that ugly yellow dog in the search panel
Vista Opinions
- Thread starter linthat22
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Yeah, with every Windows version it just gets harder and harder to find a sensible desktop environment underneath all the cruft. It's especially frustrating once you start getting serious about multiple user accounts, and not doing day-to-day stuff as an admin, as you gotta repeat all the reconfiguration for every account. And not just the desktop, but also the applications that try to "blend in" (Opera 8+ with the default skin for instance looks so horrible ...).
Oh btw, are there actually people here who find, say, Windows XP default settings more useful/more productive than something more Windows 98/2000ish? Can we have a show of hands please?
Oh btw, are there actually people here who find, say, Windows XP default settings more useful/more productive than something more Windows 98/2000ish? Can we have a show of hands please?
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Well I've actually been messing with Win95/98 lately. I also have 98lite going. On my main machine I run XP with its default look.
I'm not sure which I prefer. I suppose I consider myself flexible enough not to care really. Speed is a non-issue as long as the hardware is within 4 yrs of age IMO.
I do know that 95's interface is a lot more annoying in many ways than 98's. 98SE is probably the pinnacle of efficiency from MS. They got rid of 95's annoyances and didn't add confusing extras. XP's additions don't hinder things for me though, and I do find uses for the weird new start menu. I gotta say though that XP's Start Menu by default is some evil marketing scheme. You need to customize it a bit to make it useful.
The "prettyness" doesn't bother me much really.
I'm not sure which I prefer. I suppose I consider myself flexible enough not to care really. Speed is a non-issue as long as the hardware is within 4 yrs of age IMO.
I do know that 95's interface is a lot more annoying in many ways than 98's. 98SE is probably the pinnacle of efficiency from MS. They got rid of 95's annoyances and didn't add confusing extras. XP's additions don't hinder things for me though, and I do find uses for the weird new start menu. I gotta say though that XP's Start Menu by default is some evil marketing scheme. You need to customize it a bit to make it useful.
The "prettyness" doesn't bother me much really.
nondescript
Regular
XP vs. 98:
The first thing I do after re-installing XP is to change the look to Windows Classic, so the start menu doesn't take up half the damned screen. The second thing I do is go to Windows Explorer, and make all system files visible.
About Vista, I'm not going to buy it at least for a few years, because I'm running an ancient Athlon XP 2500+/ GeForce 4MX 440, and XP SP3/Firefox/Google Desktop works just fine.
About console/PC games, I def. play only strategy and old games on PC. Civ4 being the most recent. X-Com, Fallout 1/2, Starcraft, that's about it.
The first thing I do after re-installing XP is to change the look to Windows Classic, so the start menu doesn't take up half the damned screen. The second thing I do is go to Windows Explorer, and make all system files visible.
About Vista, I'm not going to buy it at least for a few years, because I'm running an ancient Athlon XP 2500+/ GeForce 4MX 440, and XP SP3/Firefox/Google Desktop works just fine.
About console/PC games, I def. play only strategy and old games on PC. Civ4 being the most recent. X-Com, Fallout 1/2, Starcraft, that's about it.
On the first point, I find the "small icons" version of the new start menu to be really great. i have a fairly good-sized LCD, so i set it to show 30 icons, and this means I almost never need to go into the "all Programs" list to find an application to open. most of the other changes to the start menu i remove, however. As swaaye said, there's a bunch of crap "services" in there I don't want. also, i like the control panel as a menu. seeing the control panel as a window gives me bad flashbacks nowadays.
On the second point I totally agree. Every single time i use windows i spend the first couple minutes fixing the folder settings. remove 'commonly used tasks', show: details, status bar, address bar with full path, extensions, system and hidden files, memorize settings for each folder and then set all folders to look like this one. seems kind of stupid to have to do it, but at least i'm fast at it now.
Meh.
Surely you understand why they hide the system files? Just imagine how much that dropped support costs around the world. The vast majority of people do not need to see those files or be able to manipulate them. Hell most people don't even want to be able to see extensions.
My boss at work, for example, has to rename bunches of JPGs daily. If extensions were shown she's screw up every 30th file and wouldn't notice. And I'd be asked why it wasn't working. Yay. Extensions are usually unnecessary and add complexity to tasks.
I too like using the small icons version of the new start menu. It's a ton faster to put some popular progs in there than click thru the real programs listing. I also use toolbars stuck into the taskbar with shortcuts.
What most people don't seem to understand is that Windows is not built with power users as the primary target. That wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. That is also the fundamental flaw of Linux and why it will never gain massive acceptance. Linux is so friggin off that track that it might just be the anti-simple. 98% of people out there just want stuff to work and be mind-numbingly simple. And I hate helping that group, so I'm with MS on making Windows as mind-numbing as possible by default. I can take the time to customize things. But man the fewer mundane questions that come from work, family, and clueless friends, the better.
