I know I said I thought I was pre-determined to not like Vista in my original post about it, but there are plenty of annoying things that just scream out at me. Some stuff looks nice also, but all that I have found that I like are all UI things. No real substance.
My first major complaint is that the control panel is different. For example all the elements you could previously get via the display control panel are now separated. So you have to go looking for the control panel option for the screen saver, screen size, desktop, etc. It is annoying. I also looked for 15 minutes and could not find where the option to NOT let Vista log me out after an extended period of time is kept. In XP and older versions it was configured in the screen saver options.
The major thing that drives me crazy is how you have to install software. Since at work everything is on a network drive I have to say ok to launching something from the network, and then I have to say it is ok to install something, since Microsoft likes to ask me if I really want to do what I am telling the OS to do. That is nice in theory, but if you get too many dialog box’s you tend to just say yes to them and not read them. I thought they (MSFT) figured that out with 2003, but apparently they didn’t learn their lesson. In fact they decided to take it a step further. Jayson says this all the time, but by turning off all the options of a browser by default does not make it more secure. Users will just say yes to the warning box when they try to run something. They will also look less at each box the more of them they get.
Now on a good note, I was surprised how quick Office 2003 applications such as word and excel opened when launched. I didn’t get a chance to use the apps since I really don’t work on a windows box anymore, but I was happy with the snappy performance. Of course the performance better be that nice on a 64bit AMD 3000+ with 2gigs of RAM.
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