Brothers,

I'm about to make the leap to Windows Vista on my one and only PC. I have an HP Pavilion a450n. I got it on sale at Staples, where it was being sold as a "back to school" bundle, with Windows XP Home. Later, I upgraded that to XP Pro.

Recently, I ran a Microsoft utility that's supposed to tell you if you're hardware is going to be compatible with Vista. Surprisingly enough, mine was. However, they recommended that I upgrade my RAM. Hey, I was going to do that anyway, and thanks to Crucial, I can get 2 gigs for this machine dirt cheap.

Speaking of memory, let me refresh yours as to why I even HAVE a PC. As you know, I'm a Mac guy, through and through. I was there for the first Mac in 1984, and I never looked back... um, until OS X turned out to suck and not be adequate for pro use.

About half of my business now--maybe it's more than half--is web design. And while I still design my graphics and build sites and so forth on the Mac (using Adobe and Macromedia-cum-Adobe products), I find that to really see how a web site is going to look on most computers in the world, you have to look at it and test it on a PC. Why that is, beats me. But nine times out of ten, a site that looks friggin PERFECT on a Mac, blows apart and looks terrible or doesn't work at all on a PC. Testing on a Mac, it turns out, is testing on a Mac. You ALSO have to test on a PC, or you aren't truly testing.

Of course, as I test my web sites on a PC, what do I discover, but surfing the Web in GENERAL, is much, much, much faster on a PC than it is on a Mac. I mean, Apple should be ASHAMED of itself. It's absolutely unacceptable how slow the web is in Safari on a top-of-the-line G5 with memory to burn (8 gigabytes). Compared to a computer I got for 1/5 the price down the street. With 512MB of RAM installed. Crap like that makes me fucking crazy.

How Apple can be doing this well, and be providing its customers with such sub-standard performance with its highest end hardware is a travesty. And still X-Men and the Mac Faithful cut them every bit of slack they can, and make excuses for Apple right and left regarding why they aren't doing their jobs.

Seems to me, they're being awfully lenient and forgiving. As if iPods and digikid con-jobs are enough to make us overlook how really poorly Macintosh computers run in the real world, thanks to OS X.

And yet, ironically, everything I've seen or read about Windows Vista tells me that Microsoft is ripping off OS X. It's designer AIR ("Aero") rather than designer WATER ("Aqua")... but it's still all about eye candy. The people who make computer operating systems have all determined what sells, and it ain't performance. It's splashy interface. That must be what every focus group, marketing poll, and powerpoint analysis says. And yet I continue to question that. I continue to refuse to believe that the computer using public is so stupid that they can't tell the difference between a skin, and something that works and is intuitive.

Anyway, I got curious about Vista, and figured I'd give it a shot. What do I have to lose but a few bucks? I've lost enough trying to find some relief from how terrible OS X is to work with. I've resigned myself to the fact that the Apple con is always going to be more important than productivity. Marketing is always going to be more important than performance for professional users. And yet I hold out hope that sooner or later Apple with "get it"... that they'll realize they can have their cake and eat it too. That making a smarter, more streamlined "Less is More" interface will be in their best interests, and will put some truth behind their now-empty hype.

When the MacLash comes, as far as I'm concerned, all will be forgiven. I will look back at the OS X era as a brain fart. An adjustment. A kind of Applezheimers where Apple got greedy and lost its friggin' mind until it realized that its legacy is all about smart, intuitive, commonsense, graphically SIMPLE interfaces. And the path to glory is not trying to scam the userbase with eye candy, but provide it with the digital tools that unleash personal creativity.

It's one kind of strategy to sell $100 interface skins, it's another to unleash creative power and sell $1,000 pro tools. Right now, Apple is getting away with selling powerful hardware, on which its bloated operating system barely runs except to look impressive. It doesn't really DO what it looks like it does.

Is Windows Vista Microsoft trying to get a piece of that action? Is the computer userbase really made up of people who can't tell the difference between pretty, and crap that WORKS? We shall see, my brothers. We shall see.

As soon as I install the new Windows operating system, I will see how it performs. I'll be paying close attention to how much SENSE the interface makes... how it USES eye candy to communicate functionality. If it makes the mistake that OS X makes, i.e. eye candy for its own sake, without being grounded in productivity, believe me, I'll know.

quote:

Originally posted by thalo:
As soon as I install the new Windows operating system, I will see how it performs. I'll be paying close attention to how much SENSE the interface makes... how it USES eye candy to communicate functionality. If it makes the mistake that OS X makes, i.e. eye candy for its own sake, without being grounded in productivity, believe me, I'll know.

