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Day 4 with Vista - starting to see the point
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By: Dale Vile, Managing Director, Freeform Dynamics Published: 13th February 2007 Copyright Freeform Dynamics © 2007 |
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StumbleUponIt has been 4 days now since installing Vista, so how is it going?
Well I said in my last post, "Brave pioneer or mad, reckless fool", that this little adventure was designed to try out the new OS in the real world, so basically, I have just been using it. As it has been pretty busy this week, I have not had time track down the cause of the annoying little errors on boot up I mentioned previously, but then again, I haven’t actually rebooted the machine since Sunday evening, so it hasn’t really been an intrusion.
Looking at this another way, at the time of writing, that’s about 48 hours since the last reboot, which is hardly a record (before all of you Linux guys tell me how many months your PC has been running continuously), but confirms there is at least a basic level of stability there. I probably shouldn’t be impressed by this, but I have also put the machine to sleep a few times and it has woken up without a problem, which wasn’t always the case with Windows XP.
So far so good then.
On the compatibility front, I received some more precise news today from Vodafone on the lack of Vista support I reported. This was specifically from the Marketing Manager for Mobile Connect in the Enterprise Business Unit. Mobile Connect, for those not familiar with it, is the software that drives Vodafone’s 3G/HSDPA data cards and the USB variant that I use. The message I received in the email from Vodafone said:
I was just crawling through Technorati and came across your blog post re Windows Vista—I thought I’d give you a quick update. You’re right that we don’t yet have Vista support for the USB modem, we’re waiting on the drivers to come through from the manufacturer—we’re aiming for mid March.
However, we do have support for the data cards—we’ve just made it available online this morning. Once we’ve got the USB modem up and running the software will be available from: www.vodafone.co.uk/usbmodem
So, it looks like the situation is pretty good for Vodafone subscribers. While I really like the USB modem, the majority of users have the traditional PCMCIA data card, and are clearly now sorted if they choose to migrate to Vista (thanks for the update James).
But what about all these great productivity gains we have heard about from Microsoft?
So far, I haven’t explored Vista in a methodical and proactive manner, but an obvious new feature to try was the desktop search, and I have to say, this really is a productivity booster, particularly for me, who like many others struggle with how best to file things. I gave up on trying to use highly structured folder hierarchies years ago as it is not always obvious where a file or email should live, e.g. should the above message from Vodafone be filed under “Mobile Technology”, “Vodafone”, “Microsoft” or “Windows Vista”?
I have tried all of the desktop search alternatives to work around this, but none of them do it for me, so I have always gone back to Nelson Email Organiser (NEO) to at least deal with the email part of the equation (this has served me well for years).
The embedded indexing and search functionality in Vista, however, changes all this. So far, I have just gone with the default indexing across local folders and my Outlook 2003 repository (which includes all offline folders as well as my “live” inbox). I didn’t have to do anything to set this up, it was just initialised automatically as part of the standard Vista installation process. And it just works, really effectively—and I say this simply on the basis that I receive a LOT of correspondence and am continuously trying to locate “that message” that I know I received earlier in the day, yesterday, last week or whatever. Bottom line is that even after only 2 working days, I would now really miss this part of Vista.
The search related feature I haven’t tried yet is the tagging functionality, which now appears to be an inherent part of the file system. Again, I’ll report back when I put this through its paces, along with network folder searching which I also haven’t checked out properly yet.
The other productivity aid I have naturally fallen into using routinely is the “rotating windows” feature. Rather than pressing the traditional Alt-Tab key combination, you hold down the Windows key instead then press Tab , which brings up a kind of 3D rolodex view of the windows you have open, then rotates by one window at a time with each subsequent Tab key press. At first, I thought this was a bit of a gimmick, but as I type this, I have 14 windows open and it really is a lot quicker to context switch between tasks (something I am doing continuously) when you can actually see a picture of each window as you cycle through. I can almost see the sad shaking of your head as you read this—it’s definitely one of those features you have to try to appreciate the value of.
That’s pretty much it so far, apart, perhaps, to say that my machine appears to be a little less snappy performance wise. It’s not a huge impact, but I would say it is noticeably slower, though I am still not 100% sure I have all of the necessary drivers and utilities installed—something I still have to revisit when I have time.
I am reserving judgement so far on whether the cost and hassle of the upgrade is justified by the productivity gain, but I think we are heading in the right direction. Maybe by the end of the week, the balance will be tipped in favour of upgrading, but I still need a bit more convincing.
Meanwhile, I have received quite a bit of feedback on my original post, so feel free to give me your own comments and experiences if you are currently living at the bleeding edge like me!
Reader Comments
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14th February 2007: 'P. Enguin' said:
For an independent analyst company you seem very Microsoft oriented (i.e. Vista and MSIE7).
Do you intend to do similar blogs on competing OSes like Mac OS-X, Linux (Ubuntu, SuSE, Freespire, Xandros etc.)?
It would make good reading to put desktop Apple/Linux against the new Microsoft counterpart.
Are the Linux/OS-X desktops a viable alternative or is the performance / productivity drain to big?
