I have just completed my first full week after moving from Windows Vista to Windows XP.
Before I get to long into this, perhaps I should give some back-story. I’ve always been on the cutting edge technology, in fact I stood in line to by a copy of Windows 95 at midnight after it went on sale back in the fall of 1995, and I have been an early adopter of new software ever since.
Because I am a technology elitist, I understand that “early adopters” often have “issues”. In my time I have had issues, though not as many as I think have been hyped in the media (both new media and old media). Each time I upgrade I just expect there to be some small issues with the software, but more importantly I also expect there needs to be some time for personal retraining. I found that often people will blame the software for faults which are more appropriately cased by their own lack of knowledge. So, with each new upgrade I always give myself time to get past any personal prejedust or ignorance so as to pass a more informed judgment of the software or hardware.
I ran Windows Vista on my Primary Desktop for over a year. When I first installed it I, like most, was amazed by the visual effects of the user interface (Aero). I had read enough about Vista before hand to know that I needed a higher end video card, and additional ram, to make the first impression a good one. Having been through the last two major upgrades of the user interface in Windows, 3.11 to 95, and 2000 to XP, I had come to expect great things from the UI, and Vista did not disappoint. While I never used the “rolodex” task switching feature (that was 100% hype in my opinion), I was pleased by the format of the UI, the new start menu and the overall layout of the tool bars.
However, I have to admit that the honeymoon with Vista was short. While the UI was pleasant, I found nothing about it which I could justify the cost of the additional Video Card power to my clients. Vista of course had a non-Aero UI which worked pretty much the same, and so the “eye-candy” of Aero was simply unneeded. Aside from Aero elements, there also seemed to me to be a great deal of Video mode issues. In the first few months with Vista I would get these bizarre “Windows has lowered your Video Mode” messages. I traced most of these issues back to older versions of the Java runtime environment, but I would still get those messages from time to time right up until I stop using Vista. The UI was nice, but much like a gilded Victorian house, it may look incredible, but it is most uncomfortable to live in.
I can say that I did not have any single “deal killer” issue with Vista. It was more like a being killed by 1,000 little cuts, each not of great concern but combined proved both painful and lethal. Somewhat like a marriage that has reached its end, there were many things that caused the devoice, but here is what I put into the papers.
- Unreconsilabale Differences. Vista and I could not see eye-to-eye on how to handle Files. In Vista there is an infinite number of ways to “view” the contents of a folder. Filename, Size, Dates, Descriptions, etc, etc, are all columns which can be added to a Folder View, and ordered, arranged, and sorted however you would like. BUT Vista and I could never seem to agree on a Folder View. As a developer I like to pile all the files I have for a project into a single folder for each client. Words Docs with meeting notes, Excel Docs with budgets, Bits of code in text files of different extensions, HTML, and anything else I might need for a project. This is how I work. I would set up a folder, start dropping files into it and the moment I dropped in a file of a specific type, Vista would change the Folder View on me the next time I opened it. Vista seemed to give NO weight to the number of files of any time. So I would have a folder full of 200+ PHP files, but drop in a single JPEG and now my folder view has changed, giving me things like “date taken” and “Rating” as columns rather than my “date modified” which is what I use most.
I am sure that there is some logic in how Vista selects for me the file views. I am equally sure that someone from Microsoft could explain it to me. But I’m not sure that I wouldn’t slap them at the end of the explanation.
- Adultery. Yes there was another Woman, my MacBook and OS 10.5. No, I’m not going to compare and contrast OS X and Windows Anything. I will admit that while I was having problems with Vista, I ran to the arms of my MacBook for comfort. I won’t say it was a deciding factor in going back to XP, after all I went back to XP and not a Mac Desktop. XP also seemed to play better over the network with my MacBook than Vista. Perhaps Vista is just a jealous lover. She seems modern in her outward appearance, but still is still very traditional and monogamous on the inside. I still have my MacBook now that I’m back with XP, I love them both, and neither is jealous of the other. They know my heart. (btw my MacBook’s is quite the little freak, she bats for both teams thanks to Parrells.)
- Mental Suffering an Abuse, Battery. I’m a right clicker. My first instinct when I’m not sure what to do is to right click on it. I’ve tried this in my normal life, but pecking on things with the middle finger of my right hand does not seem to have much effect. I’m also a network user. At TCG we have over 5 TB (Tetra Bytes) of storage scattered around the empire. Some of these files are big ones 100+ GB. When I would go to a file on the network in Vista and right client on that file (out of habit mostly), all hell would break lose. I’m not sure of the technical reason, but it would seem that Vista needs to ether go through a files completely or “copy” that file locally before it will pass judgment on what I can do with a right click.
The end result would be that when I would absent mindedly right click on a file, Explorer would go into partial lockdown waiting for whatever it needs to do. Of course on a small file over the network this was ok, but with a 20GB backup file on a slow link VPN link it is murder. I basically have to restart the machine if I want it to stop. Worse than the “absent minded click” was the deliberate right-click. On those big network files, Vista would be doing it thing, but because Vista remembers your mouse clicks, after right clicking on a file I could do NOTHING else until the context menu shows up. This is because if I had clicked elsewhere on the screen, then the moment the menu shows up, it goes away, and Vista does not cache such data, so if I right click again, I’m forced to wait the additional time all over.
Copying the large files over my network also suffered under Vista. I have no data to support this except my “Coffee” test. I have to copy 2 or 3 Gig files on a normal bases from my desktop to a server. There is a 802.11g wifi link in this chain so the maximum bandwidth in which I could copy these file is 56MBits less the WPA overhead. In XP I could start the transfer, and it be done when I come back from refilling my coffee cup, in Vista the same transfer has a little while left after I get back with my fresh cup. I’ve believe this to be not just a fixed additional time, but a sliding scale. Larger Files seems slower, the bigger the file, the slower the transfer.
For all of these reasons and more (I got never get Kimboot to work on Vista), on Friday of last week I switched back to XP. I felt, and still feel, like somewhat of a failure. I gave Vista a year of my life, I tried to work it out, but the frustrations just kept rising. There had been a lot of hype about people “Upgrading to XP”, and I did not want to fall into the trap of being either a “fan boy” or a “hater”.
I had hoped that Vista SP1 would address some of these things, but while it did speed up the network issues, it didn’t do it fast enough to complete with XP.
So how has the week been? I think that a good test of any Software is to see what you miss. After a week with XP, the jury is still out. I miss the Start Menu Search Bar. I found myself using it to find programs rather than digging through the menus. The Start Menu itself was also very handily laid out. I think I miss that, but not enough to put up with the rest.
Once reason the jury is still out is the issues of “need to reinstall a program”. Of course after you’ve been using an OS for a year, you have everything you need installed on it. After switching OSes, you always have to reinstall software. I find that it is easier to reinstall software as I need it rather than just pile on software right from the start. So while I feel a minor a nuisance, I know that it is always that way.
In the end I’m going to give is “side-grade” a month. If I do not feel overtly completed to switch back to Vista, I’m going to just keep on using XP. I will write again on the topic after I have had some time to process it.
