Bagel Belly Blog

Vista sucks

I don't think Windows Vista is going to last much longer on my laptop. It's been interesting getting to know the "latest and greatest" operating system out of Redmond, but it's getting in my way on a daily basis now and I really expect the OS to get out of my way and let me do my job.

Here's just a few of the most annoying problems:

• Dual display. I drop the laptop onto the docking station every morning. I have an external display plugged in and sat to the left of the docking station. At least half the time Windows extends my desktop to the right - meaning I have to move the mouse to the right in order to get the pointer to appear on the screen to the left. I have to open the display preferences and change the monitor layout. It only takes 30 seconds, but Vista should remember, damnit.
• RF mouse. I have a wireless mouse and each morning I plug the receiver dongle into my laptop. You guessed it: at least half the time Windows doesn't know what to do with it, requiring me to unplug and plug back in again. I fondly(!) remember Windows XP having peripheral amnesia, most frequently with my Kensington travel mouse. I'd have thought all the years of engineering that went into Vista could have solved this.
• The document could not be found. Opening attachments from within Outlook or Thunderbird, or even just double-clicking them in Explorer will open up the relevant program (e.g. Word, Powerpoint) just fine ... but if my machine is busy at the time, the file itself often fails to load, and is replaced by a stupid error. An OS with short-term memory loss?
• A program needs your permission to continue. Boom, black screen! WTF? I'm used to polite software installers that stay out of your way and do their job. When Windows asks if the installer can run, dropping you into a black screen with a single dialog box, it's abrupt, unpleasant and jarring.
• Too much candy. I'm used to my Macbook, which goes from suspended to running almost as fast as I can get my keys onto the keyboard, and which is asleep between closing the lid and placing it in my bag. Not so with the Vista brick: I've got time to put on my coat, drop my mug off in the kitchen, and read War and Peace between closing the laptop lid and a successful hibernation. I suspect the cause is all that glossy pointlessness they added to the GUI: it means the memory is full of bloat, so there's that much more to page out to disk.

All of these little things add up to one big heap of annoyance. I'm not surprised so many people stick with Windows "for teletubbies" XP or switch to Macs and Linux... It's a shame, because there's some nice touches and on the whole it feels more modern than XP. If only Apple would let us run MacOS on non-Apple hardware ....