Windows Vista – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

According to the Online version of Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word Vista means:

1: a distant view through or along an avenue or opening, or
2: an extensive mental view (as over a stretch of time or a series of events)

With its big release last month, it’s very likely that we’ve all heard at least something about Microsoft’s new operating system. This blog post is going to be about The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Windows Vista.

Now this is just my opinion, based on my experience with this operating system over the past week, and I promise it won’t contain a bunch of technical terms that none of us care about anyway.

Now, I believe that the Redmond cronies would like us to believe that definition number two from above is the correct definition for their product. In my opinion they’re wrong. I think definition number one fits much better. The Vista or “View” that Redmond actually sees is the $ signs through the narrow view provided.

The Good
Let’s start with the good. For me, this is going to be a very short list. One of the best things this operating system has to offer is the fast install time. I think it took me about 20 minutes to install this and get on the Internet. Luckily, there’s not seventy five security updates as of yet. The other thing that was nice was the fact that even though they changed the entire look, you can still make it run like the old classic Windows. Unfortunately, that’s just about all I liked about it.

The Bad
Being a System Administrator and having my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certificate, I would like to think that I know a few things about computers and the way Windows works. With Vista I found myself trying to find certain items or settings that were no longer where I am used to. They must be catering to new users that have never used Windows before.

And the Ugly
I know Microsoft prides themselves with the fact that Vista is the most secure system ever, but prompting me every 30 seconds on whether I want to do something is a little ridiculous. Are you sure you want to do this? Are you really, really sure? How about now? At least with most firewalls out there you can change settings to always allow certain events to happen. So, once you find your programs and you have given the OK to run them, again, you start to feel pretty good about your new purchase.

But wait, what’s this, the Blue Screen Of Death, on my new operating system. Surely you must be kidding, or maybe this is the Vista that Microsoft is talking about. At least the memory dump was faster than it was in the past. Based on the error code, I have some faulty hardware. Since this is my test box and I had been running Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP before this without error, I figured it is probably just a fluke. Nope, it happened every couple of hours whether I had programs running or not.

Being the troubleshooter I am, I was able to fix the problem in just a few short hours. I am happy to say that my Windows XP Pro with SP2 is now running just fine.