A Vista That'll Mystify

Hypnotic glass from Microsoft -- Picture courtesy Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Have to confess -- I'm one of the Microsoft lemmings that went out and bought a new HP laptop when Vista became available last week. In my defense, my 6 year old desktop PC needed replacing a year ago; I deliberately held off until Vista became available. More material in my defense: AMD and Intel have been having a price war that's whittled prices way down. Also, PC sales have been depressed due in part to a delayed Vista release -- the PC deals are really enticing. I got a new HP laptop for roughly half the price of a MacBook with similar features.

Now.. on to Vista. For those who didn't catch it, the title of this blog is lifted from a lyric in the movie Shock Treatment. Some people may want shock treatment after they encounter some of the weirdness of this new OS. I'll first woo you with what's good about Vista. Microsoft diligently did as Scott Adams (author of Dilbert) stated: they used Apple Inc as their research and development department. The Vista interface is beautiful, blue and translucent. They call it "Glass". Why does it make me think of Apple's aqua interface? Glass offers you 3-D cascading windows that remind you a little of Mac OS X's dock. Glass also gives you "gadgets" which are very similar to the little "widgets" that Mac OS X has offered the past couple of years. Lastly, Glass (aka Vista) has a beautiful app called Windows Media Center that turns your PC into the ultimate TV/DVR/Home Entertainment Nexus. You need a remote control and a big screen to fully appreciate it. Why does this remind me of Mac OS X Front Row? To be fair, Windows may have had a similar offering earlier, but not as cool as Front Row.

Now for the less wooing facts about Vista. Its enhanced security slows down a lot of your activity. Where you press a button that says "Run" or "Install", Vista will now query, "Did you initiate this action?” Or, "Do you wish to allow this module to execute?” I feel like I'm playing Simon Says or Mother May I. The new procedure is silly and inconvenient enough that Apple Inc has lampooned it in their latest commercials. Neither is all well in the land of digital rights. I've been using Movielink for about a year. I'm a fully authorized user with purchased or rented material -- Vista however gave me an extreme hassle over "Digital Rights" to the material I purchased last week. I had to research the issue and go to a MS site to download a DRM patch to make it work. I naively thought that the drivers of XP and Vista would be highly similar. My new PLUSTV USB stick disabused me of that idea. The same device that turns my Gateway XP PC into a television will turn my HP Vista into a dead computer with the fabled "blue screen of death". To its credit Vista does warn you at installation: "You should get the Vista Driver at the manufacturer's site. Proceed at your own risk". The HP was revived by a reboot and removing the offending USB stick (which has no Vista driver available).

I think Microsoft as well as various hardware/software makers will wade thru all these glitches and get it working. In the meantime, you can have a few chuckles from the Apple site:

Apple Get-a-Mac Ads

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