Thoughts on Vista, without trashing it. (EG - What do you like about it?)

[zallison]

I'm very impressed, from a customer service standpoint, with Vista.

Now I know that there is lots of animosity towards the OS, but what do you really like about it?

Here's my list.

• Network and Sharing Center - I love the collection of all the basic networking tools gathered into one place. And the visual map and netwroking troubleshooter built in makes this a godsend for anyone that answers a 'my internet stopped working' call.
  
  User Account Control - I know this is the number one thing people hate about it. But honestly, its just a GUI version of the 'su' command. It grants admin rights for a instant so you can make a hazardous system change. Yes its annoying, but think of it as 'su' and it takes alot of the problems I had with it away.
  
  Parental Controls - Take out the parental, and substitute it with administrative.. Makes maintaining a system with HDD quotas, time frame restrictions, sites you don't want users accessing, etc... All built in, no 3rd party products.
  
  Start menu Live Search - Run command, search bar (even web searches)
  
  Virtualization - I like it when I don't have to cleanup my girlfriend's desktop icons or downloaded files to organize my system. They all save to her account no matter where she thinks she places them. She can find them, I don't have to worry about clutter on my account or when I'm in Fedora.
  
  Disk Management - Ability to take a disk and change the partition on it without a format is great. And the fact that I didn't have to do it with anything other than windows makes it better. I don't like spending money on the tools I should have gotten with my OS.

Do any of you have any things you like about Vista?

[xierox]

- User Account Control. (Made running as a restricted user so much more convenient than XP.)
- UAC + Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 7.
- Instant Search
- Windows Aero
- Windows Media Center
- The Sidebar
- Shadow Copy
- Superfetch
- Flip3D

Unfortunately, my slightly dated laptop (which was 2 years old June of this year) didn't run it well, so I had to downgrade back to XP. However, I hope to use it again next summer when I build a new computer.

- X

[zallison]

I was already performing Shadow copy on my own.

I happen to be a multiplication fanatic. Everything I have is probably spread across every system I have, or use constantly, in addition its probably been backed up or archived somewhere.

Makes .mp3 and .wma organization a nightmare when the network scan pulls 50+ copies of the same song.

I honestly didn't find Flip3d to be appealing, but I do like the sidebar (when its not overloaded) because I can have my mail and RSS feeds constantly available.

[Ippersiel]

For myself, the new explorer is both great and a pain in the a$$. I love the templates for mp3 files showing artist and year and such, but it also does it for folders that have no audio files in it. It also takes a long freakin' time to load all my files in my music folder because I have over 2500 mp3s. Don't know if anyone else has encountered this. (Thank goodness for music managers like MediaMonkey)

I've also run into some file deletion problems. It doesn't delete what I want it to and I can't undelete the files because they weren't deleted to begin with (supposedly)

I do love the game explorer, when it recognizes the games, (ugh) but forget games older than 98 except the popular ones.

The search is great if the files are part of the indexed folders (although I know where those files are) but when you search for program files or system files it's very difficult, and actually worse than the search from XP (which is when I do use search) (can be replaced with X1, Yahoo Desktop or Google Desktop)

I have UAC off. It was annoying and conflicted with my Flash 8 Video Import/Editing options.

The Sidebar is nice, but nothing a 3rd party app couldn't fill (eg: DesktopSidebar.com)

To be honest though, except for the UI changes (mimicable with Windows Blinds), I can't say I would have changed to Vista had it not been included with my new laptop. I'm not going to downgrade to XP but I'm not spreading praises of Vista.

Maybe I'd sing a different tune if I was using it as a System Administrator or more in depth networking schemes?

[zallison]

I have 1700+ songs on my HDD currently, thats not including what I don't have pulled off of my backup DVDs.

The Music template is only applied, currently, to the main, and subfolders of the Music folder in my start menu.

You can redirect the folders for Pictures, Music, and such just like you could redirect the target of the My documents link in 2k and XP

I find them very useful without a 3rd party app, and fast searching when you keep the attributes of the folder proper (those Blue folders that allow Virtualization to come into play with UAC on are autoindexed, I can pull up all songs by an artist just by typing the artist's name in the search menu.)

IE7 took a slight bit of getting used to in Vista (no menu bar threw me for a loop) but since I'm more at home in a typing environment (I can run anything I want from an IRC client on this machine. =/) pressing alt and tabbing to the appropriate tool didn't bother me at all.

