Windows Vista: A Masterpiece of Shame

Author's Rating:

Pros: Some new features, gadgets, visually appealing to the eye.

Cons: A hoard of buggy problems, and sluggish performance.

The Bottom Line: 
Overall: Vista does not satisfy a user looking for an OS to install on an old PC, or a user looking to find a cheap alternative to Windows 7.

Author's Review
Windows Vista: A Masterpiece of Shame


History: Microsoft is pretty much responsible for PC's growing as popular as they did, as quickly as they did. They swept us away from the intimidating command-based systems, and gently placed us into a graphical environment in which the user could learn how to perform tasks in an easier manner. Since the transition from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, consumers anxiously await the unveiling of what Microsoft would next have up its sleeves. It seemed as though they would keep on improving upon their previous designs. This was all about to change, with the transition from Windows 98 to Windows Millenium. In short, Windows Millenium was the big hype, the new operating system from Microsoft at the time. In reality, it was a complete failure, and rightfully so. It was a buggy, disfunctional mess. In the blink of the software market's eye, Microsoft released Windows 2000. Windows 2000, at the time, was a secure and solid operating system that functioned like it should. It was strikingly similar to Millenium in just about every way, except all of the previous problems were gone. Why would Microsoft do such a thing? It's been rumored that it was a quick and easy way to prepare consumers for the change that would be brought by Windows 2000. Not to mention, it'd be quite the relief to get rid of bag of problems attached to Windows Millenium.


I felt that story was necessary, as it can be retold for Windows Vista. Instead of going from Win98, to Millenium, to 2000, imagine going from Windows XP, to Vista, to Windows 7. The exact same story applies to Windows Vista, acting as a transitional operating system. Whether it was intended to be that way or not, I would guess that it was. Being that Windows Vista functions as just a transitional operating system, there are going to be quite a few quirks.


Features: Right off the bat, you're going to notice visual differences between Vista and XP. Windows Vista does look nice, and has some cool effects. It seems like a good way to market a new operating system, by making it LOOK new and innovative. You'll also notice that there may be a large clock or calendar, visible from the desktop.


Windows Vista added the use of “gadgets”, which are nothing more than small programs that stay running, even if they're not on the screen or in the taskbar. They're pretty much just meant to be a more efficient way to have a clock, calendar, or weather monitor that doesn't need to install a whole program just to use it.


We also get a neat little search feature that is built into the start menu. It also functions as the “Run” box. So whether you're an advanced user looking to run the CMD command, or a novice user just trying find the calculator program, it'll serve a purpose for you.


The “My Computer” icon is now known as simply “Computer”. It has changed a bit, but nothing groundbreaking. The only added feature, that is worth mentioning, is the addition of disk usage meters that display under each drive icon to show how much free space you have.


To make Windows Vista a bit more media friendly, Microsoft has added built-in DVD burning, a feature that was never added to Windows XP at any point.


Overall, there are no features that really jump out at me as great changes. There are a lot of little changes and updates, but none of which contribute as a defining part of Windows Vista's image.


Changes: A lot of things have been renamed or relocated, make it confusing to find certain functions, even if you've been using Windows for years. For example, Add/Remove programs has been pointlessly renamed to “Programs and Features”. Is there really a good reason to change something so simple? As long time Windows user, I'd like to be able to benefit from my knowledge and support of previous operating systems. Instead, I find myself in the control panel reading every icon until I find something that looks like the “Add/Remove Programs” equivalent. Did Bill Gates lose a bet, and had to mess up the Windows design to hold up his end of the bargain?


Another annoying example of these pointless changes would be “Network Connections”. I thought Network Connections was find the way it was, and very appropriately labeled. Microsoft disagrees, apparently. Instead of being located directly in Control Panel, you now have to go to the Network and Sharing Center, which takes forever to load, and try to find it in one of the side panels from there. The only way to get “Network Connections” in an easily accessible place is by setting the Start Menu to classic mode, which gives you “Start>Settings>Network Connections”. Or you could create a desktop icon to it, once you find it, but who wants to do that?


