Disenchanted by Windows Vista
Ξ January 6th, 2007 | → 6 Comments | ∇ Windows |
Disenchanted by Windows Vista
Why Vista isn’t ready for the real world – by Joe Hancuff
Introduction
In the past few months I’ve been rigorously testing and using Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate on a number of platforms. My goal was to see if it’s ready to become the centerpiece of my workflow. It was… almost. In this editorial, I will be expressing my opinions and technical observations on the operating system as a whole, my predictions, wishes and concerns regarding Microsoft’s efforts in creating and maintaining this operating system and what I’m going to do now.
The experience
I’ve installed and have been using Vista RTM for some time now. In general, the operating system is very polished. As many of you already know the installation process has finally been updated for this century. Gone are the DOS based installers of 1991. You’re finally confronted with an easy to use and easy to see graphical interface almost as homage to Linux installers(which have been graphical for quite some time now.) I think what Microsoft was trying to accomplish was refine and make the “out of box” experience as nice and simple as possible for users who know nothing about installing or upgrading an operating system. This has been done very successfully. If you’re doing a fresh install that is.
Install times have been shortened dramatically and will utilize your hardware better to make the installation as quick as possible. On my AMD FX60 machine, a fresh install will take as little as 10 to 15 minutes depending on the speed of the drive, etc. One thing to note is the driver support inside the installer. Unlike XP, I didn’t have to specify any additional drivers for installing to my RAID array which is a big bonus because before, you were forced to either integrate the drivers into the installation image or install and make the grand hajj for a floppy drive and a floppy(who still uses those anyway?) and find the boot-time driver for your hardware(since you couldn’t use the Windows driver in most cases for things like RAID controllers, etc). That was one of my biggest gripes about XP, even the later installers still required a floppy drive to install 3rd party drivers at install time. Not very forward looking at all. That being said… I can’t say whether or not they’ve eliminated that requirement in Vista. Because even though the little button was there to install 3rd party drivers it was never needed on any machine I installed on. I’m sure that will change just like with XP as hardware changes and the installer versions don’t. I highly doubt that Microsoft will bother updating installer drivers. Be prepared to have that stack of discs handy to install the boot-time driver for your holographic storage device.
Post installation is simple and painless in its worst form; it really has been cleaned up and polished to a nice luster. You’re simply asked to enter a username which becomes a local administrator by default. This I found to be very handy because one of the first things anyone who’s used a computer for longer than oh… say… 5 minutes will do is disable UAC.
In general Vista is absolutely gorgeous. That is, if you have the appropriate hardware. My FX60, a watercooled and overclocked gaming rig scored a 5.1 on the performance scale after some tweaking. So suffice it to say my user experience was fantastic. I installed the 64 bit version which surprisingly enough had some fantastic driver support for my hardware despite my hardware being almost a year old. This comes not from Microsoft hard-coding driver support into the OS, but simply moving from a CD to DVD for installation media. I feel this move is long overdue as there are just too many different devices out there to not include as much driver support out of the box as you possibly can. Nobody likes installing a new OS and then having to dive into Device Manager looking for what didn’t get installed and then trying to get their drivers from the manufactures or if your NIC or wireless adapter wasn’t installed, searching for the original driver disks.
The Aero interface is slick and clean, and a lot of clutter has been eliminated. I have my gripes about where they moved stuff to but that’s fine. It’s more designed for non-powerusers and that’s where Microsoft wants to go with it.
Most surprising is that both 32-bit and 64-bit version have nearly the same support. The limitations come from vendors who have not yet released or refuse to release 64-bit drivers to Microsoft or the general public. Contrary to the case of Windows XP x64 which had absolutely no driver support out of the box and Microsoft appeared to just shrug their shoulders at it.
The first impressing is that Vista is cleaned up, dressed nicely and ready to rock. We’ll see.
The good
Here I will sing the praises of new features or advancements not just conveniences in the operating system.
-
Windows Media Center
This is an absolute joy to use. They’ve really cleaned up the interface and generally revamped the entire program. All in all it takes no time to start and has a smaller footprint than the application from MCE 2005. The biggest change was that they made the arrangement more intuitive for widescreen displays. You’ll see better organized information in widescreen in addition to actually not having to scroll as much to get to your desired media. They’re removed the limitation that you had to have an NTSC Tuner installed before you could install an ATSC tuner. So those of you with your nifty USB ATSC tuners are now in luck. Chances are that they’ll work great in Vista MCE.
