Redux
I tried Vista back with beta 2, and as I wrote back then, I was not impressed. It took ages to install, ran like a dog, looked like crap… not the next generation operating system Microsoft have been promising.
Well with RC2 out, what should be the final test version before release, I thought I’d give it another try. So I wiped the laptop down and fired up the install sequence. Immediately, the improvements were noticable. The install sequence was far simpler and far faster, eventually dumping me into the desktop. The graphics performance is much improved as well, and since my laptop graphics card isn’t up to giving me the proper Aero transparencies (despite the fact that it’s able to run World of Warcraft OK, but we won’t get into that), it was nice to see the improved visual style for those with crap hardware.
Everything is far more polished, and I quite like the general Vista look with the black taskbar etc. The security system is improved, but it’s still annoying. All these stupid popups making me confirm everything that I want to do. And when I copied over Secure CRT settings from another machine, it point blank refused to let me remove the “read only” setting from the folder. In the end, I switched off their new stupid security system. I do fine without it in XP and I’ll do fine without it in Vista too.
Both Vista and OS X are going down the same route, making their Explorer/Finder handle a users files with increasing ease. With lots of metadata and search tools everywhere. But what about users like me? I have no use for any of that stuff whatsoever. I do all my stuff online, I use a browser, a text editor, an FTP client and a remote shell. I open files from remote servers, edit them, and save them back to a remote server again. I don’t really have local files at all, short of music, which I organise within iTunes and it’s tailored interface anyway. So from that point of view, Vista offers me nothing. The next version of OS X, the same.
Where’s the innovation in areas other than file management?
