Comments | luna_torquill: Dead on.

luna_torquill

Dead on.

Dec 22, 2008 10:26

This. This is a glimpse of exactly how I feel about Vista.

I'll stick with my complex, obedient Linux system with a side of Propaganda.

tech, humor

Comments 7

As I said on lily, it's not that bad. knaveofhearts December 22 2008, 18:40:27 UTC

The display resolution thing is an exaggeration -- right-click menu includes Personalize which has a link to 'adjust your screen resolution'. It's not identical, but it's no huge mental leap. And really, the UAC thing hasn't been much trouble -- it's merely a GUI equivalent of 'sudo' but with a modal function which frankly I see as a feature, not a bug.

It does what I want, and does some things better than Linux and FreeBSD so it's what I use when I'm not using FreeBSD. If the tool does the job right, I'll use it -- and as the OP said, all things being equal, the pretty tool is better. :-)

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad. luna_torquill December 22 2008, 19:01:28 UTC

Details aside (I could figure out pretty easily how to do the resolution thing), it's the feel of the piece that resonates for me. I find Vista's DRM oppressive and the permissions handling clunky, which gives it Kafska-esque overtones to me. Add in the slightly brittle, cheery prettiness, and it's... creepy. Sort of like Aqua -- I can use it ok, but the look of it (and the toolbar magnification thingie) make me want to run away.

I was never particularly fond of XP either, which may have something to do with it.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad. knaveofhearts December 22 2008, 19:10:00 UTC

I have yet to encounter digital rights management on Vista, but I don't use Windows Media Player 11 (which is the only app I can think of that has any DRM in it) so it's probably never going to be an issue. The permissions handling is certainly different than Unix which has been designed for decades as a multi-user operating system but Unix's permissions are pretty clunky as well when compared to something like VMS. Never really saw brittle in the pretty, just a mostly-successful attempt to make it easier to use than XP. It's essentially XP-but-more-so so I'm not terribly surprised that someone who didn't much like XP doesn't much like Vista.

Re: As I said on lily, it's not that bad. luna_torquill December 22 2008, 19:17:56 UTC

The DRM slapped me in the face when I had to install Vista from scratch. Not sure whether you've ever had to do that... people who just use the version that comes pre-installed don't encounter it.

If I hadn't done that installation, I'd probably be a little better with it. I just felt as though I was being treated like a criminal for working on my own computer.

"Brittle"... I often feel apprehensive about it, because it doesn't break in obvious ways like XP does. Instead it spontaneously vanishes Excel files, resets preferences, things like that. Maybe "unpredictable" would be a better term.

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