webdoctor - 3:10 pm on May 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

Updated Explorers

Which many people seem underwhelmed by. It's not clear that the new interface is going to help productivity - for old dogs there are lots of new tricks that need to be learnt.

Aero Interface enhancements

Eye candy. Great way to slow down a fast PC. How exactly does being able to see through some bits of my desktop help my productivity? :-)

User Account Control

This is driving people up the wall - and a majority seem to want to turn it straight off. It's a bit like sudo with all the good stuff taken out, and a lot of MSFT eye-candy thrown in :-)

"Super User" and "Standard User" with permissions locked down from the get-go

This isn't really true. By default the user account created during setup IS STILL an administrator (albeit protected with UAC).

MSFT still haven't grasped the nettle of setting users up with low priviledges by default - they're too worried about breaking existing applications. AppCompat seems to be more important than security.

Desktop Search

The search function has a few... err... unusual features. It also eats CPU cycles, and batteries if you're on a laptop. Seems to get turned off pretty quickly by many users.

SuperFetch - accelerated Boot & Application Loadup

IMHO it remains to be seen if Vista will run as fast as XP on similar hardware. Right now it definitely doesn't.

ReadyBoost

No-one seems to have any evidence that this actually works. Some have pointed out that the I/O of the average USB stick isn't going to win any awards. Easier to buy another stick of real RAM?

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From where I'm standing, Vista is a long way from being a "must-have" upgrade.

<humour>It has cool effects which will appeal to teenagers ;-) but for those of us over 19, I'm not so sure.</humour>

Many of the features look great the first time you see them, but after an hour or so you realise that that you're experiencing yet another waste of time or CPU cycles (remember Clippy?)... and then you start looking for how to turn it off.

Roll on GoogleOS :-)