At the end of February, I went to the Dell website to order a brand new laptop with which to surprise my brother. I navigated to the “open ource” section first to check the availability of a laptop with Ubuntu. Unfortunately, the one I had seen previously was no longer listed. I knew that ordering Windows XP would add another $150 to the price of the laptop, so I opted for “the-worst-case-scenario-as-far-as-I’d-been-told,” Vista. Everyone’s familiar by now with the multitude of criticism and backlash the two year old has suffered, so I won’t spend any time preaching its condemnation here. Instead, I’ll summarize my experience with it over the past few days. It’s not a complete rundown of every feature in Vista—just a few things I wanted to comment on.

First impressions

After primarily using free and open source software for so long, setting up an OEM installation of Windows is a little bit shocking. Now, you should understand that to us die-hard, liberated-from-shackles, grab-your-1740-replica-Katana-and-rebel open source guys, an EULA is sort of like an affront to our personal freedom (yeah, deep down we know it’s kinda silly, but have some sympathy for us—we’re delicate). But true to form, I looked on in horror as several EULAs had to be accepted to use both Vista and the software that came with the computer.

When Vista was fully installed and usable, it was the familiar routine of plucking out the things we didn’t want or need. The control panel is a lot nicer in Vista. For some reason, I couldn’t ever find anything in the XP control panel unless I switched to the class view. (It might’ve been all the blue disorienting me.)

Not long after, our first order of important business was to use Microsoft’s Glorified Firefox Download Software™ (ie., IE) for obtaining a web browser.

Style

Certainly, one of the most publicized features of Vista is its updated look and feel. I’ve never really talked to anyone who feels neutral on this subject. They either love it or hate it. I like it, but I’m not satisfied with the handling of themes and theming in Windows. I’ve been spoiled by the wealth of customizations that are available  in GNOME, KDE, and other free desktop managers for Unix-like systems (Linux, BSD, …). In comparison Windows has always been extremely limited here. Theming is possible, of course, as a myriad of websites will show you; but it is not easily doable and usually requires third party software.

Instead of being built into Windows, theming is the responsibility of the individual applications that wish to implement it. (Safari has its own look, Advanced WindowsCare has its own look, et cetera.) I would rather have all the applications look the same. Some of my friends have said that I’m just boring, but a level of uniformity in the look and feel of each application allows me to know what to expect: It helps straighten the learning curve when I’m using new software.

Explorer

One of the features that I liked in Explorer was that the music directory showed album covers as if they were pages in an open folder. Unfortunately, it’s not an equal opportunity feature—even though I had installed the Ogg/Vorbis codec, it would only fetch information and art for the few mp3s in my collection (this one-sided behavior continued in Windows Media Player). About 85 to 95 percent of my music collection is Ogg/Vorbis. In the end, this feature is more of a novelty than a necessity, but it would have been nice to see it play well with the geeky kids across the street.[1]

I like how the breadcrumb trail has been separated into segments as well, although it doesn’t realize its full potential. For example, in Nautilus (the GNOME file manager), files can be dragged to different segments to move or copy them to that location. This is a useful feature when you want to move files or directories up a few levels. Other useful features it’s missing are tabs or split views, and a quick directory search (like Firefox’s quick find).

Still lacking a lot

A lot of things are still lacking or impossible in Windows that are easy to do in other operating systems. For example, I wanted to mount an ISO image. This is a two click operation in many Linux distributions, or a single line in the terminal, but a search for how to mount an ISO image in Vista revealed that I would need to download third party software.

There are many glaring issues with software management as well. Installing and uninstalling software often requires a restart, and is still a series of unintuitive “click next” screens. There is no package management available; to obtain any software I have to go find it “in the wild.” I’m not really comfortable doing this, especially when it comes to closed source software (I found three programs for mounting ISOs, and only one was not reported to have malicious software of some kind).

I feel naked without a comprehensive set of command line utilities. Sometimes it’s just a whole lot easier to tell the computer what you want to do with words, not clicks and motions.

Conclusion

If I were still a Windows user, I would definitely upgrade from XP to Vista. Microsoft has taken a step in the right direction, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Windows 7 puts on the table. But I’m a Linux guy at heart. I have a different mindset when it comes to operating systems, from a design perspective and a usage perspective. Vista feels cumbersome because “the Windows way” doesn’t facilitate my workflow.

Ironically, almost none of my criticisms here are aimed at Vista in particular. I experienced the majority of these problems in XP as well. The core issues like look and feel, software management, and the “one true way” approach to design are true for all Microsoft operating systems to this date. However, I do understand that not everyone feels the same way I do. To them I’ll say that Dane is right: Give it a fair go before you throw it in the trashcan. You might even like it!

…

But if your heart is still set against it, try one of the free alternatives.

[1] My brother finally got the album information to display in WMP. Unfortunately, we only know how to do it one album at a time.