Advantages

• The font rendering is beautiful and crisp. This is the most important improvement.
• built-in startup manager.
• built-in backup to DVD, at least in the business editions.
• It displays a map of how you got to where you are in the menu tree similar to the way this website works.
• IPv6 support
• Windows Defender. Using SpyNet voting Microsoft decides which programs are safe or dangerous. Then it blocks dangerous programs from running or queries you before running any unknown program. Unfortunately the fool thing keeps asking every time you run.
• Useless eye candy like semi transparent label bars on the windows, that just make it hard to read the writing, and gradually fading windows. You can configure the transparency off.
• The directory listing of image files shows you a thumbnail.
• You can buy an install disc of the 64-bit version for an additional $13.00 USD from Microsoft. You need a credit card. It requires special 64-bit drivers for all your hardware, so you probably will still need to use the 32-bit version as well to use the software for your more exotic hardware. The main reason to go 64-bit is an 8 gig plus address space. The theoretical size is 2⁴⁸ bytes or 281,475 gigabytes of virtual address space. Different versions of Vista have different artificial addressing limits. Also processing of longs and doubles will benefit from the 64-bit data paths, and the 64 general-purpose registers. (32-bit mode has access to only 8 general purpose registers.)
• 32-bit Vista supports 4 GB of RAM. However, you can order the 64-bit install CD then go up to 8 GB for Home Basic, 16 GB for Home Premium and 128 GB for the Business editions. The catch is you need 64-bit drivers for all your hardware, which might not exist.

