The King’s New Clothes?
Popular folklore says that it is not until the third version that Microsoft gets a program “right”, and certainly those of us who remember Version 1 of Windows would agree with this. By Windows 3.11 for Workgroups they had something that was both useful and understandable.
Since then we have had 95, 98 and the dire ME, again becoming a good(ish) product in the various forms of XP.
Soon (although actual dates keep receding) we are due to get a “new” Windows, to be called Vista. It has taken a record time to get to this point and Microsoft needs to get some income coming in. We have been reading reviews of Vista that have been very favourable, and have been asking Microsoft for some time when we could get our hands on the software to trial.
Finally last Friday we received a package from Microsoft, including lots of new software, and I decided to try Vista and the new version 12 of Office Suite. We installed onto an Acer Ferrari laptop with an AMD Athlon XP-M2500+ CPU, 60GB Hard Drive, 512MB DDR RAM, and an ATI Radeon 128MB Graphics card. This comfortably met the minimum system requirements, though we do find problems as we go along.
My feelings are probably influenced by an installation of Mandriva Linux that I did along with a customer recently. The software went on easily, formatted the drive (including several options for partitioning) and installed itself along with a couple of Graphical Interfaces and some Office type applications in around 30mins.
Vista however popped up a Graphical Drive formatting gizmo, which, whilst it capably formatted and partitioned the drive, really gave no idea about the how or why. The whole installation took over an hour (and it needed an internet connection to do so). When complete it seemed it had correctly recognised the hardware and located drivers so, heigh ho away we go.
Well no not exactly…
- Our first shock was the dire, dreary interface, featuring Dark Grey and large chunks of Black (one of my pet hates is those websites that have a black background, now my “Computer menu” has a black background with no obvious way of changing it).
- Next is the red X on the top right of a window, which is sometimes there and sometimes not – now if like us you have spent the last few years trying to re-assure users that the best “safe” way to close unwanted windows was not to touch any “close” or “no thanks” buttons; simply hit the red X on the top right, you are mystified as to why this standard has been dropped.
- In the evening I took the laptop to a local hostelry which offers (free) wireless access intending to install the office software. Now I like to think I am something of a wiz at wireless, however Vista has certainly managed to get my number – it can hide wireless connections better than the Scarlet Pimpernel could French Royalists. It features a plethora of windows with no obvious way forward or back (and no red X). What has happened to the “View Wireless networks” in XP? By the time I had managed to discover the Access Point and connect to it the laptop battery was flat, and I discovered that Microsoft had not provided Activation Codes for the Office Software.
- The rest of the weekend was spent e-mailing Microsoft asking why we had no activation for the office suite, trying to recharge the laptop via the car charger (I had forgotten that we had used it to recharge a customers laptop and had it set to the wrong voltage for the Acer hence it didn’t recharge). In the end I went out and bought a PC Magazine which had a “free” copy of the Office Beta software, as an easier way than trying to get an answer from Microsoft.
Well things are moving along (don’t they always?) and we have spent a long period playing with wireless network access – we now have two wireless hotspots based at the ComputerBits store as well as our own wireless network. These are Free-Hotspot.com and Zonerider – we would welcome you to come along and try wireless access from the Market Place, or one of our local pubs or cafes, and you can add your comments to this article.
Yesterday evening a crisis arose – we got home and number one daughter (actually the only one thank goodness) decided to push the speakers of the Media System onto the floor in her enthusiasm to connect it up and become square eyed. This meant we had no sound AND the cordless mouse stopped working (dead battery). Attaching the mouse I use with the Acer Ferrari worked but the amplifying USB speakers I use with it didn’t!
No matter, we set up the Laptop in place of the Media Centre, loaded in a “Back to the Future II” DVD and off we went. First I realised we had not installed DVD software onto the Vista system, but to my delight Vista Media Player said “Do you want me to play this DVD?” , Oh Boy, Oh Great , you can do that?, you’re good, oh Yes please!.
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What do you mean, “copyright problem”? I paid good money to buy these DVDs from Blockbuster; Vista you are wrong!
A night without TV…..
Further reseach today suggests this problem is a bug and has been encountered by others, nonetheless this O/S is proving an embarrasment
BUT – frankly the Acer is needed to check out the functioning of Wireless signals and with the Vista O/S it simply cannot cope. This is not a bug within Vista; it is to do with the thinking behind it. Microsoft is making the bits of XP we found useful either unavailable or hidden so deep within the system that we cannot find them. We think this is their idea of making it simple – “the system does it itself” – so the user does not need to know about connection details. However, the fact is we want a simple “view available networks” and this is not there!
So… Terry has spent most of this morning uninstalling the hapless VISTA, and re-installing XP onto the Ferrari.
That means that until we get another PC – preferably with a 64bit CPU – we do not have a Vista system running. I have installed “Office 2007″ onto my Desktop PC and will be saying something about this, but for the short term Vista remains..
To Be continued…