The program guide is where I’ve seen one of the biggest enhancements to content. Not only do you get your regular guide with information for 2 weeks in advance and all the expected DVR abilities, you also get a movie guide which is more like a program guide filter. What it does is filter the movies from the program guide and arrange them more like DVD’s. You can sort by genre or channel that they occur on, schedule viewing or recording times as well. Very slick.
This feature by far is one of the best new features of Windows Vista.
-
User Account Control
Ok, so while I absolutely abhor this feature because I’m a geek, this is actually a really great sort of feature for say… your mom. This is a Unix-like kernel level user session isolation that actively prevents a user from doing anything damaging. In its default configuration it’s extremely annoying however it can be configured to still protect the machine and not be as annoying. This feature will help keep support calls to a minimum and definitely help eliminate issues with spyware for those users who simply don’t know any better.
-
Internet Explorer 7
While this isn’t exclusive to Vista it’s been in Vista far longer than it’s been available for XP. This is the integrated and default web browser. There’s nothing spectacular about the overall experience from IE7 other than it appears to have ripped off tabbed browsing from Firefox. I guess that’s ok, I just want it to work. The big deal with IE7 is the phishing filter. I don’t know how many spam/phishing email’s I’ve gotten with links to say… my bank, and if you clicked the link you’d be taken to a site that looked something like or exactly like your real bank page. The problem is that it’s not, and when you put your information into the page, you’re just handing it over to the unscrupulous thief who’s about to have a shopping spree on your tab. The phishing filter will alert you if the page you’re viewing isn’t actually what it claims to be. While I don’t know the particulars on how exactly this works, I can tell that with a fair amount of accuracy it does work. It will at least provide the haphazard users with at least a speed bump before emptying their bank accounts.
-
Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption
This is a fantastic new feature that with the right hardware is totally transparent to the user and still offers complete protection. This feature is more geared toward users who are somewhat worried about physical access. This would mostly apply to laptop users who carry critical or proprietary information on their machines. The basic gist of the software is that it will encrypt your drive on a hardware level. There are two modes for this one of them requiring Trusted Platform Module chip present on the motherboard. Transparent mode simply uses the key from this chip to unlock the hard drive at boot time and requires absolutely no user interaction. If this hardware isn’t present, the drive won’t boot and cannot be accessed on any other hardware with any other operating system. The second mode requires you to enter a user settable pin or insert a USB thumb drive with the key certificate present before the drive will boot. This is fantastic for every level of user. The only downside is that if you go with the TPM1.2 method and you have a hardware failure or environmental failure(i.e. fire, etc) then it will become impossible to recover your data save for government forensics. However, I don’t think the point of BitLocker is to save your data but to simply make sure that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
-
Windows Explorer
This is just getting better. It’s more of a convenience but there are several additions to this venerable program as well. First and most notably is the ability to sort and search on any type of meta data. For instance, you can search for music files based on artist instead of just a file name. You can sort pictures by date taken, or any of the data available in EXIF entries if present. This means that you can sort the pictures by the camera by which they were taken. Or even the lens used on the camera by which they were taken. And the list goes on and on.
-
Shadow Folders
This is yet another advancement on the venerable system restore. This is more or less a breadcrumb trail of changes to files. You can revert single files or entire volumes to any arbitrary point in the past without compromising too much space on the disk.
These are some of the most notable new features from my perspective. I could go on and on and on about all the new stuff in Vista but that’s really outside the scope of this article.
The Bad
Here’s where things start getting ugly for me. As a basic user who won’t be doing any sort of media development, transcoding or distribution won’t be disappointed. Anyone looking to use Vista in an enterprise environment will be in for quite the surprise.
-
Smart Cards
Remember those silly little credit-card sized things you heard about way back in the day? You might even use one now. Little miracle of biometric security technology they are. There are numerous vendors and they all require their own Cryptographic Service Providers. They’re like drivers for the cards themselves not just the reader. These CSP’s were included with Windows 2000/XP and thusly the vendors have adopted this relationship and have not made their CSP’s available to the general public to download and install based on the assumption that Microsoft would include them with each new version of Windows.
