Vista Vexes

by Jan Fagerholm

June 2007

I've been doing this column for six months now. I'd like to mark this semi-anniversary with a few general observations, as well as a tip.

When I started this column, I didn't imagine that it would be going on this long. The idea was to point out some of the, um, "peculiarities" of the release version of Vista, because I was a tester on Microsoft's beta program. I'd been testing it since the first alphas. (For the non-programmers, software is "alpha" before it is "beta".) As it approached the release date, it became clear that it was going to be released with many peculiarities unresolved, so I thought that it would be most useful to speak of it in terms of what you could expect if you ran out and bought it on the release date.

I am platform agnostic. I don't want to know or even be aware that I am running on Windows, or OS X, or Linux, or Dell, or HP, or . . . you get the idea. The platform is simply supposed to let me do what I want to do, and I don't want a brand identity attached to that. I want process, not product. OS X does a fair job of this, as does Linux. Vista gets in the way of what I want to do too much and reminds me it's Vista, not what I was thinking about. This makes me doubly annoyed at both how the new interface gets in my face (the inconsistent Aero) and how I must adjust to it in so many ways because it won't adjust to me.

Microsoft made many changes in the user interface (read - rearranged where you find things). They had a stated goal of making things easier for the new user. Much of this seems to be in the form of rearranged menus and dialogs, most of which is more nested than before. Much of it has, frankly, been lifted from the Macintosh OS X interface. Much of it is, simply, in-your-face glitz. In every case, it penalizes the experienced user, because you must spend time to learn the new interface.

There is something to be said for making both the software and the hardware that it runs on when it comes to consistency and reliability - Macintosh OS X has the crown. Linux, with its broad platform support epitomizes the other end of the software spectrum: it runs on more hardware that any OS in the Solar System (Linux is in the Mars rovers) and boasts more incompatible applications software that any OS on this planet. Vista runs on a single segment of PCs; the i386 compatible, yet the staggering variety of  "standard" PC hardware assures that it can't possibly recognize all of it.

Microsoft did not succeed in making Vista more Mac-like, despite copying many Mac features. It has, like its predecessors, a distinct design-by-committee flavor which extends into the very way the system works. There are more ways to do the same thing, each method having its own properties and permissions.

Ever notice how the left pane in Windows Explorer works so differently than the right pane? (Example: if you can't delete a folder in the left pane of Explorer, simply navigate the left pane up a level so the folder you want shows up in the right pane, then delete it from there.) This is one of the by-products of feature creep, and its worse than ever in Vista. Oh, yeah, notice how you have to provide an administrator password whenever you want to install an application? Part of the new security scheme, Windows now works just like Linux and OS X. It is possible to change this and make permissions work like the "old" Windows, but you need to jump several hoops to do it.

I'm not the first (or, I'm sure, the last) to mention the Vista Recycle Bin's anomalous behavior: sometimes the icon disappears with just the text title left behind (still works, though), sometimes it displays the wrong icon (shows full after you empty it, etc.), and sometimes it just disappears altogether. Knowing the reason for this (Microsoft's famously poor memory management) isn't sufficient satisfaction to compensate for its behavior.

But at least you can bring it back when it disappears. Right-click on the desktop and wait for the context menu. Select Personalize, and when the window appears, go to the upper left Task Pane and select Change Desktop Icons. That opens a dialog where you can select which icons to display on the desktop. There are checkboxes for which items to display on the desktop. (Miss My Computer? You can bring it back here.) Though the Recycle Bin checkbox may be checked, toggle it: uncheck, then recheck it. Click OK, then close the Personalization windows. That usually fixes it, at least for a while.