I hate Windows Vista and this computer has been hooked up for 8 minutes.
*** Update ***
Where the hell is the add and remove programs part in the control panel?
And how do I shut the damned system down without turning off the power?
Grr.
*** Update #2 ***
Nothing completes the sheer joy of trying to set up a new computer and router like a cat who walks around attacking everything you get out of the box, rubbing against the boxes and attacking your feet, meowing loudly, and deciding the place to sleep is RIGHT on top of the manual you just opened.
Spotty
There, there, John. The good news is that Vista is an acquired taste. The bad news is that Spot hasn’t acquired it in six months.
bobbob
Give it another 8 minutes and you will hate it with an unbridled passion.
Gus
Shoulda bought a Mac.
Catpain Haddock
Come on now, what’s with all the Vista hating? Its not that bad. I mean, other than being bloated beyond reason, what’s the problem?
NewUnansweredQuestions
Add and Remove Programs has been renamed to Programs and Features.
SpotWeld
Maybe Skynet has found out that instead of sending killer cyborgs it’s much more efficient to let humanity kill itself out of frustration with really crappy operating systems?
Buckethead
I had the same reaction when I first installed it, now I like it about as much as XP. To get back the old Start Menu/Control Panel, right-click on the taskbar, click Properties, Start Menu, Classic Start Menu, then Customize. Check the boxes for Expand Control Panel, Expand Printers, Show Small Icons. Uncheck Scroll Programs and Personalized Menus.
Delia
I have a desktop and laptop with XP. They’re both in good shape and I don’t know what I’m going to do when they kick it. Maybe I’ll go with Mac. My daughter bought a Mac notebook; she can figure out anything on it, and she is the most computer-disabled person of her generation that I know.
Incertus
Anyone else surprised that Idaho Dems aren’t running away from Obama in the first place?
El Cid
I have one PC with XP and one with Vista. Overall I like Vista better, but I really don’t see a huge difference.
Click the colorful windows button to the left of the bottom bar, then click “Shut Down”.
The Moar You Know
Control Panel -> Programs and Features
I’m a minority, it seems. I love Vista. It requires some relearning but it didn’t take me that long to figure it out.
I do have a couple of peeves:
1. Microsoft shouldn’t just move around functionality without a good reason. Moving “Add/Remove Programs” was done without a good reason, and that is just stupid.
2. As was done with XP, Microsoft made Vista incompatible with some software seemingly just to drive sales of new versions. This, too, is pretty unacceptable.
But if you’ve got the CPU and RAM (oh boy, do you need RAM, 2GB at least) then Vista is a very nice OS.
Catpain Haddock
Just go with Vista. Its not that bad. Sure, somethings have changed, but a quick search on google will set you down the right path.
Incertus
It’s not OSX. That’s the problem. heh.
cleek
i like Vista just fine… as long as the UAC is off.
demkat620
Just a tip, you can delete the recycle bin on Vista.
I’ve done it twice now.
Oh, and considering what just happened to Tunch, you’re lucky he’s not on your head.
TheFountainHead
So true.
Once you go Mac, you never go back.
Davebo
Ya just gotta make the transition (says the guy still using XP on his laptop but who bought his wife a new laptop with Vista).
Use the search box on the start menu. It will direct you to most of the stuff you used to know how to do.
DougJ
I’m not a Mac fanatic but I have a new one and it really is much better than XP, let alone Vista.
NR
USA Today/Gallup says McCain leads by 4 among likely voters. Obama leads by 3 among registered voters.
On the one hand, this poll is an outlier and I think USA Today’s likely voter model is BS. But on the other hand, I hope this poll serves as a wake-up call to the Obama campaign. IMO, they’ve gotten far too lax in going after McCain. Hopefully this will light a fire under their asses and get them on offense again.
KRK
See, you could have stopped at “…like a cat,” since everything that follows is kind of implicit in the word “cat.”
NR
Link to the poll. Didn’t post in the last comment for some reason.
RSA
Which version of Vista are you running? (Just to forestall incorrectly targeted advice.)
OS.VS.OS
OSX is not any better than vista, especially for a power user. It crashes just as often (about 1x per month for me), and is very frustrating on a laptop, with all the floating menus and more difficult to resize windows. Add to that that more software is freely available for windows, and that laptops that run OSX are pretty much un-upgradable. If you want to go with something else just because you hate Msoft, go with Ubuntu.
The Moar You Know
Serious question:
What do I never hear about liberals murdering conservatives for their views? It always seems to be the other way around.