Having played around with Vista since Beta 2, I can't really say Microsoft has used eye candy to communicate functionality any more than Apple has. They seem to have a coherent UI vision for Windows, which they've been building up for a long time: the "task-based" UI based on large windows prompting you for things the system thinks you might want to do, along with the traditional 10-step wizards for things as simple as turning on file sharing. Case in point: Microsoft is now taking this to the extreme by ditching menu bars in favor of a horizontal string of buttons for common tasks. It's well thought-out, but it strikes me as limited, and I couldn't see myself using it for serious work.

I thought this was a pretty good Wiki entry regarding Windows Vista for those who want a quick glance of what it's all about.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." -- Albert Einstein

Well after the experience of installing Windows XP on Mother Rico's old Gateway for Sister Rico I would rather take red hot pokers to both eyes than have to deal with Vista.

Who wants all those pop up windows anyway. Your connected to the internet no shit sherlock. Or AOL is asking you this I don't even have an AOL account.

If Mac OS X is in your face to much brother thalo if it were not for the fact that you need the PC for web testing I am sure you would have taken a couple of shotgun blasts to the HP long ago.

The web runs better on PC's because Microsoft wants it that way. When you design a website on the Mac do you follow the rules set out to properly build a website to standards. But in the end bringing a site designed by the industry standards does not work in Windows. That's becuase Microsoft and Explorer have their own standards outside the industry. Hence the reason the internet runs better on windows.

Sort of like gaming. Gaming was and is only really coded for windows. We discussed how shocked the gaming programmers were with how many numbers the Xbox 360 could crunch. The main reason was due to the altivec units on each core. The gaming programmers could have be taking advantage of Altivec on PPC G4's for 6 years before the Xbox 360 ever arrived.

For me, brother Rico, the annoyances of Windows (at least for word processing) are completely overshadowed by its superior handling of fonts and the options to turn off anti-aliasing completely if desired.

OS X enforces its Vaselined view of the world. But from what I've seen personally (a fellow down the hall has the Vista beta installed), there is no question whatsoever that gratuitious eye candy is a major part of Vista.

Windows has its own Expose-like thingie. I'm trying to decide if I like it better than what OS X does. Offhand, I think the Vista one is more intuitive in the sense that all these interfaces nowadays are trying so hard to stress that third dimension of depth and shading. Well, Vista's "Expose" extends this metaphor (see the Wiki article for what it looks like) rather than does like OS X does and just vomit windows helter-skelter onto the screen, never in the same place twice. Vista stacks them up neatly in layers.

Here's the alt-tab version of it.

And here is something called Live Thumbnails which, whether you love or hate the taskbar, I think could definitely be an intuitive improvement. Granted, as anyone knows who has surfed the web for any length of time, those sites where damn near every mouseover causes something to pop up can just become a nightmare.

Vista and my chips from crucial just arrived. Here goes nothing...

Give us the details, thalo. First off, how much did Vista cost? Which version did you get? Are you clean installing or installing over XP? How long did the install take? Are you drinking wine out of a stemmed glass or a juice glass? LOL. We want to know!

Take note too, thalo, that Vista has a sort of "Sidebar" in Windows Explorer. I haven't played with it much. But this small feature looks to be a vast improvement. All that other task-based button stuff, I don't know.

I kid you not, this is what it says at the bottom of my PC screen right now:

quote:

Your upgrade may take several hours to complete.

Oh my god, I never laughed so hard.

I ordered Vista Biz upgrade at Staples for $199.
I'm trying to install it over top of Windows XP Pro.

I had to de-install Norton products to get the installer to work. I have no idea how I'm going to re-install them because I'm sure I lost my serial number and emails for that stuff.

I'm drinking no wine because I have a dentist appointment later this afternoon. But I could use a glass.

I'm looking at the pamphlet, and it seems like an OS X ripoff bottom to top. They even have widgets... er, gadgets. Same old bullshit. Button-shine render effects, which I'm absolutely sick to death of. Not crazy about the blue and green color scheme. Hope I can grey it out like I could in XP.

I don't mind if mouseovers pop up something IMPORTANT. What makes you nutty is when you get it... you've read the info, and STILL the same crap keeps popping up over and over.

Oh, it also says my computer will restart SEVERAL TIMES during the upgrade. Hysterical.

Memory upgrade in the HP was pretty easy, except there's a design problem. The monitor card sits up against the locking tab of the first RAM slot. No excuse for that. To open the tab, you have to physically BEND the card out of the way, and it's not made for that. But screw it, I wasn't going to uninstall the card.

Not crazy about the blue and green color scheme. Hope I can grey it out like I could in XP.

Well, apparently there are three styles: Windows Aero, Windows Vista Basic, and Windows Classic.

