Danbury Area Computer Society

Looking for the Wow

by Richard Corzo

Last month (Preparing for the Wow), I described how I installed Windows Vista in a dual boot configuration with Windows XP in a separate partition, so I could safely check out Windows Vista without committing to an upgrade from which I couldn't turn back.

Windows Vista boots quickly and it's immediately apparent that a lot has changed in the long period since Windows XP first appeared. It's still recognizably Windows but everything has been given at minimum a face lift. To save space on the task bar the Start button has lost its text label and is reduced to a Windows logo. The Start menu saves horizontal space by not cascading to the right. Hovering or clicking on All Programs replaces the initial menu column with the contents of the All Programs menu. Clicking on any programs folder such as Accessories or Games expands the contents in line underneath the folder name.

There is a search bar at the bottom of the menu column that is one of the entries to Vista's new integrated desktop search. Typing in the first few letters of a program will narrow the search results, so you don't actually have to navigate to it in the Start menu. You will also see other search results besides program names, whether they be files, favorites, or e-mail communications.

I have Windows Home Premium with a sufficiently powerful graphics card so I could see the new Windows Aero Glass interface and not just Aero Basic. Surrounding most windows is a nearly transparent glass edge that allows you to see what's behind. If you're not running your flat panel display at its native resolution, the glass will seem blurry or frosted. If you hover over an item in the task bar, a large thumbnail of the program or folder will appear. Alt + Tab still works, but pressing Windows key + Tab brings up the Flip 3D view of all your open windows, and you can keep pressing Tab to bring the desired window in front. The Aero Glass interface, if your machine can support it, is one of the things that give Windows Vista a wow factor.

Windows Sidebar is a new feature that allows you to have little gadgets in a column on the side of your desktop. This is one reason you'll want a widescreen display in Windows Vista. You can view selected stock prices, the weather, a mini slide show, and so on. There's also a gadget for displaying RSS feed headlines, but this one illustrates one of the limitations of the sidebar. The column width for displaying gadgets in the sidebar is a fixed width, and it's really too narrow to display enough of an RSS feed headline to decipher it. You can click on a partial headline to show the RSS headline with its description, but then that's too narrow to see the full description without scrolling. If you have too many gadgets to fit in one column, you can page to see more gadgets, but that kind of defeats the advantage of always having gadgets visible. But if you can limit yourself to just a few gadgets, it's a nice idea. You can download additional gadgets. I particularly like Multi Meter(D) which shows how busy each individual core is on a dual-core processor, along with RAM usage.

Windows Explorer, that is, the file explorer and not Internet Explorer, has been revamped. Like many of Vista's new programs, the traditional menu bar is gone, but there is a button or tool bar underneath the address bar to accomplish what you need. The address bar is new, showing the context of how deep you are into the folder hierarchy. You can click on any intermediate location in the address bar to go directly there, or you can click on the little triangle after each folder in the path to show a list of folders underneath so that you can quickly navigate somewhere else. Vista's built-in desktop search bar is just to the right of the address bar. Search results here are limited to the open folder and to its sub folders. I have to say that this is one area where I do like the changes in Vista, although others may find themselves a bit disoriented.

The My Documents folder has been reorganized. It's called Documents and is located under the home folder \Users\username instead of \Documents and Settings\username. Also, My Music, My Photos, and My Videos are now Music, Photos, and Videos and are directly under the home folder instead of inside My Documents. Shortcuts to your home folder, Documents, Pictures, and Music are available on the right side of the Start menu. In Windows XP you could relocate the entire My Documents folder to another drive. Now, if you wish to relocate your Documents, Music, Photos, and Videos folders, you must do so individually from the item's Properties Location tab.

The Control Panel is updated. If you switch to the classic view you will notice that the Device Manager is a first class control panel and no longer under System. Add/Remove Programs has become Programs and Features. Opening many built-in Vista control panels opens them in place instead of in a new window. New control panels include AutoPlay, Backup and Restore Center, Color Management, Indexing Options (for configuring Vista's desktop search feature), Parental Controls, People Near Me, Personalization (which combines Display Settings, Sounds, and Mouse Pointers), Windows Defender, Windows Sidebar Properties, and Windows Update. Windows Update is now a separate program instead of being integrated into Internet Explorer.

If you open Parental Controls this is one example where you will see User Account Control, a new Vista security feature, in action. You will be prompted to verify that you have started this action, before being allowed to continue. You will see this prompt a lot when you first install Vista as you install new programs into your Vista system. I confess I don't really read the prompts, I just click, and I fear other users will also be trained to click without reading, which defeats any security benefit this is supposed to have.

