A buddy has Vista and I played around with it for a couple of hours. It was build 53??. Some thoughts:
1) it sure looks nicer than XP out of the box. The default system font is nice. Mac like min/max/close effects. When you hover an icon in the taskbar, it shows you a mini screenshot. I still like the mac's icon zoom better.
2) Better security == more annoying nags? Every time you click on something, it asks if you want to allow it. Open Themes. "Do you want to allow this program to run ..... publisher: Microsoft Corp." Hello, don't you recognize your own kind? Open Network. "Do you want to allow... ". Of course I'm running as Administrator too.
3) They're trying hard to abstract the file system. You don't have drives and folders any more. Just "places", My pictures, My video, My music. The folder tree is gone and I couldn't figure out how to turn it on.
4) Why is it that in every version of Windows, they hide Windows Explorer in a sub sub menu? I mean, IE, OE, MSN and who knows what else are right there in your face, but WE you have to dig for and pull out of the Accessories sub menu.
5) The start menu now doesn't expand out to the right like it used to. You just see one menu/sub menu at a time. I.e., when you click All programs, it replaces the start menu with all programs menu, then when you click Accesories, it replaces it with that menu. To go back , you have to click Back. It's just like XBox on your PC!! I couldn't find a way to make it behave like the XP start menu.
6) I don't know how you search for a file. When I tried to do a search, I think it actually searched the content of every single file on your drive. Had to kill it.
7) They sure go through great length to hide things from you. Example: in XP, most of display related stuff are in one dialog with multiple tabs (theme, appearance, resolution, etc). Now they're all separated into different dialogs. I guess tabs confuse the newbies.
8) The DSL went out briefly and it didn't recover automaticallyl. There was no repair option on the ethernet device. I had to run diagnose ("Do you want to allow this program") then say yes repair the connection.
9) For some reason, I couldn't play any video, not even the sample that came with it. Sounds but no pics.
The system ran pretty well and snappy for a beta. No crsashes. Of course he has a very good system (Opty 165, 2G ram, 7800GT).
Looks good, but I can't say I like the UI better. Too often I feel like I'm using Windows for Dummies and it's getting into my way. As for what's underneath, I didn't use it enough to tell.
Edit: one very good thing I forgot to mention: Windows now has better, true DPI scaling. This is important not just for people w/ some visual deficit like me but anyone with a high res LCD monitor and finds text and icons a little too small to read comfortably. You no longer have to run the monitor at a lower resolution.
Another good thing is you no longer have to reboot after updating video driver, since I guess it's now running in the user ring, not kernel. But oddly, you have to reboot after changing DPI.
I figured out the quick (filter) search function. It does work as expected. It's just really slow b/c it's indexing.
I'm sure it'll get better. All in all, I have to say "good" but also I have to wonder what's taking them so long. I didn't see anything really big, other than the cooler GUI.
1) it sure looks nicer than XP out of the box. The default system font is nice. Mac like min/max/close effects. When you hover an icon in the taskbar, it shows you a mini screenshot. I still like the mac's icon zoom better.
2) Better security == more annoying nags? Every time you click on something, it asks if you want to allow it. Open Themes. "Do you want to allow this program to run ..... publisher: Microsoft Corp." Hello, don't you recognize your own kind? Open Network. "Do you want to allow... ". Of course I'm running as Administrator too.
3) They're trying hard to abstract the file system. You don't have drives and folders any more. Just "places", My pictures, My video, My music. The folder tree is gone and I couldn't figure out how to turn it on.
4) Why is it that in every version of Windows, they hide Windows Explorer in a sub sub menu? I mean, IE, OE, MSN and who knows what else are right there in your face, but WE you have to dig for and pull out of the Accessories sub menu.
5) The start menu now doesn't expand out to the right like it used to. You just see one menu/sub menu at a time. I.e., when you click All programs, it replaces the start menu with all programs menu, then when you click Accesories, it replaces it with that menu. To go back , you have to click Back. It's just like XBox on your PC!! I couldn't find a way to make it behave like the XP start menu.
6) I don't know how you search for a file. When I tried to do a search, I think it actually searched the content of every single file on your drive. Had to kill it.
7) They sure go through great length to hide things from you. Example: in XP, most of display related stuff are in one dialog with multiple tabs (theme, appearance, resolution, etc). Now they're all separated into different dialogs. I guess tabs confuse the newbies.
8) The DSL went out briefly and it didn't recover automaticallyl. There was no repair option on the ethernet device. I had to run diagnose ("Do you want to allow this program") then say yes repair the connection.
9) For some reason, I couldn't play any video, not even the sample that came with it. Sounds but no pics.
The system ran pretty well and snappy for a beta. No crsashes. Of course he has a very good system (Opty 165, 2G ram, 7800GT).
Looks good, but I can't say I like the UI better. Too often I feel like I'm using Windows for Dummies and it's getting into my way. As for what's underneath, I didn't use it enough to tell.
Edit: one very good thing I forgot to mention: Windows now has better, true DPI scaling. This is important not just for people w/ some visual deficit like me but anyone with a high res LCD monitor and finds text and icons a little too small to read comfortably. You no longer have to run the monitor at a lower resolution.
Another good thing is you no longer have to reboot after updating video driver, since I guess it's now running in the user ring, not kernel. But oddly, you have to reboot after changing DPI.
I figured out the quick (filter) search function. It does work as expected. It's just really slow b/c it's indexing.
I'm sure it'll get better. All in all, I have to say "good" but also I have to wonder what's taking them so long. I didn't see anything really big, other than the cooler GUI.
