Windows Vista: actually quite a good OS

Finally, my company is offering Vista as an alternative to XP. I've updated yesterday. I'm happy now.

Why, you ask? Why can you be happy with something that seems to have acquired a fame along the lines of "big bloatet piece of crap that is slower than XP and has features nobody needs anyway"? Because the vastly superior user experience that Vista offers, that's why.

User Experience as in UI that is a joy to use

Why should that matter? Isn't an operating system there to get the job done? That's certainly true, but if you (like me) spend a big fraction of your working hours, and thus quite a part of your life working with a computer, interacting with its OS whenever you search for a file, write a mail, send something to the printer, switch to another open window, then haven't you deserved that the OS tries to make these many long hours of your life as enjoyable as it can?

This is in my opinion what always made MacOS so vastly superior to Windows (and to Linux). The right mixture of little flashy effects (not really there in Windows) and a strong design of GUI elements (not really there in Linux) result in an operating system that is enjoyable to use. I still smile when the Firefox icon jumps up and down when starting.

With Vista, Microsoft makes a huge leap into the same direction. Other than XP, which was released a bit after Mac OS X and looks pathetically poor compared to OS X's beauty, the Vista experience is similarly fun to use than Mac OS X. And it's interesting to see how the fundamental different approaches of Microsoft and Apple influence the OS look and feel.

• PCs could always be customized as much as you liked. Power to the people, even the people with bad taste. With Vista you can, again (after XP's pathetic selection of "nice silver", "wild blue", "awful olive"), select from multiple coloring schemes, font styles, ...
• In the Mac world, Steve knows what's best for you. You do not change the color of the window close button, and you do not change the color of the window title. You can influence tiny nuances, but not the overall look of your UI.

User Experience as in "doesn't cause more frustration than necessary"

Let's face it. Windows XP isn't good software. Not in the way Mac OS X is good software. Just look at my personal experience:

• At home I use a Powerbook G4, 3 years old. I never had to re-install the operating system, just installed 10.3 over 10.2 and 10.4 over 10.3 with the "update installation" (something no sane Windows user would do), and my Mac is running without any noticeable issue. Everything still works the same way it worked on day one.
• At work I use a rather new Thinkpad T60, less than 6 months old, and already
• When I put my laptop into the docking station, it first switches to the monitor's 1600x1200 resolution, and then switches back to the notebook's 1400xsomething resolution after one second. So much fun.
• Microsoft Desktop Search needs regular rebuild of the search index because it doesn't find outlook data files after a while.
• Shutting down the computer doesn't work without user interaction ("can't stop process 'Explorer'" and similar). Really, when I tell my computer to restart, I just want it to do the damn job. Like MacOS X does.
• And Sometimes Outlook tells me another process is locking its data file.

All this was working initially, and doesn't after 6 months of normal usage (and after installing far less 3rd party apps than on my Mac). As somebody who studied computer science I have to tell you: this is not good software. This is the kind of software that lets people lose trust in their computers. Not the kind of user experience you want.

Why do I think Vista will improve this situation? There's a couple of reasons:

• Vista is not built on top of the XP code but on top of the Windows 2003 server code.
• The desktop search is not a service on top of the operating system as in XP, but built into the OS, so it should be far easier for the OS to keep track of changes.
• The registry is better protected from changes.

Of course it's far too early to tell, but I was impressed by the way Vista handled reboots - it dealt well with hanging applications, and the only time it actually did not automatically shut down, I actually had unsaved changes in an application.

My early conclusion

Maybe I'll regret this statement after a few months, but so far I'm very impressed with Vista, and I honestly can't understand why ANYBODY might prefer the instable, security-nightmarish, ugly mess that is XP (how many years did it take to fix even the most blatant security leaks?) to Vista. It's a good operating system, guys, don't fall for the omnipresent Vista bashing.