V-day has arrived

[Gnerma]

So those who bought it. How is it having to give permission each time you change a folder name?

Well I didn't buy it but it takes just a couple seconds and one reboot to turn this off. It would be borderline bearable if it didn't ask about everything you do on secondary hard drives (like folder renames, file moving etc).

Okay, "useable" as in basic. Pre-XP basic.

I personally find the XP & now Vista start menus significantly superior to the old windows 95 design. I would guess that most people's problems with them are cases of not giving them a fair shake. It's easy to call something inefficient when you first try it and you've trained yourself to do something a different way. In everything I've read about Vista the (seemingly minor but effective) start menu tweaks are nearly always praised as more than the sum improvements. For those using Vista now try turning off "use large icons" on the start menu. This gives you about 20 slots of commonly used programs under internet/mail. For me that more programs than I even use.

I agree with the system tray hiding being annoying, thats easy to turn off though.

 

[Roger Kohli]

Are there any online stores in the USA that will ship to the UK? Even with shipping + taxes I should save $100 easily.

Edit:
Amazon will

Edit2:
And why don't we in the UK qualify for the $50 additional licences? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/familydiscount.mspx

 

[pjbliverpool]

Okay, "useable" as in basic. Pre-XP basic. A proper [strike]Start[/strike] menu that displays everything of relevance in a static, organized, reliable format, with a reasonable font size so that many items will fit.

Yeah, "useable" was a little loaded, sorry
I just like a UI that does what it's supposed to do and stops there. Most of the people I studied with had their XP desktops configured in a way that basically removed every new XP GUI feature except for the "Welcome" screen and the root view in Explorer (the big drive icons, with the clear separations between physical drives and system-defined shortcuts). I also remember having lots of fun with the "Security Center" and the "There's stuff on your desktop. You put it there because you want to delete it, right?" annoyances. And some of the, err, older people I did support/repairs for, seemed to be delighted when I disabled some key annoyances for them (such as Systray item hiding and "personalized" menus).
You could say I'm part of a demographic that has perceived new Windows versions as incremental burdens that take ever longer to configure for day-to-day operation. Should have explained that better.

But you already answered the question, so thanks

Both XP and Vista have a "classic" start menu option which uses the same format as Windows 95 - 2000.

I really liks XP's but im not so sure about Vista's yet. Seems a bit crowded for my tastes.

 

[pjbliverpool]

So those who bought it. How is it having to give permission each time you change a folder name?

Annoying

But very easy to turn off

I think the point of UAC isn't for single or advanced users like us, its for families with multiple users who don't do a lot of messing round with files and folders. One improvement I would like to see in it though (and this may be there already, I havn't looked very hard) is the ability to turn of the checks for the admin account but leave them on for other user accounts. That way I get normal use of my PC but other users get restricted use.

 

[Blazkowicz]

for that sort of thing, I'd look in group policy, but maybe it's for business vista only?

 

[Rolf N]

Pre-XP Start Menu compared to XP and especially Vista is almost unusable by comparison.

At least it's static, reliable*, and lets itself be organized. IOW it doesn't take time to "get used to", which is the major fault of the modern [strike]Start[/strike] menus. If you use Windows as an occasional boot to play a game, "it becomes useable if you're used to it" isn't a high quality. Customization is good, but obvious, shallow default structure is better.
The new [strike]Start[/strike] menu may well be a less poor design than the really poor design in XP, it still won't win any contest. Good designs look like this:

Even if you've never used it, its use is immediately obvious. Each text item in the top of the hierarchy is useful information that helps you navigate through the stuff you have installed.

Now onward, to locate the "All programs" item that shamefully hides somewhere among items that someone thought are more relevant right now. As long as Microsoft insists on placing their favourite stuff at special spots in the hierarchy of available programs, the Windows [strike]Start[/strike] menu will always stay a little arbitrary, and require more clicks to locate any program. just count them.
The search is kind of intriguing, maybe another day I might argue that a clear structure removes most of the need for search, and that even while search functions are very useful, the basic functionality should not rely on them instead of sane design. Oops, now I did. Well what can you do.

*reliable as opposed to auto-custimization, aka "personalized folders", where you never know whether or not an item you once found in a specific place will be somewhere else the next time you seek it

 

[Accord1999]

And in my opinion, Vista's start menu is the finest yet, out of any OS. As for your good designs, that's just Windows 95 era, with none of the usability advancements of the past 12 years.

 

[Skrying]

.........

Xubuntu? I find the Ubuntu menu still much better, though they're not "very" different from the Xubuntu. Kubuntu on the other hand....... yuck.

Vista's Start menu is different. Its basically a compact version of the XP menu, so I do not see the issue other than that I personally find navigating with you being able to quickly and visually see your path much more beneficial.

 

[Albuquerque]

And in my opinion, Vista's start menu is the finest yet, out of any OS. As for your good designs, that's just Windows 95 era, with none of the usability advancements of the past 12 years.

