#174433 - 2007-03-03 12:05 AM
Welcome to Vista?
|
Allen
KiX Supporter
Registered: 2003-04-19
Posts: 4549
Loc: USA
|
Vista has been out to the public for about a month now. It didn't like my current box, and I was already having residential customers buying it and asking me to help, so basically I was forced to buy a new box. I've been using my new box for about 10 days now.
The first word that comes to mind with Vista is "Frustrating". Stupid little things they've changed to make it "Easier" for the dope user, but overly complicated for someone who is up for the task. The User Access Control (UAC) is a joke (I'll explain why later). I swear I think MS is trying to alienate the IT community by not having enough hardware drivers for Vista and making nearly every program have to be re-written to work with it, not to mention almost all new hardware to run the beast. What ever happened to a painless upgrade. Vista is not painless to say the least.
One of the first things I ran into was UAC. Every time you turn around its asking you to approve whether or not you want to fart, blow your nose, blink your eyes or god forbid make a change in the control panel. The first thing I did was disable it. Funny thing is, I found out this has consequences too. Try installing Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0 with the UAC turned off. It won't install properly, although there is a workaround. As it turns out, there are places on the computer that even the Administrators of the box do not have permissions to. This location is where the UAC works. The other unbelievable thing I found is the Administrator account is disabled by default. Why in the world would that be desirable? Lets just say you need to log into the computer using the Recovery Console. How many users are going to know their user id that had administrative rights? The other reason the UAC is a joke is how easy it is to disable. In addition to just being a registry setting (Change requires reboot), there is also a way to fire off a program in what is called "Escalation Mode" (EM). Once EM is given permission, UAC is turned off until that program finishes doing whatever it needs to do. EM doesn't even need to reboot to work. Seriously, how long is going to take the Spy/Ad-ware community to figure that out?
The next thing that annoyed me was the networking. Again, it looks easier, but try to do something advanced, like change the Bindings (BTW, After a good hour of searching, I found the solution). One of the programs I use is called FreePops. Usually you configure it to connect to localhost, but it would not work. When I pinged localhost, I was not getting reply from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx but instead getting IPv6 information. You now have to force Ping to use IPv4 by using the -4 switch. Has IPv6 taken over already and I just missed the sticky note on it? What a pain. I thought I might be able to remove the IPv6 Protocol but under Vista, that is not an option. Then, I thought I might be able to change the binding order... but for the life of me could not find where to change it. Finally, I happened to cross a document saying something about hitting the Alt key while in the Networking Dialog. When you do that, the Missing "File, Edit, View... " menus re-appear, and the Advanced is there as well. FYI, the "Alt" button also works to make the "File,Edit,View.." appear in the Explorer as well. How stupid is that?
I've also noticed the constant hard drive turning, even when I wasn't doing anything. The "Windows Search" was the cause. Disabled.
Anyone else beside me find it really obnoxious that in IE7 you can't reorganize the toolbars? Firefox to the rescue.
Windows Defender. To slow, little value. Disabled.
Vista Basic. I couldn't believe it didn't include the Aero theme. Without Aero, I'm finding it hard to find the point of the upgrade.
Themes / Screensavers. Aside from Aero its about the only theme. They've all but removed any option to change the Screensavers. I found a web site that has the registry hacks, but why should we have to go to that trouble?
Sorry for the rant, but I thought I would pass along my experiences. What do you guys think?
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#174577 - 2007-03-08 06:17 AM
Re: Welcome to Vista?
[Re: Lonkero]
|
Allen
KiX Supporter
Registered: 2003-04-19
Posts: 4549
Loc: USA
|
Well... more fun 
Yesterday I spent a good while trying to figure out why Vista would not add network printers. @serror was returning "Print monitor is unknown". After googling I found the following link, that suggested that you have to actually turn the UAC back on to add the printers.
http://trevinchow.com/blog/2007/01/27/vista-error-the-specified-print-monitor-is-unknown/
For whatever reason this worked.
Then today, I was setting up another Vista computer in the same office, connecting to the same printers. This time however no matter what I did, the printers would not install. Same error, "Print monitor is unknown". Finally found another suggestion, that worked... but just drove me nuts. You have to install the XP drivers locally on the computer (the same drivers that are installed on the server), and then Vista will allow the printer to be added. Now correct me if I'm wrong... but doesn't this defeat the whole purpose of a print server?
Now for the kicker... these were very common HP4250n printers.
GRRR!
{edit: Just found this link with pictures of exactly what what happening:
http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/windows-forces-you-to-use-uac-to-add-a-printer/ }
Edited by Allen (2007-03-08 06:25 AM)
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#174904 - 2007-03-23 01:18 AM
Re: Welcome to Vista?
[Re: Allen]
|
mole
Getting the hang of it
Registered: 2003-01-01
Posts: 77
Loc: Indian Head, Maryland, USA
|
Allen,
I have to agree with your assessment of Vista. I have a Technet copy of ultimate running under GSX and many of the annoyances you found I concur with. There are some tools like the enhancements to taskmanager that are great, but by and large they do not compensate for UAC idiocy and the fancy doodads that add nothing to efficiency when it comes to getting work done. I have the OS configured with "classic" theme and bone stock everything and its a CPU pig. Certainly there is some lost in the fact I'm running on GSX VMware, but the host system is a dual core 3 GHz with 3 GB RAM XP-SP2 to start and carved out of that for just the virtual Vista OS is a single 3 GHz CPU and 1GB RAM. Vista ultimate takes about 7 GB of disk space and idles at 400MB of RAM doing nothing and clocks the CPU to 95% opening pretty tame stuff the control panel. i do not like the navigational changes in the control panel and other advanced system properties either, too much mousing.
I wanted to mention about DOT banning Vista though. Some US federal agencies are horribly slow on the uptake of even long released SPs for their standard PCs. I work at a federal agency (to remain nameless) and manage scientific computing for about 300 Windows workstations amongst other things. The mainstream office PCs are handled by a different internal organization and only last fall they finally included SP2 for XP in their image, waiting all the way up to the 11th hour of support for SP1. They also have still banned MSIE7 and do not allow Firefox or any other alternate browser. My scientific systems had SP2 long ago and Firefox is available for those who want (or need) it for external browsing along with MSIE7 as an optional install most people have accepted to install on their scientific workstations and lab instruments by now.
Ordinarliy I'd be starting to roll test systems of Vista beyond my staff into the general scientific user population by now, but with my experience with Vista so far, I see no advantage to upgrade and only increased support labor. It will remain in test phase when I have the time to poke and prod it for a while. MS had an opportunity to make a big improvement with this OS and they blew it so far as I can see. If I had wanted a Mac, I would have bought one - no thanks.
mole
_________________________
mole
Who is John Galt?
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
|
#174931 - 2007-03-23 09:22 PM
Re: Welcome to Vista?
[Re: DStelz]
|
Allen
KiX Supporter
Registered: 2003-04-19
Posts: 4549
Loc: USA
|
|
|
Top
|
|
|
|
Moderator: Arend_, Allen, Jochen, Radimus, Glenn Barnas, ShaneEP, Ruud van Velsen, Mart
|
0 registered
and 918 anonymous users online.
|
|
|
