where the app opens up partially, posts up the “no mas” message, and then finishes loading and begins checking your mail.

Obviously, there was really no problem, so why was I notified that there was? Possibly, it’s a time-constant issue, but I guess if Microsoft lengthened the interval before issuing a warning, we’d be back in XP car-crash territory.

“User Account Control” Messages
Microsoft has made noises about improving the user experience surrounding these intrusive security-warning dialog boxes, which seemingly pop up every time you want to do anything.

They’re supposed to protect users from launching malware or bad executables. However, as I’ve previously written, they pop up so frequently they’re the computer equivalent of the airline ticket agent asking you if anyone has handled your luggage.

I should mention that many software experts have pointed out that things would be worse if there were no warnings at all. Still, the User Account Controls as they currently exist are pretty much Microsoft’s version of a software brain fart. They should be fixed.

Messy Windows Update Installs
My gripe here is not that Microsoft is issuing Windows Updates–patches to fix vulnerabilites in Vista and its associated applications. That’s a good thing.

The problem, most particularly in the early days of Vista, was that updates would be installed automatically when one’s system powered down, and then the next time you booted up, the PC sometimes wouldn’t work properly. There was a particularly nasty glitch, right after Vista was released, where you’d reboot from an update and your PC would ask you to reactivate Vista. (This was quickly fixed.)

Another canonical case, early on, was the situation where a user left a battery-powered laptop running, the battery ran down, and the system ended up with a messed up, half-installed update.

Possibly Windows Update now runs flawlessly, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve shut off the automatic-install feature, and now manually vet all suggested updates by going to Microsoft’s knowledge base and making sure each item is indeed something I want.

Which leads me to what’s perhaps the more important issue: Microsoft seems to have a particularly aggressive update policy. Sure, I want Microsoft to push down important security updates, as well as patches which fix bugs. However, mixed in with the important stuff are a lot of what I call “gotcha”–things related to DRM, language packs, etc.

True, as a user you don’t “own” Vista, you’ve simply purchased a license to use it, so Microsoft can pretty much update it as it chooses. However, stuff which either impinges upon ones privacy, or tilts the OS towards becoming bloatware, should be off limits, which is why I’m keeping auto updating turned off.

Now we’re back where I began, with Ed Bott’s post relating to Internet Explorer 7. To be fair, there are no showstopper problems which prevent IE7 from doing a fairly decent job as your primary Web browser.

However, if you ask me, “Is IE7 as good as it can possibly be?,” the answer is clearly no. Back that up, you say? Okay:

- Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 928089: The computer may respond very slowly as the Phishing Filter evaluates Web page contents in Internet Explorer 7;

- Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 911860: Internet Explorer no longer works correctly when you use a very long name in the Internet Explorer Favorites folder;

- Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 935855: Error message when you try to start Internet Explorer 7 in Windows Vista: “You must be an administrator to open Internet Explorer on this desktop.”

True, these have all been fixed, otherwise there wouldn’t be these Knowledge Base articles. It’s also true that Firefox has been amply patched itself.

The main problem I have, which I can’t quantify, but I defy you to tell me I’m wrong, is that IE7 simply doesn’t perform as well as either IE6 or Firefox 2.0.0.5. Pages . . . load . . . more. . . slooooowly. (Sometimes, really slowly. Bad browser. Very bad.)

The Need For More Memory
How much memory one actually needs to run Vista adequately is one of the great mysteries of life. The official word from Microsoft is that “Vista Capable” PCs need at least 512 MB or memory and “Vista Premium Ready” PCs need at least 1 GB.

“Capable” is defined by Microsoft as “will be able to run at least the core experiences” of Vista. “Premium Ready” means “including Windows Aero,” which is the translucent, Mac-like user interface presentation. (If you ask me, you pretty much need Aero if you want Vista to be Vista.)

Microsoft’s memory requirements raises two issues. The first is, while Microsoft says “at least,” people pretty much ignore those two words. Thus, there’s the expectation that a PC outfitted with Vista Home Basic and 512-MB of RAM will run just fine. Many bloggers have disputed that, though I should point out that Ed Bott, the respected Windows expert I linked to above, says that 512-MB is indeed okay for Vista Home Basic

My experience is with Vista Ultimate, so I’ll stick to that. I can say that 1-GB is adequate, but that anyone who wants a decent experience with Ultimate should really get 2-GB. That’s what I’m currently running, and I’m soon planning to upgrade further.

My suspicion is that Microsoft is underemphasizing the hardware requirements one needs to really enjoy Vista. Along with more than the minimum suggested memory, you’d do well to buy the hottest graphics card you can afford. It’s not necessarily bad that you have to have all this stuff–though the added costs have clearly been an impediment to corporate adoption of Vista–it just is. But Microsoft should be more upfront about it, the better not to disappoint newbies, who will be impressed when they see what Vista can really do when it’s running unfettered. Like I said, Redmond has nothing to apologize for, so why downplay the truth?
source: Alexander Wolfe

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