Vista includes Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player 11, both of which are available as separate downloads for Windows XP. Internet Explorer again omits a traditional menu bar, and now supports tabs, a search bar, and pop-up blocking, catching up with all the other Web browsers out there. Its user interface seems less bizarre under Vista than it does if you try it under Windows XP. Under Vista, IE provides enhanced security by running at a priority even below Standard User mode to minimize the risk to your system that IE under Windows XP exposes you to by merely visiting a malicious Web page.
Windows Media Player 11 is a nice update if you use it, including album cover art that can be automatically downloaded. You can access online music stores from within the application, although the list of stores has changed from Windows Media Player 10. (For example, Musicmatch is no longer included.) Windows Mail is a re-branded Outlook Express. Despite its name change it still can be used to access Usenet newsgroups. Windows Calendar is a new application with Vista, and aside from creating your own calendar events, you can subscribe to published iCalendar format calendars. I was pleased to be able to subscribe to my .Mac calendar, although the reminders were not carried over.

Windows Media Center is an update to the same program that was formerly only available with Windows XP Media Center Edition, and you could only get that if you bought a new computer with it pre-installed. Although it can be controlled via a mouse and keyboard, it provides a 10-foot interface that also can be controlled from a distance with a Media Center remote control in case you have your PC connected to your TV. It allows you to watch live or recorded TV programs, and view or listen to your photos, videos, or music on your computer. Vista's Media Center is optimized for widescreen displays, so the menu system is more horizontally oriented than the XP Media Center application. To get a Media Center-compatible remote I bought a Hauppauge TV tuner card that included that kind of remote. The application is actually quite nice, but in truth my PC is in a separate room from my TV, so I just use my PC's 24' LCD widescreen display.

Viability
Vista works fairly well if you pair it with Microsoft Office 2007 and if you're lucky enough to have peripherals that are already supported in Windows Vista. I did run into a problem where my computer would not wake up from sleep, so I changed the power options to a 'High performance' plan to avoid having the computer to go to sleep. Hopefully that will be fixed in a future update to Windows Vista. I noticed one other problem where Windows Calendar would often crash when I first booted, but I haven't seen that problem lately.
The wrinkle to being able to use Vista full time is support for existing applications and hardware. I was able to use my HP laser printer in Vista with a built-in PCL5 printer driver. However, when I tried downloading supposedly Vista-compatible HP universal printer drivers for PCL6 and Postscript support, one didn't work at all and the other gave sub-par graphics printing support. I had much better luck with my Canon inkjet printer, scanner, and digital camera, by downloading the latest drivers from Canon. My Nokia phone has a PC Suite application and drivers, whose latest versions seem to be compatible with Windows Vista.

As for applications, Musicmatch, which was bought by Yahoo!, does not have an update for Vista. I was able to install the application, despite warning messages, by running the installer in compatibility mode with Windows XP SP2. This is done by right-clicking and selecting Properties, then selecting the Compatibility tab. I'm still waiting for Vista- compatible versions of Palm Desktop, Intellisync for Yahoo!, and TiVo Desktop. In general, hardware and software vendors got very comfortable with the Windows XP ecosystem, so it is taking some time for them to update their drivers and applications for Vista.
Mozilla Firefox seems to work well enough, but when I first installed it there was no plug-in available for Windows Media. Microsoft has since released a plug-in for Windows Media to work with Firefox. Apple has updated iTunes to be compatible with Vista, but they warn you not to use Windows Explorer or Vista's Safely Remove Hardware to eject an iPod. Use iTunes instead to eject it. As I write this, Microsoft has come out with an update to fix these Vista incompatibilities, which you can download if you know about it. It won't show up in Windows Update for another couple of weeks.

Conclusion
Windows Vista is a promising long-overdue update to Windows that will serve those well who have the hardware to run it. However, now is an awkward time for someone to buy a PC with Vista. Not all the vendors have caught up with Microsoft's new operating system, so you may find that some things just don't work yet. If you are running some mission critical tasks on your PC, it's best to wait a few months if you can, or else buy the PC with Windows XP now and upgrade later. If you want to avoid the question of XP versus Vista, some of you might consider a Macintosh instead. As for myself I currently spend most of my time booted into Windows XP, but I'm looking forward to when I can live full time in Windows Vista.

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