That being said, Microsoft left them out. All of them. All but two… the two Microsoft-branded basic and enhanced CSP’s which aren’t even supposed to be used with smartcards just certificates.
Enterprise customers who currently utilize biometrics should consider holding off or checking with your card vendor for the CSP’s before migrating to Vista as you will not be able to use your card with Vista.
-
Data Execution Prevention
As if this feature wasn’t irritating enough in XP now they’ve gone and cranked up the sensitivity so that even other Microsoft products “Stop working” due to DEP. This is simply ridiculous. The vast majority of application and software incompatibilities are caused by DEP being over-sensitive about what you can and can’t run. On top of that, despite the fact that you appear to be able to exclude executables from DEP prosecution, you are only allowed to exclude Microsoft executables from DEP. If it’s a 3rd party application then no, the system will insist on whining about it. This is the biggest reason why software doesn’t run on Vista.
-
Driver Signing Enforcement in x64
This is almost understandable for security reasons. Microsoft wants to increase stability by only allowing drivers to be installed that adhere to their strict standards in terms of quality and structure. The fact that you can’t turn this off on a permanent basis is kinda stupid at best. It’s off by default in 32-bit windows. What I also don’t understand is why some unsigned drivers will still install despite being given the warning while others that should be pretty generic and no where near the kernel get disabled by this Gestapo feature. Right up there with DEP on my annoyance scale, let me tell you.
-
Vender Support
This really isn’t Microsoft’s problem. I blame the vendors for the vast majority of hardware incompatibilities. The reason being is that XP x64 has been out forever it seems and the vendors have known about Vista since it was called Longhorn and have had plenty of time to develop their API’s against Microsoft’s Driver SDK(which, by the way vendors if you’re reading this, is a free download from Microsoft.) As far as I know the only difference between 32 bit and 64 bit drivers for the most part is how their compiled. I shouldn’t be that difficult to at least release a beta of all of your XP drivers in 64 bit form to at least give it a go. There are vendors out there who are cold and downright mean when asking about 64-bit support. Pinnacle Systems, I’m calling you out here.
-
Codecs
This is a huge gripe of mine as a do a lot of work in various media types, none of which function 100% if at all in Vista, 32-bit or 64-bit. I don’t understand where the huge jump in codec architecture except that perhaps DirectX 10 is still. Well, not finished. WDM codecs don’t install, VFW don’t install right. DirectShow filters don’t install right and for some reason Microsoft’s MPEG2 Directshow filter was disabled. This means no streaming MPEG2 to extenders. This seems to be nothing but damaging to functionality. It doesn’t enhance security all that much. I conjure Microsoft did this to try to battle piracy of media. If you install one of the many famous large codec packs you’ll be left with holes and formats that crash Windows Media Player. There is however a Vista Codec pack which seems to work well enough for playing. But if you’re looking to transcode, don’t bother, you simply can’t unless it’s uncompressed AVI into Windows Media.
-
Compatability with Current Server Architecture
This sort of relates to the whole smart card thing above but a different aspect. This is a good example of how they’ve made certain breaks in compatibility from XP in Vista. For instance enrolling in smart card services for using a smart card to log on. If the server you’re using to enroll is not Longhorn Server, Vista will not be able to enroll. What’s more, Microsoft has actually released instructions on how to hack the enrollment website for Windows Server 2003 with code from the enrollment page from Longhorn. Seriously fellas. For a bunch of guys who don’t like it when people reverse engineer your stuff that sure is a strange way of going about it? How about releasing an optional hotfix for Server 2003? Speaking of which.
-
Hotfixes
This is almost funny. I have a source inside Microsoft that tells me that the quality control on the hotfixes that go out the door is very little if any. I had a hotfix designed for my processor specifically for Windows Vista x64 that crashed when trying to install it. Now that’s comedy. I wonder if they’re going to release a hotfix to fix the hotfixes.
The Ugly
Alright, that’s it! This is the “there’s no excuse for this crap” section of my article. I really only have one item on here that I’m going to talk about that’s the absolutely and complete lack of any useful Bluetooth support.