While I agree with you from my own biases, he still has a point: A "brand new" user who has never touched this OS will not empircally know where to find their applications. Now, that doesn't mean they couldn't learn, but at least in his example it's nearly self-explanatory.

Regardless, I'd be changing it right back to the default way that Vista uses just because I find it far less clunky for my uses.

 

[Gnerma]

zeckensack, as I understand it you're saying "Immediate understandability is always better design" and I question whether that makes much sense. Sure its good if something is immediately transparent to as many people as possible but that does not necessarily make it more efficient for the advanced user. Or the guy that was a beginner a couple hours before for that matter. In any case that menu you posted is primarily application based. Microsoft may preinstall some applications but most of the stuff in that menu would be 3rd party on a windows box.

Regarding clicks if something is on the recent programs list it requires 2 clicks to launch it. If something is in all programs, it requires 3. With small icons and a decent resolution you have 60 slots maximum. In other words easily far more programs than any sane person will have on his rig within 3 clicks. To launch a program on the menu you posted also requires 3 clicks.

 

[Rolf N]

zeckensack, as I understand it you're saying "Immediate understandability is always better design" and I question whether that makes much sense. Sure its good if something is immediately transparent to as many people as possible but that does not necessarily make it more efficient for the advanced user. Or the guy that was a beginner a couple hours before for that matter. In any case that menu you posted is primarily application based. Microsoft may preinstall some applications but most of the stuff in that menu would be 3rd party on a windows box.

Regarding clicks if something is on the recent programs list it requires 2 clicks to launch it. If something is in all programs, it requires 3. With small icons and a decent resolution you have 60 slots maximum. In other words easily far more programs than any sane person will have on his rig within 3 clicks. To launch a program on the menu you posted also requires 3 clicks.

I see how that might seem attractive, but I don't find it to be a good use of the space in a top level menu. Having that menu there means something else doesn't fit anymore. I've posted what I think is a perfect use of top level space very well, so there's not much use repeating it

I take two basic issues with a prioritization of/reliance on "recent programs" in the top level. Or maybe one and a half issues, because they're connected.

1)It doesn't scale gracefully. You may use a high res and fit 60 items there, but what do you have then? Recent Programs is one flat list, ordered by ... I don't know (LRU? Not alphabetically from the screen shots I've seen), with no structure (groupings by type, theme, publisher, user-defined tags ...). To find something there means reading the list, sifting through its items one-by-one, and when no match is found, proceed to the "classic" structured alternative. Instead you could have the structured "alternative" in direct reach.

2)Because it's adaptive, you will at some point need to rescan the list to find the item you want. It might have moved, or it might have fallen off to make room for something else you have started using just recently. I've touched upon that as "reliability" before. An adaptive system discourages trust in your own knowledge of it. A static structure is there for you to learn. Once you know where everything is, you can rely on your knowledge to go faster. Like, to shut down an XP box i can hit ALT+ESC, ESC, ALT+F4, H (German locale). I've done that just recently because apparently my TV and graphics card disagree on supporting 1088x612. I couldn't have done that if the hotkeys had a tendency to sometimes change. In this case it would have prevented me from doing anything at all (lack of visual feedback kills the deal), but even if you can see what's going on, the point is that not knowing that you can trust the system to function how you remembered it will cause inconveniences.
That's just an analogy of course, and they are all flawed, but I hope you get the idea.
Static systems sometimes expand or shrink, but that is (or should be) always tied to a user action, namely installing or uninstalling software, where it is reasonable to expect such a change.

Personally I find myself not using the "recent documents" concept. I don't know what's inside there (because it changes), but I do know where in the file hierarchy I put the stuff I'm looking for (I tend to structure my stuff in a way that suits my preference, which makes it trivial to remember). As a result it's easier for me (requires less processing power ...) to skip checking if a file might be in "recent documents" and just open it. I hate how Windows ME and 2000 can hide Start menu entires you haven't used much recently. So far every single user I know has been happy to have that disabled. Okay, that's not the same system, but IMO the experience is similar enough to go as a similar experience

Just think about how people approach new, unknown toys. You observe, you try something, you observe the results of that action, and if it worked well you try to keep it in mind to reproduce it later.
At the most basic level, changing stuff around without a clear immediate reason is frustrating. You teach people that their knowledge of the system isn't reliable, so they stop learning (and stop caring about not learning). It makes people not trust and not understand computers. For an example what happens next, see the ending of Independence Day.

Regarding the thing with Microsoft-sanctioned spaces in the menu, what if I want to use Opera to do internet browsing and email? It's one monolithic app, there's no reason for it to take two spaces in the menu. Going by the bit-tech shots, the Vista menu fails in that case, because Microsoft decided for you that you use separate programs for browsing and reading email, just like Microsoft decided for you that certain system configuration applets aren't really programs and should instead live in their own comparted space in the Windows 95 - XP ("classic") Start menus, or likewise that a shortcut to iexplore www.windowsupdate.com is more important than the entire program hierarchy on your system.

