Who here is actually going to be jumping into Vista?

[Uraniun235]

As for whether I'm going to Vista... nah, Windows TG is what I need.

4) 'On-site service' that consists of a guy who comes out on-site, looks at the system, and says, 'Yep, ship it back to Dell.'

Oh, barf, really? That's crap. We had a DOA Gateway computer at work recently and Gateway sent a dude out to fix it on site, with parts and all.

I've added non-Dell RAM to Dell computers before. They were Dimension machines; maybe the Optiplexes have a trickier motherboard.

If I remember right, the Dimension brand is the "home" brand whereas the Optiplex brand is the "office" brand, so I could very well see them dicking around with the Optiplex boards, figuring that corporate users have the cash to throw around on memory upgrades.

Even without all the changes in functionality, at this point I'd get it simply to be able to stare at something else then XP's UI (and no, hackish stuff like Windows Blinds don't count).

Meh. The screenshots I've seen haven't impressed me.

But then, the very first thing I did after installing XP was to reset the theme to "Windows Classic", so asking me about UIs is probably like asking Stark about cyberpunk.

[Durandal]

Since it will be free to me (MSDNAA) I'll probably get it when it becomes available. In recent years I've become less and less of a tinkerer with machines, but XP is honestly starting to feel a little stale. Even without all the changes in functionality, at this point I'd get it simply to be able to stare at something else then XP's UI (and no, hackish stuff like Windows Blinds don't count).

Actually, the Royale theme for XP is quite nice, and it's an official Microsoft theme, not a hack. Completely free.

[Praxis]

The Vista screenshots I've seen look ugly to me. The GUI is inconsistent and horribly designed, with browser style buttons where they shouldn't be. Even Paul Thurrott, Windows Fanboy Extraordinaire, is driven nuts by it.

http://winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_rc1_worst.asp

What? You don't see the Back button? Oh, it's that weird blue thing in the corner. Why does Vista use a graphical browser-like button for Back and an old-fashioned text-based button for Next? I can understand why Back is on the left, and why Next is on the right, but why is Back on the top of the application while Next is on the bottom?

UI guys are going to have a field day with this one. For some reason, Microsoft's software designers have decided to use the Web browser's navigational scheme in many of Windows Vista's application (and not just wizards). But since this is Microsoft we're talking about, they did so in a completely inconsistent and even partial fashion. So now Back is graphical and on the top of the window, while Next/Forward is textual and on the bottom.

Smart!

Or not. Most stupidly, there's nothing to suggest that the two buttons are related in any way. So it's not really clear that they offer similar functionality. What's really amazing is that the functionality underneath is often even more insidious than it appears at first glance. Let's use Windows DVD Maker as an example. Assume you're busy making your first DVD movie. You're in the second stage of the wizard (which is stupidly called Ready to Burn Disc even though there are at least five other things you can do in this phase). You click the Customize menu toolbar button to navigate forward to the "Customize the Disc Menu Style" phase of the wizard, adjust some properties, and go back to the previous phase to preview the changes. Deciding you want to visit "Customize the Disc Menu Style" screen again, you type ALT + RIGHT ARROW, which is of course the keyboard shortcut for "Forward," as we've all learned after several years of IE usage. Clearly, this will bring us back to the "Customize the Disc Menu Style" screen.

Nope. Instead, this keyboard shortcut is the equivalent of clicking the Burn button for some reason. Instead of changing the menu style again, you just started burning your disc. Or a coaster, since the disc you're now making isn't what you wanted.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But wait, there's more. Oh there is so much more.

Why can't we have the Up directory button in Explorer windows anymore? I get that the new breadcrumb functionality in the Address Bar is more powerful, but sometimes you just want to go up one level. (On the flipside, Microsoft did finally implement the ALT + UP ARROW shortcut I've been asking for since the Windows XP beta. Thank you for finally listening to that one.)

And speaking of Explorer, why isn't the first item in the current view always selected when I open a new folder? If you double-click on a folder in Explorer, or select a folder in the Favorites Link list or folders list, it's not clear at all where the focus is. What's selected? Why is nothing selected? The behavior is different almost every time, and it's never clear what the reason is.

How come the special shell folders are less intelligent now? In Windows XP, when you went to My Documents, for example, you'd see links to related locations like Shared Documents. In Windows Vista, there's no such intelligence. Every single folder simply presents the same exact list of Favorite Links. And here's the best part: Sometimes they're actually presented in a different order. Yeah, that's just good stuff.

And what's up with the glaringly inconsistent UI across Windows Vista and all of its applications? Some windows have menus, some don't, and some have hidden menus. Some have these new black toolbars, some don't. And so on. Why isn't there a team of people just working on consistency issues?

Why does Internet Explorer want to download stuff to a Downloads folder? What is Downloads? Where is it? How do find it? (Yes, I know it's in the home folder, but the average user won't know that.) When I download something, how come it disappears? Why doesn't the Downloads window open when the download is complete? Why isn't Downloads on the Start Menu if it's the default in IE? Was the desktop too logical and commonly-used a destination?

