Like the title? Well it’s the approximate time microsoft has… somewhat devoted to the next generation of Windows. Vista, it’s in it’s last year yet it still seems so far away, it has gone from the expected best innovation to windows ever, to something on par with the release of Windows 95, to something on par with the release of Windows ME… THEN back to something on par with the release of Windows 95, right now it is currently on par with XP when it shipped in the “Where the hell has everything moved to? I just want to read my email!” level of confusion for the poor home users, I thought I might make a little to explain what I mean.

There have been many bumps in the ‘road to longhorn’ for microsoft, first a full SQL-based filesystem had to be re-thought into NTFS with an SQL-based searching system integrated because it was simply just too hard (and come to think of it, a bit ridiculous), the implementation of which slowed the early Windows XP-based Longhorn builds so badly that it was a long and painful struggle just to get it turned off, this went on for a while until shortly after Windows Server 2003 was released, Microsoft decided they had to rewrite the abomination from scratch using Windows Server 2003 as a base, this naturally delayed Vista for quite some time while they slowly were able to get it back to the level at which it had been previous. Features were added, then stripped out, then changed and added back in (like the sidebar), while new exciting ways of making it almost impossible for ‘mum and dad users’ to know what the hell is going on, as is the standard when microsoft update their products.

So Beta 2, not finished by far in the bugs/dodginess department, but not magically going to alter in a massive way until release either, first I must talk of the downloading experience, as many may have heard, Micorsoft claim Vista Beta 2 was the biggest download of all time (this is pure BANDWIDTH USE, ie lots of people at one time, not how many times ICQ 99a has been downloaded these past 7 years), I was able to download before I got my cd key, mainly due to the fact that when i tried to get it the first time it claimed I had been given both my keys and wasn’t allowed any more, which was sorted later, I first tried to download using the download manager, but that was no use as it was about as stable as a one-legged drunken pirate, so I switched to using the direct link in a 3rd party downloader, (don’t try downloading the x64 build in your browser, it won’t download properly and apparently the x86 doesn’t either), while i switched through 2 different akamai mirrors, the main one being telstra’s and like usual, iinet’s wasn’t of much use most of the time so I now am minus approx. 3 gigs of quota, not including what I lost from trying to download using the download manager.

After all was downloaded and checked out, I quickly backed up and restarted with the Vista x64 disc in my drive, everything went smoothly though slowly throughout setup, though I did delete my XP x64 partition which contained the boot files for my Windows 2000 installation on the second partition, which I will have to fix up at a later date as I use it to play games. In the end after restarting a few times Vista was up and running and graphically pleasing, at first notice most of my devices were recognised and working fine, the only one that wasn’t was my onboard sound, which after the first run of windows Update worked fine. I then installed the latest nVidia drivers which sped up response times in Aero greatly, but didn’t help much when it came to graphically demanding tasks such as the ‘Aurora’ graphics which appear on copying files and happens to be a very bad quality screensaver as well.

After my system was running and configured properly, I noticed my gigabit ethernet connection wasn’t connected properly, as it’s on a separate network to my internet and there is no DHCP, after going through a few pages and wrestling with the network manager I was able to get it configured manually. File and printer sharing was not as easy, I noticed you weren’t allowed to share just anything if you just wanted to do simple file sharing like in XP and it would only let you share a drive if you used the classic file sharing, though a simple permissions change to allow everyone access to everything meant it was more or less the same thing anyway. I don’t know if it is the network drivers which Vista insists is slowing down my system by using a windows 2000 system file (how that’s possible on an x64 OS I have no clue) but everything I do on the internet tends to be somewhat slower than usual, browsing webpages can be slow at times and sometimes I would have to restart for Internet Explorer to load a certain web site for me, this though for me is a minor inconvenience and considering Nvidia’s drivers for Vista and even simply for an nForce 3 based motherboard like mine on an x64 Windows ARE NON-EXISTANT except for of course the drivers supplied by microsoft, I would say I have it good.

Other annoyances:

Why does the Disk Defragmenter have to be so secretive? Telling me it is possibly going to take a few minutes up to a few hours is not informative at all Microsoft.Why would I want by default my files grouped by type? It hasn’t been like this…. ever, people are used to looking for a file regardless of what it is alphabetically, this doesn’t include searching however, which is another trainwreck alltogether since Windows XP and that damn dog.

The icon for a user has a graphic similar to the blob guys from MSN, except this is much more life-like, if you count the de-facing of people life-like. My point? I don’t need a point, just WTF? Put a face on the poor guys.

Windows Media Player is a 64 bit program in the 64 bit version now, that’s great, however how many codec makers have come out with 64 bit codecs? I have 90% of divx/xvid files working barely by installing every x64 codec I know, how about adding a simple shortcut… to the 32 bit WMP that just happens to be hiding in the Program Files (x86) folder, something however stops a few codecs from my favourite codec pack the defilerpak from working however, but atleast with the 32 bit media player my videos don’t get pixellated to hell when i fullscreen them (probably something to do with the xvid codec, it was compiled for encoding and wasn’t tested on a 64bit player).

Seems time and date settings don’t seem to stick when you first install, it was 2PM today when I installed according to windows and it syncronised with windows time fine as well, yet by my watch and the rest of this state, it was 11PM the night before, why did Windows have to change my system clock? It runs fine by itself.

Perhaps while making a nice happy people GUI and more useless programs like Windows Photo Gallery, perhaps it would be best to make a GUI for the bootloader that does nothing new, yet has to have a database instead of a simple text file to store the settings along with a hard to find command line program that’s supposed to be able to let you change it with nice easy instructions that perhaps your rocket scientist friend might be able to decode for you, if you happened to know someone like that.

I’m going to stop there and i’ll tell you why, this might have some bad things about it, but it has far more better things:

It’s fancy looking, I find myself thinking of where that “Don’t be scared, I’m just a clown” look that windows had went. It’s as customisable as I would like, but not too much as to make me spend hours on what kind of highlights I would like my start menu down state to have.

It lets me put “Meow” in my sidebar clock

I never have to use my brain to add numbers together again, I have a tiny calculator with buttons that i can hardly navigate between.

Windows Security now doesn’t alert me if I have things turned off, however wanted a tradeoff where it had to stay in the taskbar anyway

MASSIVE PIXELLATED ICONS FROM WINDOWS 95

The ability to bring me back to using Internet Explorer and it’s bastardised Mail friend Windows Mail, aka Outlook Express, aka Microsoft Mail, remember Frontpage Express?

For the first time, Windows update no longer needs Internet Explorer to update Windows, what does that mean? This time when Windows update fucks up, it won’t be Internet Explorer’s fault, it will be the Windows Update Program’s fault.

Thanks, I needed to know when I had my mouse pointer over an icon on the windows desktop, that’s so handy, thanks again for your innovation Microsoft, no that’s ok, I don’t need a stable OS, just put shit like that in it instead.

Just when I thought I knew where everything was, I now have to learn again.

Mahjongg! Chess! Inkball….. Purple Place???

Reminding me what I just did and what I want to do in a way that would make Clippy proud.

Being told my computer is a 2 rating at best, as to give me reason to splurge on my credit card.

This article is not finished, but wordpress just finished uploading to my webserver, so I’ll continue later.

Related posts:

1. Windows Vista SP2 release before Windows 7
2. Windows x64 plagued with BS news stories
3. Using Symbolic Links in Vista/Windows 7 for Google Chrome User Data
4. Windows Vista Ultimate Extras
5. Dvico FusionHDTV DVB-T Lite and Vista’s Media Center