First off, let’s talk about the good. The new Start applications menu is much improved. No longer do you deal with unsightly and endless lists of programs – everything is now neatly organized in a list, and can be accessed in seconds through a helpful quasi-run/search bar placed in the menu itself.
The new Windows Explorer is also much improved. The address bar is now a contextual/text-entry hybrid. It’s hard to explain how this is beneficial – think of it as a compact equivalent of Apple’s file browser. Other improvements are graphical in nature – the new progress bar is animated, which means that even when your important render is stalled at 50%, you can see that the program isn’t frozen.
So there’s good. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of bad, which goes back to very basic design flaws. The most notable of these is the lack of a root account on the computer (Administrator != root.) The biggest problem with Windows has always been that the main account that users log on to is an Administrator account. This makes installing applications and changing needed system files painless, but at the same time it makes the system very susceptible to malware.
So what Microsoft has done is to constrict priviledges and user permissions for the Administrator accounts. Furthermore, there’s the UAC, which is supposed to be there to act as a kind of sudo-equivalent for Windows. For regular (non-root) users, the idea is similar to Ubuntu: when you run into priviledge issues, the UAC pops up, and asks you to enter administrator credentials. If you do, you can now install applications, drivers, or whatnot. When you’re already logged in as an Admin, however, the UAC still pops up – but because you’re already logged in as an admin, alls it does is present you with an “okay” button to do this admin-thing you’re doing. It’s really annoying, because it keeps popping up, but actually serves no purpose.
But back to the permission issues. I’ve now run across two situations where there were files I could not delete because of insufficient permissions. The first was when Cygwin created files under another user on my K:\ drive. That was a mistake – but because I wasn’t the owner of the file, I couldn’t erase it. I couldn’t chmod it, or do anything. I was logged in as admin, I’m supposed to have access to everything. But no. That’s not the case. The second time where a file was undeletable was because I didn’t have permission to access the destination folder (the Recycle Bin.) I could move the file into a new folder I created, and anywhere else on the computer – just not the Recycle Bin.
So here you have the UAC which does nothing to solve the issue with 90% of installs out there, where people log in as adminsitrators. To seemingly deal with that, they then restrict the admin account itself. Absolutely stupid design decision. If they wanted that kind of security, they should of used the Ubuntu approach: create an admin account, but make regular users sign up with regular user permissions.
Then there’s the whole issue of graphics, and here you can see where the Apple philosophy differs from Microsoft’s. With Apple, things are functionally elegant. That means that all the eye candy in Apple is unobtrusive, and really serves to enhance the experience in a functional way. With Microsoft, the graphics are there to make the OS look good. It is not about functionality. As such, you end up with a look which appears to have been targeting the same kind of audience that likes to show off their uber computer case with blue flashing LEDs. This is very much reminiscent of the comments directed at WindowsXP when it first came out, about its “Fisher-Price” appearance. It is not a minimalistic approach.
The only alternative to the obtrusive theme is a complete lack thereof – and a switch to the “Classic” mode, which is supposed to reassemble how Win9x looked. However, poor attention to this feature means that it’s probably the ugliest UI I have ever had to deal with. It is much less appealing than, say, what Windows98 actually looked like. So your lone choices are either one big-teen-oriented theme, or a hideous classic mode.
You also have the new 3D task switcher, which to be honest, is only there to again – look cool. There’s no reason to use this over say, Alt-Tab. This is different than Apple’s 3D task switcher which was useful – it let you see ALL windows at the same time on the desktop. I can’t tell you how HUGE that is a time-saver when you’re going back and forth between Final Cut Pro and apps like Photoshop and iTunes.
Stability issues are also rampant. Microsoft’s own applications that are bundled with Vista will crash often, and for no apparent reason. For instance, I was in the middle of listening to a song in Windows Media Center. For no reason at all, it just crashed. In the middle of the MP3.
So all and all, I cannot recommend the upgrade to Vista at this time. If anything, it’s the best free advertisement Apple has ever received.