Disadvantages and Bugs

• Signed Java Applets will not work get proper privilege to run if you have Account Control turned on.
• I had three computers on a LAN, (Win2K, XP and Vista). I could not get printer sharing to work until I connected the printer to the USB port on the Vista machine. This was my third choice.
• Less use of the right mouse button.
• Needs twice as much memory.
• When you copy files with drag and drop, it is extremely easy to drop your directory inside some other directory when you were trying to put it into the root. It is best to drop your file on the drive letter in the left panel rather that empty space in the drive listing.
• The most infuriating thing about Vista is the fraudulent alleged bundling of Vista when you buy a new PC, e.g. from Acer. It does not actually include Vista. Instead you get a pre-installed Vista and an inaccessible disk image to restore the machine to factory conditions. You don’t get an install DVD or even a repair DVD with the various repair utilities such as bootsect and bootrec. You can buy an install disc for an additional $13.00 USD from Microsoft, but they won’t sell you the DVD, just a collection of CDs or a DVD with the 64-bit version that requires special 64-bit drivers for all your hardware. You need a credit card.
• IE won’t render iframes. It leaves a view button you must click.
• It will no longer run my Olympus digital camera or my Labtek Web cam.
• I had to upgrade to new versions of Paint Shop Pro, Microsoft Visual C++, TopStyle and Opera to work with Vista. Most of these were not available when I first started using Vista. TweakDUN and the free version of PGP no longer work. Visual Slick Edit® no longer lets you drag and drop tool bars. I have not yet upgraded that.
• It often drops LAN connections for no reason. I have to reboot the other machine to get them back.
• It loses sound after a few hours. I have to reboot to get it back.
• LAN logons often fail mysteriously for no reason, then start working again equally mysteriously.
• Often displays dialog boxes hidden behind the corresponding window.
• It sometimes displays the progress bars as a row of chicklets instead of a continuous bar.
• It no longer supports WinHelp format. This was done to ensure older programs would stop working. You can manually install support for it. When you are done you should see winhelp.exe and winhlp32.exe in your C:\Windows directory. However, I have not has success with this.
• It won’t let you search, access or write the Documents and Settings folder.
• It does not support automatic updates of Office 2000.
• It won’t let you access most of your user files. It will gives you slightly better access if you go in via the account name entry on the start menu.
• It sometimes paints black on black in the DOS box.
• The AppPaths feature for putting apps on the path via the registry no longer works.
• The search rarely finds what I am looking for, even when I tell it to look through non-indexed files. You can’t narrow the search to a directory tree.
• Dialog boxes are often eclipsed. You can’t get at them with Alt-Esc.
• Deleting files is agonisingly slow. It reminds me of the speeds I got on floppies in the old days of DOS.
• Sometimes you click back, sometimes you close a dialog box. This is inconsistent and highly annoying. It introduces one of the most annoying features of HTML into the Windows menu structure.
• Vista drives you crazy with its cancel or allow messages even for very routine actions. Further it asks over and over and over. It seems to think running a defragger is something highly dangerous. Apple does a clever advertisement to spoof this with a fat man representing a Vista PC and a cool one representing the Mac. Happily is is possible to turn of this account control feature.
• The directory listing usually does not show you the fully qualified directory name. You can configure classic lists, but then you lose the nice new features. It is very confusing if you have the same file name in many different directories.
• You can’t go to the directory containing a search result the way you used to.
• You can’t copy paste error messages, directory names etc. You have to copy them down manually.
• It does not support my Logitech MX-500 Optical mouse, other than as a simple 3 button wheelmouse. There is no Vista Logitech driver.
• With only 1 GB of RAM any time I got too much running, everything would freeze. This is much better with 2GB. Sometimes many programs simply stop working or parts of them stop working. Often a reboot clears the problem.
• When you boot for the first time, it just sits there for about 20 minutes, looking for all the world like it is in a loop. It issues no progress messages of any kind. Further it reboots several times without telling you what it is up to. You can easily imagine it not working properly. Even after the initial install is complete, Vista often alarmingly sits for minutes at a time with a black screen while it is booting.
• Getting your LAN working can be a hassle. If there is anything wrong it will try to get you to set up a wireless network or a password connection. It just drops the possibility of a not-quite-working LAN out of consideration. If you have trouble, turn off the firewalls until you have things working.
• The drag and drop copy asks you over and over if you want to replace files. It makes it impossible to start up a long copy and walk away.
• Vista has no index of file names, just contents of some of the files. So when you ask it to search for a directory or file, it starts at the beginning of disk C: and linearly searches all the disks. It takes forever. At the very least, it should have a fast look up of a directory name from part of the name, the way 4NT does. I waste so much time trying to find where files went in Vista. I hope somebody implements my Fast File Find student project.
• The drag and drop copy is so inept, I call it a giant bug.
  1. It does not display the name of the file or directory being copied. It displays only the drives. Instead, it fills the dialog box with irrelevant redundant twaddle. The box is huge but contains either the same of the source file nor the target file, the two most relevant pieces of information for keeping your various copies-in-progress sorted out.
  2. It gives outlandish estimates for time required. If it does not have enough data to calculate, it should just remain silent until it does.
  3. When you are merging directories it gives you the option to overwrite or skip. It does offer the option keeping the newer, older, bigger or smaller. It does not let you avoid the copy when the files have identical times and sizes.
  4. When you are merging directories it ask you over and over if you want to overwrite or skip. Even when you tell it to overwrite for the next n entries it still keeps asking. It is like some needy child pestering you for your attention. You can’t leave it alone to work while you do something else.
  Somebody needs to figure out a way to redo copy and insert it to replace the MS version.
• The entire OS suffers from inconsistency. Sometimes the thing you want is on the left panel and sometimes on the right. Sometimes your bread crumb trail is shown on the top bar. Sometimes it is not.
• You can’t copy paste the bread crumb trail at the top of your nativgations in the control panel to make notes for yourself how to refind some nugget.
• The recycle bin has a delete option. You would think this means discard the files in the recycle bin, but instead it deletes the recycle bin itself, something you would almost never want to do.
• Deleting files is painfully slow, reminiscent of the top speed on an old DOS 5½ floppy disk.
• Directory listings of directories containing zips take forever because it opens the zips, even before you drill down.

Where To Find

When Vista Won’t Boot

1. Put the Windows Vista installation disc in the CD\DVD disc drive, and then (re)start the computer. Unfortunately the fashion is to refuse to include this disc when you buy a new computer with Vista pre-installed.
2. Press a key when you are prompted
3. Select language, time, currency, keyboard or input method, and then click Next.
4. Click Repair your computer.
5. Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
6. In the System Recovery Options dialog box click Command Prompt
7. Type the following:
   Bootrec.exe /FixMbr
   Bootrec.exe /FixBoot
8. If you want to completely rebuild Boot Configuration Data, then you should issue the following command: Bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd This command scans all disks for installations that are compatible with Windows Vista. Additionally, this option lets you select the installations that you want to add to the Boot Configuration Data store.
9. If that does not work, the boot manager has been clobbered. Fixing it is quite a production. See the instructions.
10. In computer repair mode, you can use the command line bootsect.exe utility to repair the boot sector on various partitions. It will be damaged by any XP-style boot manager, such as grub. Vista uses an incompatible style of boot manager.