How come Windows Vista has this great search feature but most of the bundled applications still use an old fashioned Find dialog that often gets in the way of what you're trying to find? Open up Notepad or Wordpad and try to find some text. Why isn't there a Search box right up there in the top right corner of the window? Duh.

How come x64 is so horrible? Does Microsoft want Apple to make it look silly again? Those foolish enough to install an x64 version of Windows Vista will become pretty surly when they realize none of their applications will work, none of their existing drivers mean diddly-squat anymore, and, most humorously, that x64 PC you bought probably doesn't support more than 4 GB of RAM anyway. OK, that last one isn't Microsoft's fault, but seriously. It's all part of the malaise that is the x64 "ecosystem."

...



I guess I can handle the notion that Vista's Sidebar is nothing like the wonderful front-end for system notifications we were promised back in 2003. I can even handle that it's a half-hearted rip-off of Apple's Dashboard (which was itself a ruthless rip-off of Konfabulator, but whatever.) What I can't handle is that this bloated, semi-useless strip of screen real estate-stealing UI is enabled by default on Vista, that it takes forever to load, causing your effective boot time to almost double, and that it takes multiple steps to actually kill it.

And there's just too much transparency...it looks like a bad Windows XP skin. Almost like they're trying to throw every shiny effect they can into it.

http://winsupersite.com/images/showcase/rc1_01.jpg
http://winsupersite.com/images/showcase/rc1_03.jpg
http://winsupersite.com/images/showcase/rc1_09.jpg

[Arrow]

Here's a gallery of screenshots from RC1, from ExtremeTech. Now I've used Windowsblind themes that minic Vista (quite well, too), and the transparency is not a distraction. And as the gallery shows, they're no throwing in every shiny effect.

A couple of things I like are the performance display, since it gives more details than Task Manager's performance tab, and the built-in memory test, which will be nice for hunting down hardware problems.

[Netko]

Actually, the Royale theme for XP is quite nice, and it's an official Microsoft theme, not a hack. Completely free.

Yup, and I've been using it literaly since it came out (I can still remember the debate the first few days/weeks that microsoft is shafting its old customers for not releasing it for regular XP versus MCE - that is, of course, before they did release it). But even that is becoming a bit stale. Now, I might be something of a horror to the legions of office users that know how to use windows from some course, but I like changes in the interface every now and then(of course, as long as it can be percived as a net benefit, not just change for change's sake). 6 years is enough for the current incarnation, time to move on to something better.

[Netko]

Ghetto edit: A big functionality of the interface that I really like to finaly get is real time searches do to indexed content. I really liked the functionality that Desktop Search brought, but it unfortunatly had stability problems (the bug where it wont shut down normaly during computer shut down was especialy annoying) so I'm not using it on my most recent reinstall. Not to mention it being much more nicely integrated into the enviroment then DS on XP (something which microsoft employees admit is caused by the aformentioned trained office workers and not being allowed to change their enviroment within a product).

[Cao Cao]

The thing is Microsoft will muscle developers into making things for Vista whether they - or we - like it or not.
So why do they themselves have to bother with making it good?

[Durandal]

Here's a gallery of screenshots from RC1, from ExtremeTech. Now I've used Windowsblind themes that minic Vista (quite well, too), and the transparency is not a distraction. And as the gallery shows, they're no throwing in every shiny effect.

It's not a distraction, but it's definitely overused. And some of the browser-type windows that have the gigantic titlebars for no reason are just plain fugly. Why does the entire window border have to be translucent? And for that matter, the windows look fat and chunky with those borders, not to mention the shadows on top of that. I've never understood why being able to drag or resize a window from any edge is important, especially when it results in the butt-ugly windows we see in Vista. OS X windows are resized from the lower-right corner, and they have shadows instead of borders. Looks a hell of a lot nicer, in my opinion.

[Uraniun235]

Personally, I like being able to resize from anywhere on the window, but based on the borders they're using in Vista, I can see how giving that up for a cleaner look might be an acceptable trade-off.

[Netko]

It will hopefully be user modifiable. In XP, the original title bars are insanely large, a pure waste of space. Yet you can modify them to something much more plesant in the advanced options. I heard that similar things are possible on Vista, but you'll have to get to the options thru some counterintuitive menus (which imply that those options work only on the Windows Classic interface, but which is not true).

[Dave]

Holy cow, that Control Panel has way too much crap in it.

[Sephirius]

I needs Vista to play Halo 2 on PC

[Vendetta]

I needs Vista to play Halo 2 on PC

You do know that an xbox would be cheaper than even a bog standard version of Vista, right? Especially if you get a second hand one, And whilst H2 Vista is being respecced for high res and more detail, it's still going to be a four year old game when it comes out.