14 DAY TRIAL // After getting used to work with Vista I somewhat forgot about how difficult it was to get used to it and now I finally had the idea to make some sort of list containing all the annoyances (or at least the ones that I remember of) that made me think Vista will only make my life a living hell. That was when I started to use it because, as you probably know, after using any type of software or operating system you get used to it or, in the worst scenario, you learn to live with it overlooking all the tiny little annoyances that make your life miserable.
One of the things that still keep annoying me is the fact that in Windows Vista sharing a folder does seem to be a work of chance. Once you can make it work but the next time you try and try to pull it over and nothing happens. Then you decide that it has to be something with Vista sharing system's intricate settings.
Wrong move because when faced with the complex interface and the multitude of options that can be found in the advanced sharing dialog most people finally give up. This is the moment when one begins searching for an easy to install and use FTP server just to share the directory with no hassle. If only Microsoft tried to simplify things and not bloat them in unnecessary ways?
As a matter of fact this is yet another thing that struck me when I first met Vista a few months ago. In Vista it seems that every operation you could have done in XP in a step (or maybe two if it were a little more complicated) suddenly goes beyond the 5 steps that were enough for everything you might have thought doing in XP.
And Microsoft says Vista and the Aero interface help you experience an usage level never experienced before when using another Windows OS. Yeah, they would probably be right, if they wanted to say that you would curse your days because even when trying to customize your display settings you still have to go bouncing from dialog to dialog until you find whatever it was that you were trying to find. Remember XP when you just right clicked on your desktop and there were the display settings all arranged in a very easy to use window? Not the case in Vista.
Downloading something from the Internet to your desktop? I'm sure you've done that plenty of times to know what I'm going to say next. Why does it take so much to copy the file you've downloaded from the temporary folder to the desktop? Even if that file has only 1 MB it will still take approximately forever to have it where you want it.
Didn't anybody from Microsoft notice this before launching their OS on the market? Or maybe they did but they thought that anyone who paid for their copy of Vista could pretty much be a beta tester. I don't think anyone is happy with this status and I hope they will do something about it: am I asking too much when I want my OS to copy a 1 MB file from one folder to another in less than 30 seconds? I haven't thought so either!
Now let's talk about the annoyance that everyone has met when they wanted to install Vista on their system. The dreaded trip to the hardware store. Yes, the one trip that made you empty your wallet and some part of your bank account to buy new parts for your computer that didn't have the things to make Vista run happily ever after. Not to mention the money you put down to buy your own original, shiny, almost impossible to open Vista box containing Microsoft's latest OS.
Sure, Vista's Aero interface is looking very good and compared to the interface available in XP is a very big step ahead, but couldn't they manage to keep the hardware requirements just a little lower? There are other OSs that offer the same looks (most of the Linux distributions out there can do the same things Vista does with Aero and they don't seem to need more than 512 - 768 MB of RAM at most) but they will not send you to the store in a RAM shopping craze.
Now that I started doing this I could probably go on for a while but then this would just be ranting with no definite purpose to it. I'm only trying to point out the bad parts hoping that someone from Microsoft (or someone that knows someone from Microsoft :) ) will read this and will decide that there has to be done something about this.
Release a service pack, include the fixes in the automatic updates, just fix the things that you can fix, that is all I'm saying. I know these things are going to happen sometime in the future as they do with any other OS. I guess this is the natural way of dealing with things - get an OS that has some bugs and little things that drive the users crazy and fix them as you go by serving them with service packs and updates.
I know things will get better one way or another and I'm anxious to see a Vista free of bugs, critters and other things like these that are quite capable of making anyone go bananas.
Although I did my best remembering the things that annoyed me when I began using Vista and listing the ones that annoy me right now, I'm pretty sure I missed some that I probably never came across. So if you think you've got other, more interesting ones, leave a word about what not to do (or try doing) in Vista so we can all keep our mental sanity intact (that is until some update, fix or service pack will take care of it).