I got a new computer at work. I don’t know why, since I got a new computer about 6 months ago, but whatever, I’m not going to complain. Anyway, the new computer is running Vista, which I guess is why I got it. The department needs people to test out this new thing from Microsoft, and I’m one of the lucky ones. So here are some of my thoughts on it.
It is pretty. And not pretty in a “Oh, it is shiny” way but actually pretty. I like looking at it. Sure, it feels a little bit like a Mac, but that’s okay.
The sidebar thing is about as useful to me as Dashboard is on the Mac. Which is not at all. I always have windows maximized, so I have to go through a motion to see the sidebar. But if I’m going to do that, why not just use a real application?
Visual Studio 2005 works out of the box, but debugger doesn’t work without some workarounds. And apparently Visual Studio 2003 doesn’t work at all. This is ridiculous. How could Microsoft put out an operating system on which their programming environments don’t work? This blows me away. And to get VS2005 you have to use a beta SP1. This makes me angry.
The damn thing takes 15 minutes to boot up. No joke. Although I want to blame this on the guy who set up my computer as opposed to Vista.
I really hate the new start menu. Everything opens up onto itself, making it hard to keep track of where you are. I’m not a fan.
It always asks me if I really want to do something. I know why they are doing this, but people are just going to get used to clicking “OK” without even reading it, so you haven’t really accomplished anything.
So overall it probably sounds like I don’t like it. Which I guess is true. But I also don’t dislike it. It really is very nice to look at, which is nice since I spend 8 hours a day staring at it. But it really is just an operating system, and I’m not using any of the new media things, so it really doesn’t matter. Kelly is getting an upgrade for her laptop, so maybe I’ll have more of an opinion after that.