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Before I launch into my tirade, I need to make a confession.

I like Vista.

I use it daily, but I also use it with the full knowledge that it’s a pre-service pack 1 OS from the boys in Redmond. That necessarily means it will have glitches, bugs, and annoyances. That’s a given.

I’m willing to put up with all those headaches, certainly more so than Jim Louderback. But there were several things I was really looking forward to in Vista that are simply missing in action or broken. These are features I’d really hope would improve my productivity and make life a little easier.

HA!

Let’s run down the list, shall we?

Font Compositing



Microsoft had made a pretty big deal about their font compositing technology. A document with 12 point type would look like 12 point type, whatever the actual display engine.

This feature isn’t just for people who are heavily into desktop publishing. As Jason Cross once noted, organizations that exchange PowerPoint presentations and Excel charts would see pretty measurable productivity gains. If Ann Smith creates a presentation or chart on her 24-inch, 1920×1200 display, then sends that presentation to Joe Jones, who views it on his 19-inch, 1280×1024 display, he won’t have to fiddle around with the formatting just to read the document.

But that feature appears to be missing in action. The same issues happen today if I create a document, such as an Excel chart, and send it off to someone with a different pixel resolution and DPI display.

Easier Networking



It is true that setting up Vista networking is easier than with Windows XP. It is patently untrue that it’s easier to use. Check out this screen shot:

See that thing in the location dialog at the top that looks like looks like a progress bar? It is, in fact, a progress bar. Vista seems to want to re-enumerate my network every time I open this window. This is pretty silly. Has no one at Microsoft ever heard of name or location caches?

The system named Rivendell is actually my NAS. It’s always the last item to be enumerated, which means that getting to a particular folder on the NAS takes a painfully long time. Sure, I could create a network drive, but I don’t want to do it for every single folder. But I also can’t simply map Rivedell to a network drive.

Finally, take a look at all those icons. There are three entries for Pantheon. Pantheon is the name of my production system, and the system name is the one that looks like a PC. But the other two, “Pantheon: Backup” and “Pantheon: Loyd” are shared media devices that Windows creates when you turn on media sharing. Those refer to two different users on the PC. I suppose the musical note overlapping the film frame icon next to the little box represents media, but this certainly seems obtuse.

The good news here is that if you double-click on, say, “Pantheon: Loyd”, Media Player 11 runs and shows you your shared media. But when I’ve sat average users down on a Vista system, they’re baffled by the differences in the icon. Continued…