I really love the UAC once I began to understand its core more. The fact that it completely protects the registry when its setup properly is completely worth the annoyance once in a while. I'm not an expert on Flash 8, but I don't understand why it would be wanting registry access all the time (which is what triggers the UAC) when you are doing import/editing functions.

And honestly, I do use google desktop instead of the standard sidebar, but only because I'm too lazy to set my gmail account up in Windows Mail or outlook2k7.

And, as for Aero and the start menu, WindowsBlinds (I love stardock software, still use portions of it on an old win2k machine.) is just as big a resource hog as Aero is. The fact that you can pick and choose what is done with more control does merit the windowblinds software a place in mentionable alternatives to those wanting the pretty without the system upgrade though.

I'm not getting on to argue anything, I've just begun to find most complaints about Vista that customers, or agents I talk to at work, are really a misunderstanding or a misconception of how Vista *should* be. I'm wanting to develop this thread to show people what is good, and why its good.

Believe me, I still have gripes about the system also. But thats not the point of this thread.

[Ouroboros]

The occasional driver problems nonwithstanding, I'm liking Vista Home Premium. I have a license for Vista Ultimate, and as soon as nVidia gets some solid footing with their drivers, I'll be back with it.

The sidebar is nice...it's totally useless, but it looks good.

UAC doesn't bother me aside from the fact that it uses much more processing power than it should when active. I like the extra protection from self-launching malware.

My firewall and anti-virus software are fully compatible, which is nice.

As mentioned above, the ability to manipulate partitions and multiple drives on the fly is very nice.

There are some bugs, and I have seen more than one BSOD (because I was using the MS driver for my video card instead of nVidia's...fixed that after I figured out what the hell was happening), but all in all I can't complain.

O

[xierox]

I really love the UAC once I began to understand its core more. The fact that it completely protects the registry when its setup properly is completely worth the annoyance once in a while. I'm not an expert on Flash 8, but I don't understand why it would be wanting registry access all the time (which is what triggers the UAC) when you are doing import/editing functions.

This is incorrect. UAC prompts do not trigger only on registry modifications. (And I'm sure there are some parts of the registry that are modifiable without any UAC notification. Anything HKEY_Current_User strikes me as likely being modifiable without a UAC prompt.)

The reason for this is because when you log onto Vista with UAC turned on, you are assigned two security tokens. One is the standard (restricted) user token with which all processes are run by default. The second is the "administrative" (unrestricted*) access token. If a running process tries to access somewhere (or do something) that it cannot access (or do) with the restricted access token, then you will receive a UAC prompt asking you to escalate the privileges of that process. If you give it the go-ahead, then the unrestricted token is attached to the process and it now is effectively running with administrative rights.

This should give a good overview of UAC: http://technet2.microsoft.com/Window....mspx?mfr=true

- X

*this presumes that you haven't modified your system's default ACL's or privileges. By default, the administrative token should be able to change anything on the system.

[ShagDevil]

• A much more configurable Windows Firewall
• An Event Viewer that actually gives me information I can use
• The ability to finally schedule system defrags with the default Windows Defrag
• Backup & Restore Center

There's a few more things I can't think of right now. These are a few off the top of my head.

[Ippersiel]

[LIST][*]The ability to finally schedule system defrags with the default Windows Defrag

While I do agree I like this part, I must say I have that I can't see the progress of the defrag, nor the actual drive gui and what sectors are fragmented or not.

What do others think?

[Ippersiel]

I'm not getting on to argue anything, I've just begun to find most complaints about Vista that customers, or agents I talk to at work, are really a misunderstanding or a misconception of how Vista *should* be. I'm wanting to develop this thread to show people what is good, and why its good.

Believe me, I still have gripes about the system also. But thats not the point of this thread.

I guess the aire of my post did come off more annoyed with Vista than it should have.

I'm also tired of people and the press pissing and moaning about Vista this and Vista that when most is FUD, however I do agree with some of it.

I'm kinda on the fence about Vista which is why I might come off harsh. I'd say I'm feeling like Paul Thurrott. Listen to Windows Weekly podcast #38 (me thinks, has a special guest on talking about Vista and Leopard) and that'll be about how I feel.

There are some features I like just that it's kinda been done wrong. Instead of two mouse clicks to do something, now it's five.

My biggest new feature I do love (to overcome the above gripe) is the searchbox in Control Panel. I type what I'm looking for and it's there.

I also love the change to the Startmenu. Now I don't have rows and rows of programs.

Maybe this post makes me sound less annoyed with Vista?