Vista problem areas

First off, this is not a bitch session. Vista is still in beta testing and the whole purpose of beta testing is to identify as many problems as possible (and fix them _before_ sending the product out to an unsuspecting public). Considering the number of problem reports that I get from my system, only one has an identified solution - it will be fixed in RC1. The remainder are still showing “no solution found”.

One scary problem is that a corrupted CD-R causes Windows Explorer to crash. In and of itself, this is not such a big deal. Unlike Win9x, Explorer in the more recent NT systems just relaunches itself after a FDGB (faw-down-go-BOOM). The surprising thing is that this issue has now been around for more than 10 years and does appear to be any closer to a solution than under Win95. OK, when Explorer explodes, it doesn’t take the whole OS down with it. This is a step in the right direction. But why, after 10 years of tinkering, does Explorer encountering a corrupted file not just generate a simple “oops! Sorry, dude, but that file is, like, hozed. Have a nice day.” and just keep on trucking?

A couple of notable problem areas that are almost certain to disappear by later this year: incompatible applications and scarce drivers. The vast majority of apps that were written for XP continue to function under Vista. But there are a few that will not run, even in compatibility mode; most annoyingly, the Palm Hotsync Manager. Users have been asking about this problem on Microsoft’s Vista forums for about two months now and not a peep from the good folks at Redmond. In my case, the HotSync manager believes it’s working over the COM1 serial port. I don’t know whether the fault for this lies with Vista or with Palm, but I strongly suspect the OS since the application correctly recognizes its USB connection under XP.

Antivirus is another concern. At the moment only Trend Micro’s PC-cillin works with Vista, though the other vendors are undoubtedly ramping up and will undoubtedly have a compatible product by the time Vista hits the shelves. I’m hoping that proves to be the case because Trend Micro’s product is a beta, too, and will expire at the end of October. With nothing else on the horizon, that means running without AV protection - a scary proposition at best these days.

One area where Microsoft has made a significant change is with system security. The Administrator account is gone. Instead, the first user account created during a clean install has administrator privileges and can then grant or withhold those privileges for later user accounts. To make matters better, all accounts run with reduced privileges unless something requires higher ones. At that point, a dialog box opens letting you know that something needs privileges and offering you the opportunity to provide the appropriate credential. I see this as a good thing and a bad thing at the moment.

This is good because you know what’s running (or trying to run) on your system. It’s a bad thing, though, because of the incessant number of these pop-ups. It’s a royal pain when you’re trying to get something done and have to stop every few seconds to provide credentials to a known-good app. But, in keeping with my earlier comment, the number of these interruptions should decrease as applications that don’t need higher privileges make their way onto the shelves.

The big question is whether businesses with a lot of capital invested in existing applications are going to want to spring for the newer apps just to get away from the disruption. Or will they turn to a different OS as a more efficient way of eliminating the problem? I don’t see Mac as a serious contender for this solution due to the expense of having to replace hardware AND apps, not to mention having to install the guilty OS. But there are some very good Linux distros out there and I can’t think of any good Linux apps that require root privileges to run. Here is one area where the good folks at Redmond could learn a thing or three from the open-source community.

Along these same lines, applications that you want to run at startup require authorization before they are permitted to launch. The bad thing is that Vista can’t seem to recall that you’ve said “OK” the past fifty times any particular app tries to launch; it continues to ask. Hopefully this issue will be resolved before anything hits the shelves.

Again, don’t get me wrong. Vista looks to be a vast improvement over previous OSs and it IS in beta, where these things are supposed to be identified. But I think I’m going to join with the folks who believe Microsoft needs a Beta 3 before going the RC route.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 10 August 2006 at 21:18 and is filed under Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.