Testing out Vista

A cousin bought a new laptop with Windows Vista preloaded, well nice chance to see how it is to use the "notorious" Vista, and why everyone's asking how to install XP instead.

1. When it first came out of the box, booting up took about a minute and logging in to a user's account took another 2 minutes. We were like, what, that's much slower then XP! Well, guess what, the next day when I prepared a stop watch to measure how slow it was, the whole booting + logging in process was done within 50 seconds. Well, that's about on par with a fresh install of XP and my heavily used Mac. Just don't get it why it's really slow at first and speeds up afterwards.

2. Natually, I am using a restricted account as this is not my computer. When I tried to cleanup my desktop by deleting all the shortcuts of preloaded software, I got a message that this requires the consent of the administrator. OK, so the desktop of different users are still related in some way? But wait, why should I need the consent of the administrator just to watch a flash video on the web full screen? That's retarded! (Alright, maybe it is trying to install a new version of Flash player, but a normal computer user wouldn't know as the popup only says it needs the password, never mentioning Flash...)

3. There is a button in the start menu that looks like a power button. Guess what, it only puts the computer to sleep. Same with the power button. It took me an hour to figure out how to change those stupid presets and make those 2 truly turn off the computer.

4. Over all, it's quite stable, not as bad as people are whining about. Or maybe I didn't use it hard enough, like running photoshop?

5. I am constantly reminded that I am in Windows land. As I tried to work out what I should write in a grad school application, "donk!" here comes a popup saying media center update is trying to connect to the internet. "Donk!" comes another, saying whatever scan services in trying to connect to the internet. "Pop!" comes another, saying that the antivirus software is in a dangerous un-updated state, "PLEASE PAY MORE ATTENTION TO THE ANTIVIRUS...". WHAT THE HELL? I am trying to get my work done, why should I pay attention to that freakin' antivirus and all the internet connections? Allow the connections if they are part of the operating system, update the virus definitions on your own, just leave me alone!!! Alright, that's why I removed both firewall and antivirus from my previous XP machine and just be cautious when in the net. Yet just as you escaped firewall/antivirus popup hell, "Pop!" Windows XP is trying to update it self.......

I have gotten accustomed to a smooth work flow on my Mac with much less popup pests. But Apple is also getting annoying with updates. All of the recent updates for my Mac are to solve "compatable issues with new products". Hay I am not buying iPods, nor iPhones, not even the new version of iWork/iLife or Aperature. I see no reasion to update, so stop bothering me!

Microsoft has taken a page from Apple's book on eye candy and stabability. Yet Apple is also taking a page from Microsoft on how to be a pest with update popups. Great. In usability and smoothness, I still prefer Mac OS X, yet the latest version of Windows is catching up and usable. I just hope there won't be a day when both Windows and Macs are equally annoying.