Windows Vista - Still Fresh After 19 Months?

MyStuff writes "ZDNet blog Hardware 2.0 looks at the effect of having used Windows Vista for over 18 months. It Windows Vista the indispensable upgrade that Microsoft wants you to think it is? Writer Kingsley-Hughes says 'Having been using Vista for over 18 months I believe that it's a huge improvement over XP and even though I still use XP I find that I miss many of the features that Vista offers.' Just the same, he goes on, 'I wouldn't call any of the changes earth-shattering. When I'm using XP systems I miss some of the features but not so much that they push me to upgrade any faster.' He then goes on to give a feature-by-feature breakdown of all of the improvements Vista has over XP, and what long-term use of these features can net." A possibly useful guide for gamers or administrators thinking about upgrading sometime soon.

Re:Is that the best he can come up with?

[Theaetetus]

The start menu is a mixed bag. The start menu itself has an improved layout, but the new programs submenu really blows. It took me a while to get used to it. Basically, instead of expanding menus like the XP Programs menu, think a compact tree view shoved into the area of the existing start menu. Its a lot harder to navigate.

According to the article, though, it's just because you don't know how to use a mousewheel.

Frankly, I think that's an idiotic response... The Start menu is better, except that now it takes a left click to open it, a move to get to programs, a mousewheel scroll to get to the program you want, another click to select it - and that's supposed to be efficient? Quicksilver, or even Spotlight, on a Mac is easier - hit the key (or mouse button) to open it, start typing application name, within 3 or 4 letters, you got it, hit return. On my laptop, I never even move my hands off the keys.

Re:This jives with my own experience

[Nightspirit]

There is a command line for the full defragmenter, I don't recall it but a quick google should pull it up. Vista is much better than XP, however, I returned to XP due to the horrible driver support from creative and nvidia. I figure it will take them at least a year to get their act together, so I will upgrade then.

Re:19 Months?

[Planesdragon]

No way am I going to relinquish my computer rights to Microsoft and the pathetic content providers.

Psst. You don't have to. The "DRM" in Vista is hardly more than what's in XP or OSX; it's just that the on-disk versions of MS-apps support it, rather than the on-update versions for XP.

Re:Is that the best he can come up with?

[LiquidCoooled]

Just in case anyone is actually wondering, the reg entry required to allow "a word or phrase in" searching within the standard Windows search *per file extension* is:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.ext\PersistentHandler]
@="{5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb}"

Microsoft released a patch sometime before SP1 which applies these settings to a bunch of common file extensions but even this missed the ones specific to my system.

Re:Correction

[drsmithy]

Photoshop is 'cmd-space+p+h+enter' and it is open." Actually, it's cmd-space+p+h+[down arrow]+enter. I'm waiting for Leopard when it will finally just select the top item for me.

Cmd+Enter will open the top item.

Re:This jives with my own experience

[tropicdog]

To answer your questions in order:
I defrag hard drives because my job is user support, and my users are on Windows computers and machine policy locks them out of defragging the systems themselves. (I would like to let them do so but, I don't get to make those decisions here.)
Don't know, haven't experienced Vista for myself yet.
Yes.
Fragmentation is a problem on Windows 2000 and XP with NTFS. In the environment I support, all our users store files on the network but somehow Windows still manages to get severe disk fragmentation after only a few months. Windows seems to do a good enough job of creating it's own headaches by creating enough misc temp files along with all the Internet Explorer caching to bog itself down. It doesn't require users to create/edit/delete files locally to do the same damage. I was just telling someone the other day that I've been treating the same symptom (sluggish performance on Windows) since Windows 95 with the same treatment (clean temp files off drive and defrag). From my perspective, things haven't improved with Microsoft OS in 12 years, I don't hold much expectation that Vista will magically be much better.