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  New Windows Experience Blog
Time: 12:27 EST/17:27 GMT | News Source: ActiveWin.com | Posted By: Robert Stein

My name is Brandon LeBlanc. I’ve been hired on as a vendor to work on this awesome new project: blogging about the amazing experiences you can have with Windows Vista. Previously, I had been blogging at The Hive talking about my Windows Experiences there. The Windows Experience Blog will build off what we originally started at The Hive but take it to the next level – which makes this a very exciting project for me.

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#1 By 1401 (69.27.196.98) at 4/27/2007 3:10:11 PM
Maybe I should blog about my experience uninstalling Vista.

Hey Brandon, don't forget to pack alot of KY jelly for the trip. Those Microsofties can get kinda rough...

#2 By 860 (75.197.73.9) at 4/27/2007 3:27:02 PM
Wouldn't it be great if you were PAID to blog about uninstalling Vista?

It's sad that there's so much negative press about Vista that Microsoft has to hire people to blog about "amazing experiences you can have with Windows Vista."

#3 By 48398 (69.88.78.2) at 4/27/2007 4:09:33 PM
I don't care what it's about. Anytime I see the words "blog" or "podcast" I immediately ignore the place.

#4 By 1401 (65.255.137.29) at 4/27/2007 5:27:42 PM
Here are just a few of my *experiences* with Vista Ultimate:

- go to my Music folder, click the folder I want to listen to, click 'Play All' on the command bar or whatever they call it now - music starts playing, but lo and behold! there's no media player! It's not on the taskbar, it's not minimize to the taskbar player - it's listed in the processes in the task manager. The only way I can control my music is by using the stop/play buttons on my keyboard.

- Media Center crashes whenever I try to play a video. Just plain crashes.

- file copy times are insane. I was copying about 1 GB of files over my gigabit network - the copy window literally said the copy time was 10 day and 13 hours till complete. Overall it took 15 or so minutes.

- my screen jumps all the time - the entire screen will just move to the right

- when I boot my computer, sometimes I will get AERO and sometimes I won't

It's just been one big pain in the ass. And I work in the computer industry, and I'm finding more and more of my customers are needing support with Vista. I don't want to run it because it's too much of a pain, but on the other hand I need to be familiar with it to support my customers.
As far as I'm concerned, Vista RTM is RC3

#5 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at 4/27/2007 7:39:40 PM
Shoot. MS has got to do something with all those profits!

#6 By 3 (86.1.34.106) at 4/28/2007 4:58:13 AM
Got to agree its a bad sign for a product if you have to hire people to say good things about it on a blog, I haven't had many problems with Vista but I'm of the lucky ones.

#7 By 23275 (24.179.4.158) at 4/28/2007 9:43:47 AM
#4, Yikes! If you weren't doing this for a living, I'd be less worried... Sounds like you've had a brutal experience.

What is the hardware configuration you're using?


#8 By 1401 (69.27.196.98) at 4/28/2007 10:25:02 AM
I have a friend who works at Intel. He hooked me up with one of their 'bundles' which includes Intel mobo 965DWG, Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and Vista Ultimate. I added a case, hard drive (2 x160 GB SATA) and ram (2GB) - so we're not talking about legacy components here.

The thing I find interesting is that when I install the machine works like a charm and it's actually a smokin machine. The proc supports hardware virtualization which I love - virtual machines in Virtual PC run great.

#9 By 1401 (69.27.196.98) at 4/28/2007 10:58:49 AM
And it's not just that Vista has all these annoying bugs. I really think I'm less productive on Vista than XP. The shell is less intuitive. File operations such as copy and move are more difficult. And I'm not one of those people who screams and yells everytime something changes and who always wants things the way they used to be. I truly believe in progress and that anything can be made better. I just don't think it's better in Vista. For example, when I go to upload some photos to my online album, everytime I click the button to browse, the browse window resets it's view - ie: the window is small at the icons are large. So I have to resize the window and change the view to small thumbnails. I don't want to spend my time doing that crap. I want to spend my time accomplishing my task (and drinking beer). Vista makes accomplishing these task take more time, which in turn takes time away from drinking beer, which really really pisses me off...

#10 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at 4/28/2007 12:45:54 PM
I've been using Vista at work and now that I am not changing any apps everything seems to be working fine.

Pulling my hair out at first though. I feel sorry for all those out there that actually have to maintenance Vista. Very finicky at this point.

Bet the blog doesn't talk about that, or the fact that the IT guys make more money sitting around cursing the machines then getting work done.

Bottom line for business. Good enough is good enough if it works and is cheap. Vista at present is neither - XP most assuredly is. I'm not building any Vista boxes at this point...maybe in six months.

#11 By 23275 (24.179.4.158) at 4/28/2007 12:49:23 PM
#9,10, I definitely hear you on many of these things.... if you recall my reactions shortly after Vista was presented as feature complete as BETA2 was about to roll, I lost my mind and carpet bombed these forums with enough spleen to fill a pool. It was excessive, but designed to be, in order to impart a lot of thought in a small space.

