Dead on.

[torquill]

This. This is a glimpse of exactly how I feel about Vista.

I'll stick with my complex, obedient Linux system with a side of Propaganda.

Comments

As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[knaveofhearts.livejournal.com]

The display resolution thing is an exaggeration -- right-click menu includes Personalize which has a link to 'adjust your screen resolution'. It's not identical, but it's no huge mental leap. And really, the UAC thing hasn't been much trouble -- it's merely a GUI equivalent of 'sudo' but with a modal function which frankly I see as a feature, not a bug.

It does what I want, and does some things better than Linux and FreeBSD so it's what I use when I'm not using FreeBSD. If the tool does the job right, I'll use it -- and as the OP said, all things being equal, the pretty tool is better. :-)

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Details aside (I could figure out pretty easily how to do the resolution thing), it's the feel of the piece that resonates for me. I find Vista's DRM oppressive and the permissions handling clunky, which gives it Kafska-esque overtones to me. Add in the slightly brittle, cheery prettiness, and it's... creepy. Sort of like Aqua -- I can use it ok, but the look of it (and the toolbar magnification thingie) make me want to run away.

I was never particularly fond of XP either, which may have something to do with it.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[knaveofhearts.livejournal.com]

I have yet to encounter digital rights management on Vista, but I don't use Windows Media Player 11 (which is the only app I can think of that has any DRM in it) so it's probably never going to be an issue. The permissions handling is certainly different than Unix which has been designed for decades as a multi-user operating system but Unix's permissions are pretty clunky as well when compared to something like VMS. Never really saw brittle in the pretty, just a mostly-successful attempt to make it easier to use than XP. It's essentially XP-but-more-so so I'm not terribly surprised that someone who didn't much like XP doesn't much like Vista.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

The DRM slapped me in the face when I had to install Vista from scratch. Not sure whether you've ever had to do that... people who just use the version that comes pre-installed don't encounter it.

If I hadn't done that installation, I'd probably be a little better with it. I just felt as though I was being treated like a criminal for working on my own computer.

"Brittle"... I often feel apprehensive about it, because it doesn't break in obvious ways like XP does. Instead it spontaneously vanishes Excel files, resets preferences, things like that. Maybe "unpredictable" would be a better term.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[knaveofhearts.livejournal.com]

I've installed Vista Ultimate several times for each of 32 and 64 bit when I built this box, due to the hardware issues. All I was asked to do was enter a license key. Yes, it went out over the internet to the corporate servers to register the key. So what? There's no user-identifiable information in the vast database in Redmond, just a collection of what hardware was installed when the license key was registered. If I upgrade, and the upgrade is sufficiently different from this box (which will probably only happen if I get an entirely new computer), I call the vendor and talk to them for five minutes. I don't feel like any rights of mine are being impaired or threatened, and I feel like their perfectly reasonable right to not have their software pirated is being protected.

As for the other stuff, I've never had a file spontaneously vanish and I've never had a preference reset. I'm not saying that stuff never happens -- I'm just saying it hasn't yet happened to me. There are some new features that don't act the way I'd expect but I'm currently perfectly happy to blame my own expectations for being possibly unreasonable. All in all, it's a huge improvement over XP and I'm glad I'm using it.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

That wasn't the experience I had with the installation.

I'm glad you're happy with it.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

I use both XP and Vista as part of my job (on the Mac, even) and I don't really find Vista any better or worse than XP... which is a valid argument for not upgrading unless you actually have to for some reason.

That said, a full retail install of Vista on the Mac runs quite well and it's very stable. The UAC isn't really all that bad once you're settled in... it generally only triggers when installing software or drivers.

That said, it's not as good of a security implementation as on UNIX or even on the Mac (same thing I suppose, but...). It interrupts you with a black screen and then a dialog when you need to elevate privilege, but it does a piss poor job of telling you why. Also, instead of asking for an administrator password when you're running as admin, it just asks you to click okay. That, unfortunately just feeds in to the standard windows user reflex of clicking to make the annoying dialog go away (despite the fact that it's trying to tell you that you're about to do something bad)... which the end result of is the average using doing stupid things like installing the gator toolbar or something similar.

The DRM in Vista is really a non-issue... you won't even run into it unless you're using Windows Media Player or that user disk encryption extra they have for Vista Ultimate.

I do full installs of Vista almost daily... what DRM are you talking about? The need to activate the OS? That's not DRM. DRM is the ability to say that you can do X with a particular file but you can't do Y. OS activation doesn't make use of DRM and XP's being doing it for close to 7 years now. If you bought a copy, all you do is enter the PID and it validates once the machine has a network connection.

As for the look and feel... that's pretty much a personal choice issue. You can turn all of that stuff off but really it comes down to whether someone wants the pretty or not. Some people like it. Other just want to get crap done, and that's okay.

And you can turn off the annoying dock magnification on the Mac OS too. :p

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I work for Apple.

Macs will still cost a thousand bucks more for a machine than PCs,

That's not really fair (or true, IMO). If you compare machines of similar spec, our hardware is generally comparable in price. Hell, the last version of the MacPro was easily $1500 less than an equivalent Dell when we released it.

Where the price difference really kicks in is a) if Apple hasn't refreshed a particular model in quite some time; or b) if there really isn't an equivalent Mac to the PC that you're looking at.

In my experience (a) doesn't happen all that often as we tend to refresh machines fairly frequently (with the exception of the Mac Mini it seems). (b) is more of an issue, as Apple doesn't offer machines in a number of market segments. We don't make a netbook, for instance. We also don't make a low end tower... and not everyone needs a dual quad core tower, which is what we do make.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

That's fair, and yeah, if your buying needs hit towards the end of one of our product refreshes, Apple hardware won't compare as well since we don't drop prices... we just introduce a new model instead.

Also, when you're close to ready to buy, feel free to ping me... I don't tend to use all of my employee discounts.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad.

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Wow. I um, hadn't actually intended for a humor piece to turn into "a an hour or two of time spent defending my remarks in my own LJ". Next time I see you, maybe we can talk about my experiences vs. yours.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound like I was passionately disagreeing with you... and yes, it was amusing.

It's just that I hear lots of Vista bashing at work (as you can imagine) and I think it has a bit of an unfair rap.