Noah
I know you posted the link to the leopard vs. alligator story last week, but I just wanted to say that I think it’s a perfect metaphor for Obama vs. McCain:
http://novemberblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/campaign-of-john-mccain-vs-barack-obama.html
greynoldsct00
Tunch is giving you some payback for the weekend, or he just SOOOOO happy you’re home he wants to help
Fwiffo
I swear I just don’t understand cat people. A proper dog will know when you’re in a bad mood and find somewhere else to be.
NonWonderDog
My Add/Remove programs is in [Control Panel] -> [Programs] -> [Uninstall a Program]. The new control panel is lots more sane than the classic view, which was just a mess. “Shut Down” is in the pop out menu at the bottom right of the start menu. It goes [sleep] [lock] [arrow], and the arrow opens up a menu with the list of shut down/log out options. Hibernate actually works in Vista, too, if that’s your thing.
Vista took a day or so to get used to, but I like it a lot more than XP. Everything is a bit faster and smoother, and DX10 is very useful for PS2 emulation (even if there aren’t any other uses for it yet). The sidebar is semi-useful too–look for “calculatorium.” File operations were slow for the first couple days while it indexed my drive, but you probably won’t have to worry about that if you start from a clean system.
Keep in mind that I only paid $20 for my copy of Vista Ultimate, since I bought it from the university computer showcase. That probably colors my perceptions of it a bit. I’ve also got a pretty hefty system (5.6 out of 5.9 on their scale), so that helps.
DR
Suggestion: Wipe Vista and install Ubuntu…
PaulW
Next time you get a computer, build it from a kit and install your own OS that you like.
john b
i don’t know about all the mac love. my gf’s mac crashes and is far less stable than my newish vista pc.
DR
You can go with Vista, that is, unless you actually need your computer to do stuff. Vista turns your brand new shiny computer into Eniac (I’m exaggerating a little; maybe an i386?)…
No really… Vista’s performance is simply atrocious. Get a Mac, or install Ubuntu on what is currently nothing but a doorstop.
Oh and btw, M$’s Vista shipment numbers are completely bogus. Most corporate users buy new computers with Vista, wipe it off, then install XP. Few if any corporate users have any instance of Vista running; and there’s a good reason for that.
Joshua Norton
I forget where I read it, but I came across an observation that it was really a paradox as to why so many writers are cat people. It’s much easier to work with a herd of water buffalo in the room than one cat. So funny and so true.
Paul L.
For those outraged over Dr. James Hansen “silencing” by the Bush Administration.
Roy Spencer Congressional Testimony
Oregon Guy
I’m an asshole. I just bought a MacBook on Sunday and am still enthralled (although I’m still getting used to the OS).
John
I really hated Vista when I first got my new computer, but now it’s been about 8 months and I’m pretty used to it – can’t think of any particular ways where it’s worse than XP.
What is still kind of annoying is Office 07. I’m starting to appreciate its improvements on Office 03, but it takes a lot of getting used to.
Warren Terra
I put a comment in this Open Thread about how if John intends to honor his promise to upgrade the site in July his time is running short, but the comment seems to have gone kablooie. Fitting, somehow.
JR
Forget Vista, play with the cat. Five minutes with a kitty will give you more happiness and satisfaction than a year fighting with this POS OS. Plus, I find that once you start paying attention to a cat they usually leave you alone fairly quickly–again, unlike Vista.
Joshua Norton
You’ve got that right. Our lawfirm has 2500 national users and we’re not about to try to rebuild our desktop images just to use Vista – which isn’t even compatible with half the programs we currently use. Bring the new PC in, reimage with the old XP desktop and ship it out.
Tax Analyst
But they DID have a good reason…Marketing wanted to show off our brand-new, spiffy features. Yes, this is stupid, but it’s probably the reason MicroSoft did it. I once worked for a software company that created a new “View” because other software companies with the same type product had it. So when the user’s got their new update it was set to “Default” to that new view. Guess what? Yup. Support was immediately innundated with calls asking what we did to the program and how to get back to a view they knew how to use. It was still there, we just had to show them how to change the Default back. Still, we were SUPPOSED to explain and then show them why the new view was so much better so they would be dazzled and pleased with it. No, most of them didn’t want to be dazzled and pleased with a “new view”, they just wanted to get rid of the intruder and get back to a view they already were comfortable with and knew how to use so they could get back to work. And in case you are wondering – Yes, Marketing had prevailed upon Development to do this without even mentioning it to Support…we could have told them what would happen…if they had been remotely interested in our opinion and experience.