Xubuntu? I find the Ubuntu menu still much better, though they're not "very" different from the Xubuntu. Kubuntu on the other hand....... yuck.

Vista's Start menu is different. Its basically a compact version of the XP menu, so I do not see the issue other than that I personally find navigating with you being able to quickly and visually see your path much more beneficial.

Yes, Xubuntu. I'm sure XFCE looks like that on any distro though.
I think I have the rest covered already. Good UI design must mean ease of use, basically. Windows probably isn't a broken UI, but still there is lots of room to make it more efficient. Vista doesn't really do what should be expected from Microsoft. Lots of WTFs. Like the one when I saw (in the bit-tech review) how the Explorer menus don't have a proper title bar (you know, with a window title).

 

[Gnerma]

Thanks for the excellent reply zeckensack.

I take two basic issues with a prioritization of/reliance on "recent programs" in the top level. Or maybe one and a half issues, because they're connected.

1)It doesn't scale gracefully. You may use a high res and fit 60 items there, but what do you have then? Recent Programs is one flat list, ordered by ... I don't know (LRU? Not alphabetically from the screen shots I've seen), with no structure (groupings by type, theme, publisher, user-defined tags ...). To find something there means reading the list, sifting through its items one-by-one, and when no match is found, proceed to the "classic" structured alternative. Instead you could have the structured "alternative" in direct reach.

I mentioned the 60 figure mostly to cite the maximum available with the vista start menu. I agree that that would not be a very useable system. In any case anybody that needs 3 click access to that many programs has a much more complicated computing life than I ever want :smile: I've found that significantly fewer "slots" are needed for it to work as intended. More detail on this in a bit..

2)Because it's adaptive, you will at some point need to rescan the list to find the item you want. It might have moved, or it might have fallen off to make room for something else you have started using just recently. I've touched upon that as "reliability" before. An adaptive system discourages trust in your own knowledge of it. A static structure is there for you to learn. Once you know where everything is, you can rely on your knowledge to go faster. Like, to shut down an XP box i can hit ALT+ESC, ESC, ALT+F4, H (German locale). I've done that just recently because apparently my TV and graphics card disagree on supporting 1088x612. I couldn't have done that if the hotkeys had a tendency to sometimes change. In this case it would have prevented me from doing anything at all (lack of visual feedback kills the deal), but even if you can see what's going on, the point is that not knowing that you can trust the system to function how you remembered it will cause inconveniences.
That's just an analogy of course, and they are all flawed, but I hope you get the idea.
Static systems sometimes expand or shrink, but that is (or should be) always tied to a user action, namely installing or uninstalling software, where it is reasonable to expect such a change.

This is one of those rare times educated theory fails to fall in with reality. You make good logical points in the above quote but you're approaching the "most commonly used programs list" from the opposite angle than you should be. You don't have to learn it, it learns you. And it does it in a way that is much more effective than you might expect it to be.

A couple years back I started using this feature in XP without even realizing I was doing it. I had about 7 slots available to me and for me, it was plenty. After the initial training the icons very rarely move. This is because well, people will generally use the same few apps on a day to day basis. If I hadn't seen this feature work for me I would probably be on your side on this one. I'm sure a lot of the designers at MS were opposed to it as well but when they saw it working against all logic as I have in focus groups and such, they got on board.

Personally I find myself not using the "recent documents" concept. ... I hate how Windows ME and 2000 can hide Start menu entires ...

I'm with you on these two points. I think some things work as dynamic elements and others don't. I do like the MCUP list on the top level of the start menu but prefer my "all programs" list to be static and micromanage it accordingly. If you need the start menu to hide anything you'd probably be better off cleaning the damn thing up for frak's sake. Although the MCUP list manages to be effective enough for me that I rarely ever have to go in there to run something. I usually only have to "all programs" when I dig up a programs like Driver Cleaner or ImgBurn. Stuff I only use once every couple weeks or months.

I hide most recent documents as well although I'm not a document jockey so the contents of that folder for me would only be a half dozen junk text files I was taking notes in.

Regarding the thing with Microsoft-sanctioned spaces in the menu, what if I want to use Opera to do internet browsing and email? ... [windows update?]

All can be removed. Internet and email are "special" in that they have their own UI but they disappear just as easily as anything else when you turn them off in the start menu config. If you want to use Oprah for both email and internet you can just turn off the email. I personally turn them both off and launch my browser with a one click quick launch. Windows update in both the XP and Vista start menus are just shortcuts that delete the same as anything else.

I think the moral of this story is Microsoft, unlike Apple and Linux distro developers have to develop something that works as well as possible out of the box for as many people as possible. And no matter how spot on they are in the pursuit of this everybody is going to lamb baste them about it It won't be perfect for anybody and for some it'll seem downright nonsensical. But thats why they give you so much control to Gnerma or zeckensackify it to your hearts content.