    How to Use Bootsect.exe
    bootsect.exe { /help | /nt52 | /nt60 } { SYS | ALL | C: }
    Option	Notes
    /help	display help on command line options.
    /nt52	Partition contains a bootable pre-Vista OS. Applies the master boot code that is compatible with NTLDR.
    /nt60	Partition contains a bootable Vista OS. Applies the master boot code that is compatible with BOOTMGR.
    SYS	Updates the master boot code on the system partition used to boot Windows.
    C:	Updates the master boot code on the C: partition (or other drive letter).
    ALL	Updates the master boot code on all bootable partitions. All bootable partitions must be pre-Vista /nt52 or all Vista /nt60 for ALL to make sense.

    The catches:
    1. bootsect.exe lives on your install CD. OEM installed copies of Vista don’t come with an install CD.
    2. Vista Home Premium leaves out bootsect.exe so you can’t get at in even in repair mode when your machine is bootable.

Repair

Vista sometimes loses its ability to install and uninstall programs. It keeps repeatedly telling you that you don’t have permission to access some obscure file. You can sometimes correct the program by re-registering the windows installer itself.

1. Click Start and then click Command Prompt.
2. In the DOS box, type msiexec /unreg, and then press Enter.
3. type msiexec /regserver, and then press Enter.

Installing Vista

• Installs take overnight unless you have 2+ gigs of RAM.
• When you do a clean install, make sure you have room on your C: drive for two copies of Windows, because the installer archives the old Windows files. You can later look at them, but they don’t do anything. The archives are useful for extracting configuration files to patch newly reinstalled software. If you don’t have room, use a partition manager such as Boot-IT NG to expand the C: partition at the expense of some other partition.
• During the install, the screen goes blank or apparently dead for minutes at a time, which can be alarming. Just be patient and it will eventually come back to life.

Class Action Lawsuit

Vista then developed a glitch and refused to do security updates. After a month or horsing around with Microsoft support trying to get it to work, they announced the only way to fix the problem was with the missing DVD. The Microsoft support person then agreed to ship me the DVD to repair this particular problem, but it would not be compatible with my activation key, so it could not be used to reinstall after a crash, only to fix this minor damage to the Vista installation.

These three have ripped off many other people besides me. I would like to launch a class action lawsuit against them to make them:

1. Provide the promised DVD to all OEM Vista users.
2. Include the DVD with all OEM shipments in future, or sell the DVD for $10.00 USD or less (enough to cover the cost of duplication and shipping).
3. Pay punitive damages to richly reward the attorneys who take on these giants.

I could also try for a criminal conspiracy fraud conviction, but my experience with the authorities show that too would take much more money and energy than I have. So if you have been similarly swindled, please let me know. Perhaps when enough of us get together, something can happen to put a stop to this outrage.

Books

	recommend book⇒Windows Vista Secrets
		paperback
	ISBN10:	0-7645-7704-2
	ISBN13:	978-0-7645-7704-8
	publisher:	Wiley
	published:	2007-01-10
	by:	Brian Livingston, Paul Thurrott
“If one book can help you master Vista, this is it.” ~ Fred Langa, former editor-in-chief of Byte Magazine
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de amazon.co.uk

	recommend book⇒Windows Vista Annoyances
		paperback
	ISBN10:	0-596-52762-4
	ISBN13:	978-0-596-52762-4
	publisher:	O’Reilly
	published:	2008-01-04
	by:	David A. Karp
Problems with Windows Vista and what you can do to ameliorate them.
amazon.ca amazon.com chapters.indigo.ca powells.com amazon.fr barnesandnoble.com amazon.de O’Reilly Safari amazon.co.uk