NR
Are the TL commenters getting dumber, or just louder?
Cain
You should consider getting an Ubuntu Linux OS from Best Buy. ;)
cain
chopper
obama’s bounce from his trip is quite noticable. the media is going to go on a bender in the next few weeks to try to at least portray the race as close as hell.
Conservatively Liberal
Vista sux. Protected Media Path in Vista sux. Gaming with all the eye candy on in Vista sux. I ran Vista Ultimate for a week and put XP Pro back on the system, it sucked that bad.
If you do high end video editing/DVD-HD compositions, you want all the horsepower you can get to get the job done. Vista sucks that right out the window. Same with gaming performance, Vista is nothing compared to what XP can still do.
Vista is bloated, the OS footprint is huge and the resources it demands just to idle are high. Software compatibility is bullshit, same with the hardware compatibility.
Vista just sux.
gil mann
I’ve had Vista since it launched and I, too, found it somewhat frustrating at first.
Now I find it absolutely infuriating and frequently fantasize about strangling it to death with a USB cable.
Oh, Windows Vista. If only you had a neck.
BethanyAnne
I love my iMac. When I was playing with Win and Mac, I found that I had a headache at the end of days that I spent on the Windows box. That didn’t happen weth my Mac. I’m not sold that it’s “better in every way”, but I’d go so far as to say “Made by folk that actually gave a damn.”
And, since it’s an open thread, and I saw Neil Peart posting the other day… :-) I didn’t see if Rush playing Tom Sawyer on Rock Band had been linked here.
At the very end you can hear Geddy Lee say “I’m gonna go join another band”. Hehehe
Litlebritdifrnt
I would predict that said cat will be sleeping in one of said boxes round about now. It’s in the “cat union rules” that if there is an empty box around, any box, no matter what size, cat is required to get in it and go to sleep, usually around the time their hoomim decides to throw said box away, otherwise they will be drummed out of the cat union. Dems da rules.
John H. Farr
Why on earth did you buy a new PC, when a decent new Mac will run Vista FASTER than whatever PC you bought?
Martin
Good choice. I have a MacBook Pro and have VM Fusion and XP running as well. It works great for the brief periods that I want to run it and then it goes away when it pisses me off. Even better, I save XP images to my backup machine so if one gets fucked (virus, corrupted, just gets screwy), I just copy my last image over and move on.
VMWare has a feature called ‘Fusion’ that eliminates the XP desktop and just presents the Windows application windows as though they were Mac windows (with XP controls). So you can put XP/Mac windows side by side and the Windows task bar items show up in the dock, mixed in with your Mac items. If you can blank out the XP interface bits, you don’t even realize you’re running two operating systems. It’s very slick and XP apps run nearly full-speed (The Mac runs on one core, Windows on the other, so individual programs usually go full speed, but if you are running a bunch of stuff, it’ll slow down a bit sooner).
But with the Mac (are you listening, John?) you really don’t have to give anything up at all. Hell, toss a Ubuntu image in VMWare if you really want (though I don’t know why you’d bother with Mac OS X being UNIX).
BethanyAnne
*nods at Litlebrit*. Yeps, cat union rules are serious business. The Geneva Catventions, I call it. My 2 represent Meowmore, the breeds formerly known as Purrma… *ducks*
Ed in NJ
Huff Post does a good job of breaking down the inanities of this poll. In a nutshell, Obama leads by 3 amongst registered voters, but the poll getting the most play is likely voters. The unlikely voters dropped from the count fell to Obama 61-7. In other words, they felt that 16 percent of Obama voters were unlikely to vote, and only 2 percent of McCains voters were unlikely voters.
Patrick Briggs
Should have taken better care of the cat
OR
The cat shouldn’t have closed the door on itself.
Either way, the cat blames you and is showing it, so it seems.
Dreggas
I love my vista box. Only problems I have had was one harware compatibility issue that wasn’t really that big of a deal. Of course I bought a machine specifically for gaming that was tweaked by the people who built the box so I haven’t had the issues some have reported such as “would you like to run this program?” etc.
Delia
This isn’t it at all. It’s much simpler. I have a dog and two cats and I will tell you the truth. If your writing is on a roll some fine afternoon and you’re going great, your cat will not come up to you, stick her nose in your lap, look up at you with great, sad eyes, and beg to be taken out on a nice long walk, thus breaking your concentration and ruining the rest of the afternoon for writing. A dog will do it every time.