Offhand, the only difference I can see between Windows Aero and Windows Vista Basic is that Vista Basic doesn't use transparency. I'm not sure who really needs to see through the start menu, but apparently this is considered a groovy thing in its own right. I'm all for groovy things, but look how much clearer the start menu looks in Windows Vista Basic. "Basic" is actually more advanced than the "premium" Windows Aero. A little Orwellian newspeak in action. Better is worse. Worse is better.

I would assume you could get rid of a substantial amount of that puke green by changing the desktop picture. But I don't know about that large panels shown on Windows Explorer. But surely some mods or hacks will address that at some point. The black-and-white start menu looks relatively elegant and no-nonsense. It so jarring to see this against the puke blue and green behind it.

You do know, thalo, that you're violating a long-established method of the Microsoft techies: Never install a version of Windows until at least service pack 2 is out.

But what the hell. Someone's gotta beta test. You get the privilege to do so for a hundered and ninety-nine smackers. Suck-uh. LOL

Your upgrade may take several hours to complete.

That comment was written over 3 hours ago. Please tell me you're not still installing.

quote:

I don't mind if mouseovers pop up something IMPORTANT. What makes you nutty is when you get it... you've read the info, and STILL the same crap keeps popping up over and over.

I have asked Window's people if there is a way to turn off the pop up messages. I always get the blank stare as if I hadn't just said anything.

At work Entourage is the only email client we can use to access a global address book system. Entourage has no out of office utility. The user must set up their own rules essentially creating a proper script. It is not so hard to do this manually the problem is there is a total bug when you do set it up.

With Entourage running and the Out of Office reply turned on once the user gets an email sending out the message I am out of office Entourage sends the same out of office message to the user as well. This creates a continous loop of emails for the user every second once it starts. Left unattended for 5 hours would generate 18,000 emails.

In a nutshell that is modern day computing.

Rico,

I was able to find this on the web

quote:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"FolderContentsInfoTip"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\tips]
"Show"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"StartButtonBalloonTip"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced]
"ShowInfoTip"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoSMBalloonTip"=dword:00000000

I'm not sure which pop-up balloons and messages are effected by these registry settings.

Here's one I think I'll implement immediately:

quote:

Disable Balloon Tips in the Notification area

Balloon Tips are nothing but pop-up notifications of certain events. Some examples are the "Network cable Unplugged", SP2's Security Center Firewall or anti-virus alert messages etc.

You can disable these balloon notifications using these steps:

1. Click Start, Run and type regedit

2. Navigate to the following subkey:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

3. In the right pane, create a DWORD value named EnableBalloonTips

4. Double-click the new entry, and give it a value of 0.

5. Quit Registry Editor.

6. Log off Windows, and then log back on for the changes to take effect.

Using Tweak UI Power toy for Windows XP
Tweak UI helps you automate the above. Download Tweak UI and install it. Launch Tweak UI and click the Taskbar and Start Menu section. In the right-pane, uncheck the option Enable balloon tips.

Wow that is what I am talking about.

Look how easy it is for the user in Windows to mess up the system and potentially the entire network of a company by just setting rules in Entourage. I can not imagine the havoc that would be unleashed sending them into changing registry information just to turn off pop up messages.

Look how easy it is for the user in Windows to mess up the system and potentially the entire network of a company by just setting rules in Entourage. I can not imagine the havoc that would be unleashed sending them into changing registry information just to turn off pop up messages.

You don't sound very confident in my abilities. But compared to the havoc one can wreak from OS X's terminal, the Windows registry is somewhat tame. You can at least back the registry up easily enough before doing surgery. One misplaced command in the command line and you could lose a hard drive.

I think if stuff such as notifications were handled better, you wouldn't be tempted to turn them off. And in a well-designed world, there would be a saner way of dealing with settings like these if you did want to customize the UI. There would be some kind of better and easier to use GUI.

I'm very interested in hearing if Microsoft put much work into fixing the literally hundreds of niggling and obvious annoyances and problems in their UI.

It's been six hours and we haven't heard from thalo. Do you think the dentist killed him or the install of Vista?

Brother thalo may have missed his dentist appointment installing Vista. He needed to get to the bar as soon as possible after the ordeal. It didn't sound to good all the bending the video card to get the RAM in. You can potentially crack the PCI slot the video card is in by bending the card over. I said a prayer for him (and the HP) when I read it.

I have full confidence in your ability to turn stuff on and off. It is people like Markle I worry about. He could get in there and inadvertently launch a nuclear strike on California by accident.

Looks like we are getting the weather now on the east. Up state NY is under literally 12 feet of snow and growing in just a 10 day period. It has been coming down in the metro area for several hours now. It was well below freezing all day long. The storm front might stretch into Thursday before it fully passes.