14th February 2007: 'AppleHead' said:
Sounds like they have nicked a few ideas from OS-X ...
14th February 2007: 'Toby' said:
It appears that you can no longer buy a non-peripheral computing component and get a copy of OEM Windows (unlike like XP).
The new terms state that Vista must be bought with a complete system. Surely this will reduce the uptake.
The full retail price is rather high ...
Thoughts?
14th February 2007: 'Sanjay Kanil' said:
Or haven't you heard? Linux on the desktop is terrible and Mac OS-X is just good packaging. Windows will remain at the heart of the enterprise whilst the competition is so inferior.
14th February 2007: 'Atul' said:
Its distressing to read comments from people who have problems with Windows Vista, but have have not tried Linux for the fears of unknown.
There is an excellent Linux distro called Linux XP (http://www.linux-xp.com) which is easy to learn and looks very much more like Windows XP.
The learning curve is much less steep and there is hardly any loss of functionality (for most of the users).
Please give it a try.
And for those, who make their living by creating Windows softwares, please learn WAMP and migrate to LAMP when the time arises.
And those with learning disabilities, ignore this note.
14th February 2007: 'Terry Jones' said:
Holy **** - you survived through to day 4. I didn't even get through the payment process on Ebuyer.com!
14th February 2007: 'Andy Young' said:
I will probably get a retail copy of Vista and whack it onto a VM (Parallels, VMWare etc).
Only when the OS has settled down (probably SP1) will I put it onto the main system and risk my livelihood.
14th February 2007: 'JoJo' said:
Kapersky? Now that's a company I've not heard about for a very long time. Would be good to see some coverage of consumer / SoHo AV solutions and personal firewalls. Whilst I am sure a large part of the readership are probably from enterprises, I suspect a fair few are just casual surfers :-)
14th February 2007: 'Gaynor Lewis, CTO' said:
Sheesh, 4 days have elapsed and only now you are seeing the point...
14th February 2007: 'Leonard Worthington' said:
I wish I could report as much confidence with my new windows mobile powered smartphone. Windows Mobile 2005 is far from polished and regularly crashes my HTC device.
14th February 2007: 'Dale Vile' said:
Thanks for the initial feedback everyone. To pick up on a couple of points, the Freeform Comment blog is where we let analysts do their own thing (in this case me) - there is a disclaimer on it that it is analyst opinion and impression only and you take it or leave it on that basis. I just thought people might be interested in my personal experiences with Vista, that's all.
We have done some pretty rigorous primary research on Vista, though, which is available through our main site (at no cost), so see http://www.freeformdynamics.com/fullarticle.asp?aid=25. This is a bit long in the tooth now, but watch this space for an update we are soon to report based on a study we are just processing the results of now.
Re whether we are Microsoft biased, as a firm we definitely not, but you can make your own judgement by looking at our site and reviewing the stuff we write about pretty much all of the major vendors, positive and negative. Personally, though, I use MS Windows and Office every day, not because I am an advocate of it, but because it is just the least hassle option. I am therefore biased insofar as I have more implicit knowledge of the MS desktop as a user, but that's all. I am certainly not paid by Microsoft or working off a freebie review copy they bunged us, and hopefully, you can see that I am trying to just report honest boring practicality as an everyday Windows user.
Having said this, in a little while, you'll see some similar personal experience stuff posted by my colleague David Perry, who is a Mac user. He is going to do some comparative stuff with Vista. Let me be clear, though, this will still be his opinion based on subjective experience.
As for Linux, I'm afraid we just don't have time at the moment. I am genuinely interested in how it compares, particularly from a compatibility perspective, but we are blogging these experiences while doing our day jobs and we are, like 90% of the people who consume our research, predominantly a Microsoft desktop site (David is the exception with the Mac). If anyone out there wants to send me objective (not evangelist) comparisons of the Vista/Linux experience in a real world environment though, I would be really happy to bundle them up and publish them.
So, just to reiterate, these are just everyday experiences I am blogging here that I thought people might be interested in.
14th February 2007: 'Mike Haddaway' said:
Performance issues with another, newer copy of Windows? This is why people are switching to Linux. They can no longer afford to keep pouring money away just to have the latest Windows OS. If it was just a license cost then the barrier would be easier to cross, but coupled with new hardware it makes Vista inaccessible for many SoHo and home users.
Whilst I have lost some functionality and have a considerable learning curve, I can with no personal cost deploy Ubuntu 6.10 and get much the same functionality. Even the pretty rotating screen (with Beryl).
15th February 2007: 'Charles' said:
Much is being made about the upgrade requirements and issues with Vista. Personally I see no reason to go through the effort to upgrade from XP to Vista, but when I purchase a new system I will get Vista at that time. With the past Windows versions, in my experience, most did not go to the new Windows version until they purchased a new machine. Likewise, I see no reason why I should change from XP to Linux just because I can not upgrade my system to Vista. Perhaps if I was only using basic internet, email, and office applications, however anything else and Linux starts to show its warts. Actually, XP seems to work just fine and will run most of the new 2007 applications anyway.
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