I'll just put a few choice tidbits.
Indeed, Aero looks nearly as good as KDE, although it demands about three times the system resources
It runs on GMA950. That's heavy hardware there. No, the only "unreasonable" demand is DX9 class. I think it has something to do with the Games for Windows initiative that they're trying to get everyone up to a minimum level (DX10 doesn't so much add features but that the internals are much more efficient).
The new Vista start menu is not my cup of tea. Instead of an expanding menu, it has a scrolling menu, which makes it more difficult to find the programs you want to launch. It also requires two steps; first you must click on a button to show more programs than IE, and then you have to scroll through the list, which is too long to be taken in at a glance.
Eh? Didn't you have to click Start, then Programs in the Win95-win2k Start menu? BS.
Scrolling is also nice when you have a bajillion items in the start menu like some people do because you can use the scroll wheel. It'll also hold your place until you close the Start Menu.
Finally if he's so pro-Mac and all then why isn't he using the instant search instead? You want to start Remote Desktop Client? Windows => "remote" => [enter]
Far too much space is wasted on links to documents, music, movies, games, etc. I always keep an icon for Windows Explorer on my desktop, and have no trouble finding these things whenever I please. I use the start menu to launch programs that I don't launch often enough to be worth linking on my desktop. I want the start menu to be quick; I don't want to waste time with it, being invited to do things that I can do more easily via other means.
Right, it's there and off to the left. That's somehow getting in the way? Grasping for straws.
(Mercifully, Microsoft has dropped its condescending "My" obsession, and directories are now given grownup names like Computer, Documents, Pictures, and so on. And not a moment too soon.)
Agreed.
Next, there's the Flip-3D feature, which gives you a moving Rolodex view of your open windows. When the one you want comes into view, you stop flipping at that point and it opens for you. Unfortunately, there seems not to be a reverse feature on this little merry-go-round, so if you miss your stop, round you go again. I wonder when I might ever find it useful, as I rarely have enough windows open to make a challenge out of finding whatever I want in the taskbar. I rather think it's there merely because it's "cool". And I'll confess; I've played with it a few times. I've never used it, mind, but I have fiddled. And it is rather cool, actually. And pretty useless.
I find Flip3D absolutely useless; I wish MS copied Expose.
But it's as if he's never used Windows before. Hold Shift to reverse the direction when you press tab. You can also use the mouse wheel.
Here's how mine went. First, my computer is intolerably noisy all of a sudden. The fan on my graphics card (nVidia GeForce 7900) now runs continuously. It's supposed to come on to cool things as needed, but now it never shuts off. Probably, it's a device driver problem. Or possibly, the Aqua Aero desktop uses so much of the card's resources that the fan simply has to run continuously. In any event, I'm not listening to this bloody thing for much longer. When my Vista reviews are finished, I'm going back to a dual-boot Linux/XP system.
Or maybe it's the drivers. Too bad Nvidia has severely dropped the ball.
Likewise with the Creative problem. Creative makes horrid drivers since forever.
Now for another little irritant: immortal craplets. There are two. One is the Vista Security Centre. I have disabled it. I have shut it off in Services. I have tried to shut it off in Msconfig. It won't die. Every time I boot, the craplet pops up and demands to be enabled. But if it really is disabled, then why am I seeing the bloody thing? And there's another immortal craplet: one that tells you that you've "disabled important startup programs", like the Security Centre, for example. I've tried to kill this ridiculous thing too, with no joy.
You can turn it off in the obvious place:Security Center itself. On the left column, "Change the way Security Center Alerts Me". Same way you do it in XP. I guess he's not as much a power user as he thought.
And how about a few decent utilities? Yes, thank you for the DVD burner and thank you for the screenshot tool, and for the very basic photo and movie editing kit. But how about a decent text editor, for God's sake? Would it be so difficult to give it a little of the magic that Kwrite has got? A spell checker perhaps? The ability to clean spaces? A little colour-coded action for us HTML homebrewers, so we can see simple typos, like forgetting to close a tag? Is that too much to ask?
Trap. If MS had included a mini-Word, let the litigations begin.
And how about a little encryption software? For email, and for individual files. Oh, Bitlocker is fine, but there are files one doesn't want decrypted whenever the volume they're on is mounted. Is that too much to ask?
Does this guy really work with Windows? Has he not heard of NTFS encryption? Which works per file? Which was present for a LONG time.
And there's more. Little things, really. Firefox is unable to make itself the default browser
Try upgrading to 2.0. It was a known bug in Firefox and they've fixed it.