Oregon Guy
I think that cats get the shaft by most people. This generation believes that dogs are cool and that cats are shifty. I’ve had cool cats and shifty dogs. I like both breeds, personally.
joe in oklahoma
one word: macbookpro
rachel
LOL Vista. :D
AnneLaurie
I swear I just don’t understand cat people. A proper dog will know when you’re in a bad mood and find somewhere else to be.
Only thing worse than trying to assemble anything with a cat being “helpful” is trying the same thing with the “assistance” of 40 or 60 or 110 pounds of DOG. A cat may get under your feet, sit on the manual you’re trying to read, and put a foot through the single most vital piece of paperwork; a dog will do all the same things, and follow up by chewing up and/or swallowing something small and essential and unreplaceable. When you swear at a cat, they get all huffy and go away. When you swear at a dog, either he tries to make it up to you by crawling into your lap & slobbering on your glasses, or he rolls over and fear-piddles on yet another important and non-water-resistant component.
Chuck Butcher
I’ve had Vista for over a year, other than finding some things when I looked for where it used to be (xp, 98SE, 98, etc.) I’ve had no issues with it. Office Pro 03 works on it, I don’t know if 07 would work better. Vista Ultimate can do a hell of a lot more than I have equipment or etc for.
I like it.
cleek
a cat will nearly always be somewhere else.
ResumeMan
I felt like I dodged a bullet at work last week.
I’ve been going out of my way in my life to avoid ever having to use Vista. I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop and server box at home, making sure I can get comfortable with it so when I need a new computer I can just smoothly buy a Ubuntu-loaded one and skip Vista.
So last week my company issued me a new laptop to replace my wheezy 4-year old desktop. I opened the lid and looked in horror at the “Microsoft Vista” sticker next to the touch pad!
But when I fired it up, that comforting “XP” popped up. As alluded upthread, my company must flash XP on all their new machines.
Whew! Hopefully this one will last untill Win7 is up and has the kinks out of it (and, of course, hopefully Win7 won’t suck as hard as Vista…)
Mona
John, I bought a moderately expensive new computer system from a local guy in January, built to my specs. After listening to many, many tech-savvy folk, I chose Windows XP, not Vista. Virtually everybody told me Vista sucked. XP will be supported for many years to come, and when Vista has its bugs worked out, then I may consider switching.
FDRLincoln
Two years ago we bought a new printer.
We bought a new computer with Vista this spring. Turns out that there is no Vista driver for our printer, and neither the printer company nor Microsoft intends to make one. We asked some people for help in getting the printer to work with Vista, and the answer was “buy a new printer.”
So, we wiped off Vista off the system and installed XP. Problem solved.
Delia
Proper dog? What is this “proper dog” of which you speak? A Japanese robot? All dogs I know are the ultimate co-dependents and have one extreme reaction or another to their owner’s bad mood. AnneLaurie just touched the surface. Once I yelled at my dog when he was about a year old and he started grabbing every throw rug in the house and running through all the rooms with them in a frantic fit until I caught him and held him to calm him down. Another time we were out walking and we past a car pulling out of its driveway. The guy was screaming his head off at his girlfriend. My dog started barking like mad at this stranger’s display of anger. If you have a dog pack so the animal can bond with them instead of you, it might work, but then you’ve got yourself another whole set of issues.
Don’t get me wrong. I love dogs. But they require a whole lot more time, attention, and energy than cats. John would never have been able to just fill some bowls with food and water and leave his apartment for the weekend if he’d had a dog to take care of.
John Cole
A.) I am already really liking Vista. Seems to be working smoothly now that I know what I am doing.
B.) I also like Apples. Love the one at work.
C.) I like cats and dogs, but given a choice, I will take the one with enough dignity to soldier on without me. By that, I mean the cat.
Chuck Butcher
Gus (Great White Pyrennes) is heavily printed on me, and then the family and then people. He has the attitude of independence, but he’s anguished if he can’t get in the truck and go to work. He can stay with pack members from work (long term emloyees) but he is unhappy – a kennel would do harm. He is much too large a dog to create disposition problems in.
It is very important with this breed to be careful what you allow them to print on, they will defend that. Damn dog started to print on a stuffed pig, had to whack him on the head with it and throw it away – it was getting dangerous for anyone other than me to touch it. (it didn’t really even look like a pig) ((150#s is a lot of dog))