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Vista, the Final Days

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<n>This article was originally published on the <a href="http://encodo.com/en/view_article.php?id=109"><b>Encodo Blogs</b></a>. Browse on over to see more!</n> <hr> <h>Vista under the Christmas tree</h> If you're planning to buy a computer this holiday season---and you don't opt for the shiny goodness of an iMac or iBook---then you'll probably be getting Windows Vista. Windows Vista is very shiny and pretty and probably sounds like a great alternative to its predecessor, Windows XP. However, the minor improvements to the file explorer and organization (and major ones to look-and-feel) are far outweighed by both hardware <i>and</i> software compatibility problems as well as a draconian approach to security. All in all, you spend far more of your precious time (and nerves) coddling the system rather than doing actual work. Windows Vista is not a worthwhile upgrade to Windows XP for any user---advanced or novice---and should be avoided if at all possible. Most vendors now offer Windows XP as a drop-in replacement when buying a new computer, with an option to upgrade to Windows Vista when the first service pack is available. <h>What Happened?</h> <n>All observations are based on a single-user trial of Windows Vista installed for 9 months; final impressions are based on the version of Vista available in the middle of November, 2007.</n> In February, Microsoft released Windows Vista, the long-awaited successor to Windows XP. Here at Encodo, we installed it on one developer machine<fn> for several reasons: <ol> To determine whether our products run on Vista and to fix any problems that cropped up. To test over a longer time period whether Vista truly offered advantages over Windows XP in terms of efficiency. Because "Aero Glass", the new user interface for Vista, looked really, really cool. </ol> The initial -- very positive -- impressions are documented thoroughly in <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=1543">First Days with Microsoft Vista</a> (parts <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=1543">I</a> and <a href="{app}view_article.php?id=1549">II</a>). After nearly 9 months of testing, the verdict is in: <bq>Avoid Windows Vista until further notice.</bq> And we're not the only ones; Vista recently made #10 in the list of <a href="http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39029552,49293700,00.htm" source="CNet-UK">Top ten terrible tech products</a>. We, too, have capitulated and gone back to Windows XP installations for all desktop computers. Vista survives only inside a <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx">Virtual PC</a> image, which we installed for testing purposes only.<fn> <h>The breakdown</h> Though we don't recommend Vista for anyone, we especially don't recommend it as the primary operating system for developers<fn>. Among the many reasons for our decisions are the following major ones: <dl dt_class="field"> Speed Vista is noticeably slower than Windows XP in every way. Period. It is especially noticeable in something so banal as copying or deleting files. When you see Vista open a progress window to indicate that is <iq>Calculating time remaining...</iq> to delete a single 4Kb file, you figure it's a fluke; the tenth time it happens that day, it just makes you want to cry. Security Vista ships by default with a brand-spanking-new security system designed to make viruses, trojans and other nasties a thing of the past. It's called User Account Control (UAC) and involves you approving everything that happens on your computer. In practice, this means that every time you start an installer, you have to tell Vista that you <i>did</i> actually start that program and that, yes, you <i>would</i> like to actually run it. Get used to your screen going black and asking you that question. A lot. Software Compatibility Not only is the security bothersome and inefficient<fn>, but many applications have no idea how to deal with it. One of the main advantages of Vista was that one was supposed to be able to work as a non-administrative user so that it was impossible to issue system-altering commands by mistake---or for an application to do so maliciously. Even now, after years in beta and 9 months on the market, many applications (and most installations) don't properly support this mode of operation, sometimes installing non-functioning applications to the wrong locations or refusing to install at all. Though the latest Microsoft Office runs just fine for the average user, Microsoft's own venerated Visual Studio does not run in non-administrative mode on Vista.<fn> Hardware Compatibility Though others have more thoroughly documented hardware woes, our experience was that something as simple as connecting to a network printer---which Windows XP accomplishes in no time at all---turned out to be impossible for Vista. The much-vaunted "Sleep" mode never worked on this relatively standard hardware (see first footnote), leading to incredibly long reboots after which Vista scolded you for not shutting down properly. </dl> Windows XP, for all its faults, has achieved a relatively stable release after many years in the field and is a much better choice for any user. Users that have their hearts set on the upgraded Vista look-and-feel, "Aero Glass", should wait for until the first service pack has been out for a few months---which should be around the middle of next year. Developers that have their hearts set on Vista should forget it: Vista is not ready for use as a developer operating system and offers no advantages in that regard over Windows XP. <hr> <ft>Just to set the record straight, Vista was installed on a newly purchased machine in Februrary: a dual-core 2GHz processor with a modern graphics card (which Vista itself indicates is adequate for it) as well as 2 GB of RAM and a 7200RPM hard drive---basically upper-middle of the hardware requirements for Vista.</ft> <ft>And which weighs in at a frightening 10.5GB with <i>no applications installed</i>.</ft> <ft>As already indicated, we do agree that it's essential to test software on all platforms and have Windows Vista images with which to do testing---we just don't use it for development.</ft> <ft>Not only your efficiency in that you're constantly "approving" commands you just issued, but that there are suspicions that Vista's new security concept accounts for many of the performance problems mentioned in the previous point.</ft> <ft>Visual Studio is a development tool for building Windows applications and web sites in many different languages. Postgresql, a popular open-source database, was not even capable of installing on Vista until the most recent beta came out a few weeks ago. Even tools like <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/specsharp/">spec#</a>---again, produced by <i>Microsoft itself</i>---recommend that users <iq>try disabling the user account controls</iq> (effectively removing all protection) if they can't install.</ft>