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I agree on the first point, especially as unchecking "Display the contents of system folders" still lets you access them, but only after displaying a warning instead of the folder contents.
But not showing extensions can be anything between annoying and downright dangerous. Most people do not use details view (though if you do, dropping extensions might be sensible) You go to a folder and find four files with identical name and meaningless icons, how do you know which is the one you want? You stumble upon a file with a "picture" icon, but when you open it it's not Paint that pops up, and you're left wondering what's causing all the hard drive activity...
And you get a warning when you change the extension of a file.
Agreed to both. I mostly like the XP start menu. I only wish you could make it not cover the task bar (I have it on the left side of the screen) so you could more easily drag & drop from start menu to quicklaunch bars.
From what I whitnessed, the "bloody beginners" like my parents find it much easier like that and it also preserves them from deleting anything sensible by not showing hidden and system folders etc.
Blazkowicz
Legend
I'm helping a bloody beginner to use its PC (which I have cleaned quite a bit), a Dell that was used in a company. Firstly, it was set it classic mode so I didn't changed that.. then at some point I changed the start menu to the normal one and all I got is a "wow that little start menu looks much better".
I then showed extensions and set details view.. as I don't quite see how else I'll teach a new user about ".EXE is a program, .ZIP an archive" etc., have him deal with file size, etc.
(but, I was taking decisions for him off course
)
I then showed extensions and set details view.. as I don't quite see how else I'll teach a new user about ".EXE is a program, .ZIP an archive" etc., have him deal with file size, etc.
(but, I was taking decisions for him off course
)I think it's unfortunate that the "new" start menu looks like ass when u run XP in "classic look". It just looks awful. That's actually why I don't use the classic look, lol. That and classic doesn't really offer any performance advantage that I've noticed.
I had dealings with several "bloody beginners" who prefered more conservative explorer settings. I.e. the search dog was found to be irritating and annoying, the "personalized menu" functionality made things confusing. "Common tasks" were not perceived as a helpful use of screen space. Autoplay functionality of USB mass storage was never quite appreciated, roughly along the lines of "I never want to see that f***in piece of **** dialog again! Do nothing! Always do nothing!".
FWIW it does look friendly out of the box, but after two weeks or so of continued use friendliness does not matter anymore. Usability does. And XP's defaults are pretty weak in that department IMO.
So dual booting Vista from a Mac is possible...what about the other way around?
Basically I'm thinking of building my own system (basically something quite similar to the new dual Xeon Mac Pros, but >1.5k cheaper). Is there any chance of getting OSX running on such a machine?
I really like OSX.... but with my wife in school etc... I just cannot afford to buy the machine I want from Apple.
Serge
Basically I'm thinking of building my own system (basically something quite similar to the new dual Xeon Mac Pros, but >1.5k cheaper). Is there any chance of getting OSX running on such a machine?
I really like OSX.... but with my wife in school etc... I just cannot afford to buy the machine I want from Apple.
Serge
So why didnt they set it? I've fairly certain that on the first run, actually every run, of the USB drive they are presented with an option to do nothing with USB drives when plugged in. It was to hard for them to do that?
Yes, but not legally.
It doesn't work. You can pick "nothing" and "always" but it just doesn't do anything. It's ignored probably because someone at Microsoft thought that a user making that choice can't be seriousSo why didnt they set it? I've fairly certain that on the first run, actually every run, of the USB drive they are presented with an option to do nothing with USB drives when plugged in. It was to hard for them to do that?
You need the TweakUI Powertoy or some other form of registry hacking to make that particular setting stick.
: raises hand :
I greatly prefer the XP look over the 2k look. Greatly. Ditto for all the features and great support. I work with stuff like transferring files to USB a lot for instance, and I copy my files, plug in the USB device, select show files, and paste. Works great. I do agree that it would be even nicer to be able to set it to always open the folder, but then again I can see how that would lead to problems with less advanced users - they wouldn't know how to get it back.
Anyway, just wanted to weigh in. I'm definitely not in a hurry to get Vista, though I probably will have to start working with it relatively soon to make sure my software runs well on the platform. That said, since I always use .NET, I don't expect much in the way of problems there, so it will mostly just be investigating whether or not it has useful new features.
I do think it somewhat ironic that Vista may well force desktops to have decent 3D hardware in them. Who knows there will come a point where I can make certain parts of the user interface 3D in a useful manner. Quite a challenge, but certainly interesting.