Most of the changes are annoying, and it seems as Microsoft is just trying to annoy their users by keeping all of the features, but switching around menus and naming them differently. If you're a familiar Windows user, you'll find that some things might require Google to figure out where a certain feature ran off to.


Annoyances:

Unnecessary Changes: Unnecessary changes to things are definitely one of my biggest gripes about Windows Vista. If they are going to include most features from a previous version of Windows, why would they rename them and make it confusing for everybody?

Control Panel: While it's not a feature I liked in XP either, Control Panel category view is always horrible to me. When you're looking for something, the categories may not always be very obvious to you. In which case, you may end up going back, and looking through several categories to find the function you want. In that case, you might as well just switch to classic view, where you see every option available, and can manually look through them all much quicker. Or, you are able to search the control panel by keyword, which makes the category view a waste of time. The only way to gracefully navigate through categories would be if you knew them so well that you remember where everything is, by category. Again, pointless.

Delays: I notice a lot of delays when accessing pretty much anything network related. Some of these things include accessing a shared printer, wireless networks, network and sharing center, network connections, shared folders, etc. If you try to access anything network related in the control panel, you're going to wait anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds, or even more. Even with the latest Windows Updates applied (and this is 2010), I still experience these issues. It can be very frustrating. I've also noticed that this issue seems to haunt Windows Vista installations at its own leisure. I have a friend with a different laptop, but the exact same copy of Vista, and did not experience these problems. I also knew somebody else who had it, and did experience them. The only I've come up with is that you just have to hope that you've got network adapters that are completely friendly to Windows Vista.

User Account Control: This was supposed to be a useful security feature of Windows Vista, but instead it just annoys you endlessly until you decide to disable it. With User Account Control, Windows will constantly prompt you to allow or disallow the executing of applications. While it's a nice thought from Microsoft, it's annoying! Windows has programs running all of the time, and even regular applications run other programs in the background. It's quite a nuisance to have a dialog window pop up, which disables you from doing anything else until you answer, and prompts you to allow or block a program from running. If you'd like to keep your sanity, I'd recommend disabling it. However, this will then prompt the Security Center to start alerting you that something is wrong. You'd then need to disable Security Center from alerting you, ever, all thanks to the fact that you disabled a feature which disturbs you in the first place.

Performance: The poor performance of Windows Vista is another huge annoyance. For an operating system that's supposed to be new and innovative, they sure forgot to make it function efficiently. When I first got my Windows Vista laptop, I try to do as much as I could to get the best performance out of it and ensure that the system wasn't recklessly hogging resources. I disable gadgets immediately, set the start menu to classic mode and used a freeware program to optimize Windows for best performance. In this case, it disables visual features such as menu transparencies and the cursor shadow, and other things. Then, I proceeded to take as many applications out of startup as I could, that were not important or system related services. Even after all of this, Windows was still hogging 512mb of RAM or so, just to sit with a blank desktop and wait for me to start using it. I also find that the operating system hangs up a lot, running almost any program.



Overall: I really cannot recommend Windows Vista to anybody, especially this late in its existence. It was a mess when it was released, and it's still a mess even after having patches and updates almost 4 years later (as of this writing). Whether you are building your own computer, and looking to save a buck by purchasing an operating system other than the newest Windows 7, or trying to find a solid OS to run on an older machine, I wouldn't recommend Vista to either. Windows Vista is nothing more than a development version of Windows 7. In Windows 7, all of the problems are described above are non-existent, with the exception of some of the unnecessary changes. Importantly, the performance issues are non-existent. I have to strongly urge you that Windows 7 is EXTREMELY worthy of the extra dollar spent. It looks like Windows Vista, but functions like a really solid operating system, as it should. If you're looking for something for an older computer, go with XP without a doubt.


Windows Vista has horrible performance and full of bugs, and simply isn't worth a penny. Let's not forget the story I told in the beginning. Windows Vista is simply a transitional OS. Like Windows Millenium, Windows Vista mimics its successor, but with a lack of function. Windows 7 is the REAL OS, so stay away from this guinea pig of an operating system.