Vista is it really that Advanced

Vista has finally reached RC1 status, they were many who doubted that it would ever arrive, well it has, and will probably ship not too far in the future.

Some of the far more qualified people than I are still asking questions, nothing too surprising there then, but unfortunately they have some quite serious points to make, its not all just about behind the scenes and security which most of us, me included really don't have a scooby about and we just believe that its a "necessary", the things that are now arising are well, interesting.

The article I'm going to present if from a guy who is quite clued up by that I mean "not a wannabe" he points out some stark facts about Vista, some that we would miss but are still glaringly obvious.I just wish feature like the sidebar would work, I remember this from the early alpha releases and it had huge memory leak problems, I think they cured those but it still seems very resource greedy and dam slow to boot,

 Best thing to do is read Paul Thurrots article and you can decide

The Dark Side of Windows Vista RC1

In a recent showcase, I highlighted five things I really like about Windows Vista. That's a cute list, and certainly, I could easily come up with another 5, or 10, or 20. And you know, maybe I'll do just that. But first, I'd like to discuss a number of problems I have with Windows Vista. This, to be honest, is a long list. That doesn't mean that Windows Vista is a waste of time, or a product to be reviled. As a friend once noted, "it's good enough to criticize." Well, maybe. It certainly deserves to be criticized.

You see, Windows Vista isn't perfect. It's not even close to perfect. It's better than Windows XP is, of course, but it damn well should be: It benefits from five more years of experience and work. Being better is the minimum requirement. Whether Vista is enough of an improvement over XP to warrant your hard earned money is a subject I'm saving for my eventual review of the final shipping version of the product, but I'll give you a bit of preview now and say the answer may surprise you. In the meantime, let's harp a bit on the things I don't like about Vista as it now stands in RC1 form.

It's the UI, stupid. Actually, it's a stupid UI

Last year, I infamously called for the firing of the person responsible for what was then a miserable Media Center user interface. That was a bit harsh, perhaps, but you have to remember that the Media Center UI that debuted in the October 2006 CTP (see my review) was also absolutely horrible. Since then, Vista's Media Center has improved a lot. At least Microsoft listens.

This time, I'd like approach a bit of UI that will almost certainly not change by the time Vista ships. And that's too bad, because it's one of the single stupidest UI decisions I've ever seen. (As a side note, Mac guys like to point to the Start button as a stupid UI decision, because you have to go to "Start" to shutdown the PC. Whatever. This one makes the Start button look like divine inspiration by comparison.)

Here it is. In previous versions of Windows, wizards and wizard-based applications provided logical Next and Back buttons so you could easily navigate forward and backwards through the various steps presented. Here's a typical example.

Vista, too, offers a variety of wizards and wizard-based applications. And like XP, Vista's wizards offer Next and Back buttons. Here's a typical example.

UI guys are going to have a field day with this one. For some reason, Microsoft's software designers have decided to use the Web browser's navigational scheme in many of Windows Vista's application (and not just wizards). But since this is Microsoft we're talking about, they did so in a completely inconsistent and even partial fashion. So now Back is graphical and on the top of the window, while Next/Forward is textual and on the bottom.

Smart!

Or not. Most stupidly, there's nothing to suggest that the two buttons are related in any way. So it's not really clear that they offer similar functionality. What's really amazing is that the functionality underneath is often even more insidious than it appears at first glance. Let's use Windows DVD Maker as an example. Assume you're busy making your first DVD movie. You're in the second stage of the wizard (which is stupidly called Ready to Burn Disc even though there are at least five other things you can do in this phase). You click the Customize menu toolbar button to navigate forward to the "Customize the Disc Menu Style" phase of the wizard, adjust some properties, and go back to the previous phase to preview the changes. Deciding you want to visit "Customize the Disc Menu Style" screen again, you type ALT + RIGHT ARROW, which is of course the keyboard shortcut for "Forward," as we've all learned after several years of IE usage. Clearly, this will bring us back to the "Customize the Disc Menu Style" screen.

Nope. Instead, this keyboard shortcut is the equivalent of clicking the Burn button for some reason. Instead of changing the menu style again, you just started burning your disc. Or a coaster, since the disc you're now making isn't what you wanted.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

But wait, there's more. Oh there is so much more. HERE

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