There is no official word on why all but two Bluetooth profiles have been removed from the Vista RTM build. They were in RC1 and RC2 and other Betas. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There is no official word even internally at Microsoft as to why this was done. And for someone with a Mobile device, stereo Bluetooth headphones, hands-free kit, this is ultra frustrating. There are many business professionals who depend on Bluetooth connectivity for their PDA’s or cell phones and others who print via Bluetooth. As of this writing the only profiles that function in Vista are file transfer and… oh that’s it.
No A2DP support, no headset profiles, no PIM profiles, no OBEX profiles, NOTHING. Even the basic Microsoft BT stack for XP supported Activesync over Bluetooth. It’s ridiculous and incorrigible that Microsoft would just leave these out.
Word from one of Microsoft’s coveted MVP’s was that you now have to approach the manufacturer of your Bluetooth device for a “driver” for your device. The problem with this mindset is that the manufacturers have banked on Bluetooth being a standard, and instead of using drivers, there would profiles that adhere to a standard interface so that any hardware architecture can interface with the profile making drivers specific to the device unnecessary. This universality is what Bluetooth technology is all about. That any device can work with any other device, no matter the brand as long as a generic profile—instructions on what do to do with the device – exist on either device. This is why you don’t have to install drivers on your Samsung cell phone when you join a Jabra headset to it. Why should you have to do this for the PC?
(1-10-2007 EDIT: After exhaustive research I came across a bit of information that makes a bit more sense in this particular context. Microsoft wanted to implement new architecture called SCO(Synchronus Connection-oriented) drivers for the devices. This means that drivers developed on XP wouldn’t work. The MS Stack is actually quite advanced, the problem is that the only way you can create a driver that works with it is to develop your profiles on a Vista machine. As we all know Vista isn’t exactly out. It’d be nice if this was something Microsoft had decided to announce. )
Because this was such an annoyance and disappointment I’ve written and article entitled Uncrippling Bluetooth in Windows Vista that can fix this issue but it’s still a major pain and Microsoft’s omission of something that worked fine previously is ultimately an insult to the computing community as a whole. In otherwords, you shouldn’t have to read a guide to do stuff that should already work out of the box.
The Disenchantment
At first glance, Vista is fantastic and phenomenal. Despite everything it does its speed is mind-bendingly quick given the right hardware and it’s fairly evident that the operating system is forward looking. It’s designed more for the hardware of tomorrow than for the hardware of today. Vista has made great advances in making it easier for new users of computers to find their place safely and securely.
The bottom line is simply this: Vista is not finished.
The rumor mill says that there are two current OS projects at Microsoft(other than Longhorn Server) one called Fiji which could more technically be called Service Pack 1. It contains all the features and/or drivers for Vista RTM(and subsequently the public release at the end of this month) that Microsoft had to strip out so that they could release the OS sometime this century. We’ve endured delay after delay after delay. And while we understand that with technology as advanced as Vista it’s going to take a bit more time to get it right, but I think we still expected something more for our time. Vista should not have been released. It is not finished and should still be in Beta. Microsoft should be ashamed at trying to pull a fast one over us so they could get their product out before Apple releases OS11. They should have at least called it Windows Vista Basic User’s Edition because that’s essentially what it is. It’s fine and great for the family computer or Media Center. But as soon as you try to do something remotely advanced or specialized that’s when you being to run into problems.
on January 10th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
[...] Want a second opinion? Read Joe Hancuff’s experience with 64-bit Vista. [...]
on February 9th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I fully agree with you on most of the issues. We will all have to wait for the Vista SP1, until then I will keep my winxp pro up and running.
on March 1st, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Great Review, just what I was looking for before making any purchase choices, somebody to try it out for me =)
on April 12th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
This is my first comment over here. I like this blog a lot.
I liked this blog entry the most though, the way you said it was just amazing!
See ya Later
P.S. – CSS update?
on April 14th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Where you asking about my style sheet or about RSS feeds? YOu can subscribe to my feed by adding this url to your favorite RSS news reader: http://www.dev-toast.com/?feed=rss2
on September 14th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I think I’m beginning to understand now why the Best Buy salesman asked if I wanted Vista or XP on my new laptop (late June 2007). If it weren’t for my Palm/Bluetooth issues I’d still be wondering about that.