Vista...oh boy!

So a few weeks back I got my hands on a recent beta version of Windows Vista at work. We're pretty sure we're not going to be migrating our 500+ workstations anytime soon because none of the workstations, even the ones recently purchased, meet the hardware requirements. The big problem being video card compatibility. Vista is very picky about what cards it does and does not support.

I've installed windows thousands of times, from my time as a bench tech working in 3.1 to 9x, working for a major pc manufacturer as the lead windows OS test technician for a line of high end engineering workstations with NT, 2k and XP in 13 languagees. I've worked on major migrations for telecomms, transportation and financial institutions for Y2k migrations to windows NT building workstation images for thousands of users.

And I'm here to tell you why MS has raised the bar so high on video hardware required for Vista...

Because they have replaced the dos style blue background installation screens with very pretty and high resolution graphics akin to what you see after first boot.

You know the part where you work with partitions and load mass storage drivers? Where the system copies files for the first boot from the HDD? The part that the end user 99% of the time NEVER sees? Yes, that part! So, chuck those fairly new P3 and P4 pc's out the window because the new windows OS needs a video card with native proprietary graphics support so the installation will LOOK PRETTY.

Fear not minions! I was able to fairly easily get it to install on one of our old Optiplex 260's with a PCI Matrox video card. It wasn't "pretty" but once installed sure enough, I was able to go back in and turn off all the resource hogging "look and feel" "features" and get the desktop back to a clean, slick usable interface very reminiscent of Win2k.

I haven't had too much time to dig into the newer features of Vista but here is what I have found.

IT Technicians will need to grow a third arm with an eye in the palm of its hand to use the full disk encryption they've been promising. Talk about a messy path, it's horrible. I feel fairly confident I can do it machine to machine but it makes the process of mass replicating a system image to multiple workstations quite a nightmare.

One feature I do like is the clickable full path header in the explorer windows. One of the first things I do in XP is go into the folder view options and enable "show full path in the title bar" so I can actually tell where I'm browsing. In Vista it's default and each directory in the path is hot linked. Say you're in C:\documents and settings\rex\desktop\download\torrents\completed - up in the title bar of the explorer window I could click on "rex" in the display and it will navigate me there. A bit simpler than clicking "up,up,up,up" and more reliable than "back,back,back,back" which may not take you where you really think you're going.

I'm sure there are some other good features, and some really bad ones I'd imagine as well. I may be wrong about the video requirements but have had NO problem with an old spec video card once I struggled through the nearly unusable installation. I wonder how much longer the Vista install is because of all the graphics and shit that load during those initial boot from CD setup stages - and I wonder who at microsoft thought ANYBODY would want it.

Maybe they're just trying to make the Vista OS easier for end users to install by making it less cryptic. That's all well and good but takes me back to the loss of flexibility and performance that seems to be Microsoft's common practice. I'm tired of having to work around "usability" features installed for stupid people when 90% of windows installations are going to be handled by technical professionals. I think these features should be available for OEM's to include on their systems for when they ship em off to the end users.

Here's an idea - maybe someone at Microsoft will listen some day.

Instead of trying to pack every feature, every compatibility, every option into a single package you should sell windows as a clean, efficient stand alone OS. Provide those usability, compatibility and feature tools as downloads to people that purchase it. Don't ship us a resource hog that we have to strip to meet our needs. SIMPLIFY THE OS - it will do more to decrease install time, drive users to your website and spark innovation in your user base.

Instead of IT teams getting new windows PC's and spending time removing useless features that may or may not conflict with the utilities and applications we need to install for our business that are one step outside of the "microsoft experience" we should be able to put together a package of add on's downloaded from the site and install it manually or through group policy.

Clean, efficient, crapware free Windows - out of the box, with all the bells whistles and add-ons available from your site where you can control access (genuine advantage does it pretty well) and reduce piracy.

Someone is always going to find a way to pirate your OS, but at least you control access to add ons and features now. Stop trying to cram 50 pounds of crap into a 20 lb bag - give us the 20lb bag 10lbs full and a shovel. We'll take it from there.