As Vista moved to pre-RC1, RC1 and RC2, the bugs were ironed out, but one thing remained very clear to me - Vista was going to be great and make using computers easier for people with the exception of one group of people - those that already had very strong, or expert levels of user skill - especially those that could work the shell.

Enormous amounts of retraining of very fine muscles was going to be needed - that's what I concluded. One's muscle memory had to be reset. What was once very accessible, was scattered about and in many cases, it made no sense at all. Rhythm, timing, nervous system responses to input controls that had been baked in for about a decade would all have to be remapped.

I finally relaxed about mid way through November and stopped asking why.... and simply approached Vista the same way I had 9x, NT and its successors - e.g., without asking what in God's name Microsoft was thinking and set out to reduce Vista's shell to the largely automated responses I was used to. It worked. It really is not at all unlike coming to know any other OS, or learning and sustaining multiple languages in one's head [I still shop for food in French, work on cars and computers in German, and think in Flemish - so the exercise could be made more fun by approaching it that way. Without that, all I'd do is dog-cuss the thing and imagine Bill Gates taking a ball bat to the monitors of the designers. [not really, but at first blush I was really pissed - recognizing how hard it is to remap so many thoughts].

I still struggle with a serious personal fault and limitation - I expect people to be as interested in these things as I am. They aren't. Training new people this week to use Vista in a network we deployed last week and over last weekend was again, sobering... the users work in four primary applications all day long - they touch a tiny percentage of the OS. So the benefit of Vista for them and ourselves is restricted to how reliable, secure and easy to manage it is - all the stuff Jim Allchin worked for. So while I want to know every nuance of a new language, most people are perfectly happy if they can order a cup of coffee and find the bus stop [I really need to learn that].

You'll know when you "get" Vista - you'll go back to an XP client and not feel as at home any longer - you'll have to think about the words for "bus stop"

Is Vista better? I think yes, by a wide margin - just not in all the ways that I hoped it would be better for me, or expert users like yourself. It's better for most all other users and in many different ways at the same time.

Thanks for the post - it really helped me see why so many bloggers are unhappy with Vista.

#12 By 23275 (24.179.4.158) at 4/28/2007 12:59:23 PM
#11, We've deployed Vista to a lot of new and existing customers. It has been very easy to support from a managed systems perspective - since the reality is that most people do not use as much of the OS in managed environments [even SMB], as individual users. Similarly, the systems are fully set up, so users don't see any of that - things just work for them.

Individual users of Ultimate have responded very well to the new OS - WMC and HD media have been huge hits with them.

My big let down, as I shared a few weeks ago, is how I assess the Games for Windows effort needed to be right there when Vista shipped. It will get there, but it can't happen fast enough and a total/max effort needs to be applied to spur some real interest in the new OS - DX10 and hot new Games for Windows may do that, but they need to step on it.

#13 By 1401 (69.27.196.98) at 4/28/2007 8:09:16 PM
Brandon - I think you and Paul Thurrott would make a nice couple...

#14 By 78025 (86.144.61.109) at 4/29/2007 2:46:30 AM
Oh Dear! Seems I've stumbled on the real ID of this blogger! ... ID here - http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=39876

#15 By 1401 (69.27.196.98) at 4/29/2007 4:53:39 PM
It's funny because the only things on this site that really change are the ads. The UI is so Windows 95...

#16 By 3746 (72.12.166.62) at 4/29/2007 7:09:14 PM
Who sees ads when they browse? I am using maxthon over IE7 and don't see anything. No talking ads or anything else oin this site. Why don't people take control of their browsing experience instead of complaining about ads that they don't need to see.

#17 By 2960 (24.254.95.224) at 4/29/2007 8:02:06 PM
I don't have any weird sounds coming up, no popups, no screaming monkeys coming out of a box, and no more popups to install known spyware apps.

I'm happy. You can have all the static ad's on the left panel you want as long as they stay still and leave me the hell alone.

TL

#18 By 2960 (24.254.95.224) at 4/29/2007 8:03:00 PM
As far as Windows Vista goes, the most glaring problem I see right now is the really pathetic file management speeds.

File copy performance is horrible.

TL

#19 By 1401 (69.27.196.98) at 4/30/2007 7:40:26 AM
You got your pants unzipped or something Snicky? What exactly are you referring to?

#20 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 4/30/2007 11:14:16 AM
I use Firefox 2.0.0.3 with AdBlock Plus, and I don't see any ads at all on this site. I never have. In fact, I once launched IE and came here using that browser just to hear the annoying ads with audio components that people were complaining about.

If Firefox is not your thing, there are ways to accomplish the same thing in IE.

#21 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 4/30/2007 11:18:39 AM
Hehehe. Microsoft has to pay bloggers to say good things about Vista. That is funny. At least you have to give the guy points for being honest enough to be up front about it right from the start.

#22 By 2960 (24.254.95.224) at 4/30/2007 4:42:05 PM
I didn't think about that. I'm runing adblock plus as well.

So THAT's why it's so quite around here LOL

TL

#23 By 37047 (216.191.227.68) at 5/1/2007 7:43:27 AM
Now if only I could find a way to use AdBlock Plus to block posts by NotParkkker. :-)

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