On my computer I had two windows installations of XP in different partitions and I planned to use one partition for Vista. The installation is quite easy and fast. I was just a little bit surprised, that I did not see a menu to format the partition. Instead I selected the the partition and it started to copy files and informed me, that the old installation will be moved to a folder windows.old. No problem, I can delete this folder manually. Formatting would just give me a better feeling to have a clean system without old garbage. Maybe I missed a button for formatting, nobody is reading texts like license aggrements, explaination and so on.
After installation I can see the first time the new look of Windows. Looks nice. A window opens without a title, in the address bar it identifies as 'System and Maintenance > Welcome Center'. It identifies my computer correctly as a Windows Vista Business with Core2Duo processor, 2 GB Ram and NVIDIA Geforce 7900 graphics card. Below this information block some icons offer actions what to do. Ok, lets add a new user. So I click on 'Add new user'. One would expect a window to add a new user. But no, just the imformation block above informa me, that user can have accounts and that it is useful. Hmmm, looks like they changed the professional version to behave like home version. But there is also a link for adding users now. After clicking on it I can - no, not add a new user. I can select between User Accounts and Cardspace. There is a tiny link under the heading user accounts quite right beside the other links, which says 'Add or remove user accounts'. Don't click on the heading 'User Accounts', because then you just can manage your user account. Ok, let's use the tiny link to add a user account finally. Oh, what is that? A meesage box opens, User Account Control asks for permission and I have to click on Continue. The message box is not only a modal dialog, it blocks the complete user interface. You cannot switch to other applications. After confirming with continue I still cannot add a user, but I see a list of existing user accounts and find a link to create a new user account. Then finally I can add a name and select it to be a standard user or administrator. After creation you can select the account and add a password. Phew! How many clicks it took to create the user? Feels like 22 or more.
This was just one example how intricate navigation got. For many actions it need 2 or 3 confirmations before it is executed. An example is the new sidebar where you can add gadgets on a transparent bar at the right. You can select online new gadgetsm but it needs 4 confirmations to add one to your bar. On my Google homepage I can do similiar with 1 click. I think I will switch of the User Account Control and look for new management tools to come to get rid of this annoying lack of usability.
Luckily I have for my productive work still some computers running XP. I tried to access by Remote Desktop Connection. It works as before - mostly. If you share your local drives and your clipboard this may work or not. Often not all drives as mapped or you get an error message when trying to copy data. One error was: 'Could not find this item. This is no longer located in \folder. Verify the item's location and try again.' Sounds reasonable, but is just an error in the Remote Desktop copy routines. But you can avoid this problem by opening a file share and connect to this.
After copying I tried to connect with Vista IE7 to my Exchange server using Outlook Web Access. The certificate is fine, but my organisation not listed as trustworthy. So it recommends not to connect. But I connected anyhow and after login I can read my emails. Surprisingly you cannot create a new mail. In the new mail window you cannot enter any text. Surprisingly does it work with XP IE7, with Vista IE7 it does not.
And more applications are not vista-enabled. Most antivirus programs are not yet working, Vista claims VMWare Workstation to be incompatible, but more funny is that several of Microsoft's own software is not working with Vista. 'Windows Vista does not support Visual Studio 2005' you will see when trying to install. If you install anyhow, only parts are installed successfully. And MS SQL erver is not supported on Vista and so on.
Some hardware is still missing drivers, like my Cinergy Hybrid T USB XS TV card, but I will not claim Microsoft for that.
What I really miss are the Toggle Keys. There is the option to switch on the Toggle keys, so that you hear a sound when hitting CAPS LOCK. But it is not working. So sound is played.
But not all is bad in Vista. The switch between applications by
Summary:
After 5 years of development the new Windows does not show big innovations at the first glance. Really interesting things like .NET 3.0 are not unique to Vista, they are available for XP too. As noticed, there are still many compatibility problems with Hardware and Software and usability could be improved. So I recommend not to use Vista in a productive environment right now.
