Is Vista really all that bad?

Have you used Vista yet? Microsoft has been taking a lot of heat from people about how “lousy” an operating system Vista is. The commonly used analogy is, “Windows is like Star Trek films,” meaning they usually follow a good, bad, good pattern. Quite a few of the people I talk to about it haven’t even used it, but are channeling the opinion of their local computer expert. It begs the question- is it really so bad?

In my observation, it seems that relying on the opinion of your local computer tech nerd special-geek, may seem like a good idea when it comes to, say, making a computer purchase, or selecting an appropriate system upgrade. Furthermore those of us who have learned many of the intricacies of the Windows XP interface, do have a slightly higher than desired difficulty adjusting to Vista’s interface changes. Windows Vista’s interface, however, wasn’t designed for people like myself. It was designed so that your average “run-of-the-mill” end-user can figure out how to accomplish sys-admin related tasks without being a sys-admin.

This was the same concept behind the complete redesign of the Microsoft Office Word 2007 interface. While it can prove incredibly frustrating to someone who already is extremely adept when it comes to exploiting all of Word’s features in 2003, your average end user probably ignores the conventional menu bar until it comes time to save, and probably didn’t know word had such powerful features.

Microsoft’s goal was to take the Settings and features and put them right in front in a plain English, “I want to change the setting for this,” kind of way. To make life easier on the common user, (which I’m sure makes up a larger market share of windows users than the nerds!)

Not to say that Vista is perfect! Indeed, it has its share of flaws. User Account Control for one was uncomfortably oppressive until they finally fixed it a little with Vista’s service pack 1 update. I think these things will be improved upon as well in the upcoming Windows release, but I wouldn’t expect Windows 7 to be entirely different from Vista. Although, by the time it releases, I expect it will be better received, since people will already be familiar with Vista by then. Thus perpetuating the “Trek” analogy.