Windows Vista Lounge

Windows Vista delivers on its graphic promises, slick color schemes and interface improvements…but there are a few things to frustrate those used to doing things in previous versions of the Windows OS. Change is good, so I’m not out to blast Microsoft for moving things around…far from it. But here are a few areas where I’m scratching my head and simply asking…”Why?” 

First, the thumbnail views. I work with images and pictures a lot and I’m very used to dumping pictures in any folder I choose, knowing I can go through the thumbnails quickly to find that one picture I need later. Well, in Vista it’s not so simple. You have to store images in the picture manager directory or all you get is a stock icon saying hey this is a picture. This means you have to open them individually, or open the folder and run a slide show, or import everything into the picture manager to see thumbnails. It’s a mess! What was so wrong with having thumbnails automatically generated? Maybe those pesky thumbs.db files needed to go. But this is one feature I used a lot without knowing realizing it, until it was taken away in Vista. 

Second, the user access control feature. This is great, it keeps programs from hijacking your computer, running things without your knowledge, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice idea…but a lot of programs are completely allowed and you want them to run…but each of them pause the interface for you to say “OK” before they can execute. Imagine trying to install a list of programs and having several prompts on top of the usual ones–it’s simply annoying. So, they give you a way to turn this off. Which is nice but now you get a big warning icon in the tool tray as if to say…something is wrong, your user access has been turned off. Well, I know but why does it have to be a bad thing? It would be better if they asked you when prompted–”Do you want to mark this program okey dokey for next time?” then you don’t get bugged by the same issues every time you boot up. 

And third-when it’s time to shut down, you get a big lock button to click–or–you can click this tiny arrow and say–shut down or restart or hibernate instead. OK-it’s good to have choices but most of the time I click shut down. Someone else might clcik hibernate. So why not make these tweakable so you can put your dominant choice in the big button area…it would be more fluid when trying to close up shop for the day. 

All of these are minor things mind you. Overall, you get a lot of nice “Mac like” imagery in Vista and it’s about time. Sure Microsoft could have done things more uniquely than the Mac OS look, but hey don’t they own that too now? Why reinvent the wheel I guess? Perhaps when more than the wheel is possible, they could. 

Is Vista worth the headaches, more hardware costs (Buy some more RAM as a minimum) and converting problems…Yes! It gives a fresh clean look to your PC and if you are parked in front of that thing for hours on end, why not indulge in something new?