Vista's Not So Bad

Michael Rhodes, Director of Technology

High Meadows School, Roswell, GA

One of the things I would have taken away from GaETC 2007, if I didn’t have any other sources to pull from, is that Microsoft Vista is the worst thing to hit the computer industry since the similarly overblown and misrepresented ‘Y2K’ scare.  I attended one concession titled “Vista Caveats”, but as the opening title page to the presentation was displayed, I found out this was no tips and tricks workshop, the actual, non-published title projected on the screen for all to view was, “Vista Caveat … or why Vista Sucks”.  Maybe my experience was unique and I happen to pick the one mix of concessions that would have me believing that Apple’s OS X was now the way of the future, but with the exception of the concession presented by Brent Williams from KSU EdTech, I consistently heard negative slams on Vista.  Even in the concessions that had nothing to do with operating systems, someone in the audience would regurgitate some invalid, misunderstood, non-relative negative comment about Microsoft’s new OS.  In my opinion, most of the statements were made in ignorance and I chalk it up to a very successful “mud slinging, bashing the other guy” marketing campaign by Apple that is currently bombarding us on every TV station.   However, I have a different view, and because I have been using Vista from ‘release candidate 2’ and at the moment have ‘Vista Ultimate’ on my desktop and ‘Vista Enterprise’ on my laptop I feel there is some validity to my experience.  It's an excellent operating system and, as long as you take the time to find out about it, you can do anything you want with it, and it is really not so bad.

You can poke and prod it as well as alter registry entries just like you can on all previous operating systems. And yes, the User Access Control feature, a recurring point of displeasure, does frequently ask you if you want to proceed, but I have gotten used to that and actually think it’s a good idea.  If anyone does sneak malicious rogue software onto your machine then you know if it tries to do anything.  However, if you really don’t like it, turn it off (a quick Google search would give you a dozen links with the steps on how to do this).  Both Apple and Linux have incorporated ‘dual-token administrative accounts’ like UAC for several generations of their operating systems, yet Apple points it out in one of their commercials as a bad move by Microsoft that causes a cumbersome user experience when it is really a necessary security implementation that has become an industry standard across all the major operating systems.  Not only has Apple had a UAC similar function for several generations when you try to do anything that requires administrative access on OS X you not only get a prompt to continue, you have to retype your administrative password each time. How cumbersome is that?  I like Apple’s OS X, but find it insulting that their whole marketing campaign relies on user ignorance. To me it has more the feel of a political bashing campaign than informative marketing of a product.

I like the Vista Aero interface and sidebar and the management options are quite good.  I particularly like the performance and reliability tools. It does seem to take one extra click to do any administrative task than it did in XP, but the process is intuitive and I figure the extra steps are a purposeful implementation to keep the average users from too easily making unwanted changes.  On my home unit, I run with all the glitter and gold Vista has to offer; on my laptop, I run in ‘best performance mode’ (which only takes about three clicks to switch to).  When coworkers see my laptop system they think I am running XP (looks like Windows 2000, just as XP looks like Windows 2000 in performance mode).  I would argue that even the ‘newbie-est’ user would not have much trouble migrating from XP to Vista when running in this mode.  I am not claiming that a newbie wouldn’t have trouble – I am claiming that the amount of trouble would be the same whether they were using XP or Vista.

My laptop which was originally shipped with XP pro is now set up to dual boot into either XP pro SP2 32 bit or Vista Enterprise SP1 32 bit.  I did a cleaned installed for both operating systems (XP first of course – always load the older OS first).  After installing XP with SP2, I had to spend another hour or two tracking down and installing nine different drivers including a rough go around with UAA for HD Audio that should already work with SP2 installed (see kb888111).  After installing Vista Enterprise with SP1, I only had two drivers to install and they installed easily.  I really like the fact that the driver install on Vista will search subfolders when not installing from a CD (XP doesn’t do that). Vista ran everything that I required without a hitch, including some very old programs that I had to tweak to get to work in XP.

Everyone is saying the buy in is slow, but isn’t this always the case with business organizations? I used to work for a large technology oriented company and they were always at least two-years behind the current operating system.  I recall the switch to XP being slow and many sticking with Windows 2000, many companies are still running Windows 2000.

During one concession, someone complained about the start time being about two minutes and then went on to compare it with his laptop running XP SP2, which started in “90 seconds or so”. First, what’s the difference, and second, I cannot start to point out all the flaws in blaming the operating systems for a 30 second difference when comparing the start time of two different systems. I timed my laptop from the moment I pressed the power button to when the sign on screen displayed at about 85 seconds - this is no time at all. Just in case you’re wondering how long XP took to boot on the same laptop (remember dual-boot), it was about 85 seconds.

I believe in knocking something if it's bad and praising it if it's good, and  in my opinion there is nothing ‘so bad’ with Vista but there is something wrong with many of the misinformed statements being made about it. Vista is reliable and powerful, especially with the recently released service pack installed.  The early need of a service pack was another common testament as to how bad Vista is, but this happens with all operating systems and it's simply a natural progression. And regarding another recurring proof of Vista’s ‘short comings’ is that many users are downgrading to XP. However, many of those users are either downgrading through the manufacturer before they even give Vista a try or had tried to upgrade an old system that was clearly beneath the requirements of the new OS.  Try loading Macintosh OS 10.5 on an Apple IIe, it might not run very well. 

Quick tip, unless you have a specific application that requires it, stick to the 32 bit version.  There is nothing wrong with the Vista 64 bit versions, in my opinion they are more stable than the XP 64 bit versions.  But they are much more picky about hardware and unless the system is designed appropriately it is more trouble than it is worth.  If you are running 32 bit applications and have 2 gb of ram (or less) there is no real advantage to a 64 bit OS.

As the Director of Technology for a small private school, I get to try out a lot of new technology.  I have not made the migration to Vista for the school. And probably won’t migrate until the 2009/2010 school year, at the earliest, for the same reason many companies don’t early adopt.  With about 200 computers I have a wide range of hardware to deal with and XP is meeting our needs.  And no, I don’t work for Microsoft.

I was going to go on and discuss some of the very cool things Vista has to offer for both the individual user and the network administrator, but that would be a long tangent and not the main point of this article.  I oversee the technology for a school and I teach some math.  I have found, with both math and technology, that a lot of people have a presupposition that it is going to be hard and difficult to understand before they learn the first thing about it.  Often if I can overcome that hurdle the rest is easy.  So before you judge Vista as a flop, as Apple has so well marketed, give Vista an unbiased chance, you might just find … it’s not so bad.

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