After over one year of Vista Experience including the installation of SP1 I can make a small conclusion:
First of all I want to make clear that I use my Vista PC at home most of the time for entertainment, which means that I do not much programming. So my experience is mainly at entertainment side. And I have a new PC with many power.
Because I am a positive thinking person, first I want to list the advantages:
+ File Renaming: If you use the option to show file-endings (which every serious nerd will do) the explorer is now clever enough to just mark the name of the file without the file-ending at the renaming process.
+ Switching Directories: In a file dialogue and also in the explorer very easy and intuitive with some kind of breadcrumb system.
+ The compatibility mode for Windows XP or even Windows 98 works very well, just if you need this for older applications that are not certified for Windows Vista (Microsoft sometimes have really crazy ideas).
+ You don't have to work as Admin all the time, you can just easily switch to admin rights by selecting the option "run as admin" and entering your admin password. This feature I like most, I hate it in older versions to work as admin all the time with all the security risks
+ Search Function: I could not live without the start menu search any longer, my standard workflow is to hit the windows button on the keyboard and to type in the first letters of the needed program. I Am Loving It!
Surprise, surprise - there are also disadvantages:
- Problems by deleting files - also with admin rights some files could not be deleted. This costs many time and nerves and is caused by the sloppy implementation of the security concept
- No Consistency in Naming, why must this fault be part of every Windows version. In every usability lecture you learn that this concept is a must follow. So what the fuck why is Software (to uninstall programs) called "Programme und Funktionen" in my German Vista version. When I switch between Vista and XP (home and work) I always look for the wrong naming. And the example written before is just one, there are many more existing => Microsoft please read Usability technical literature ...
- Admin rights are needed to often and so the popup window appears many times, to often for humans (admin rights are needed even for the Autostart of a game DVD). Humans will just ignore it and don't think about the message or even worse deactivate it and grand the rights automatically.
I don't regret installing Windows Vista, I think all Windows versions have space for improvements, but I got a modern operating system with many cool features (most of them taken from Linux and MacOs).
I would be proud if you share your experience with using windows vista in a comment ...
