Windows Vista: One year on

In regards to operating systems it's awfully fashionable to bash Microsoft almost as much as it is to praise Apple, usually without recourse to common sense. In many cases neither is deserved — regardless, building an OS is a colossal undertaking, requiring many resources and persistence of vision. This is not an easy, "pop down to the store for lunch" sort of task. And yet one year on, Microsoft has still failed to deliver.

I first installed Vista in November 2006 and it's been my primary operating system since.

Good lord, this is sounding like an alcoholic's anonymous meeting already.

Despite being ridiculously late, not including WinFS, Powershell and a bunch of other features, featuring a mercifully downgraded Palladium and the amazingly frustrating UAC (Do you want to run this program? Are you sure? Are you really sure? Perhaps you should triple check), I held out hope that Vista would develop into something important.

There were whispers that it'd possibly be the last Windows distributed on hard media, that under the hood it was a brand new engine, that it was modular enough for internet updates to allow huge swathes of changes.

It certainly needed them, seeming to offer not much more than an accelerated shiny interface (ooh!), a disk crunching indexing feature for search (ugh!) and the spectacularly useless Flip3D, a dismal attempt at aping Apple's Exposé without the usability (argh!). In fact the only feature I found impressive was the quick access search in the start menu, something that can be replaced easily with the superior Launchy, which, incidentally, will run just fine on XP.

And why should Vista be any different to previous versions of Windows? I've been a user since 3.1, and each major release has followed a similar pattern — a bunch of changes under the hood, greater device support, broken programs, lots of swear words, a period of dual booting, and stability issues. Each has been, inevitably, slower than the last. Each time there was the usual tirade from journalists calling it terrible, either not remembering that with the last release exactly the same thing happened, or cynically trying to boost their own shelf sales or hits.

Most of the problems were overcome with time and updates, the speed issues bypassed with newer hardware. With the exception of the abominable Windows ME, each Windows OS was a success upon the last.

The last time Microsoft really got it right was Windows 2000, although it took two service packs to get gaming compatibility going. Activation, separated Media Center app and garish Luna theme aside XP wasn't too bad either once the second service pack was applied, and became the reasonably robust platform most of the world is using today. Unlike 2000 though, it marked the start of Microsoft veering off course. Security at the expense of usability. DRM and corporate spyware. Looks over functionality.

Vista's biggest issue from the start was easily identifiable: the lack of compelling reason to upgrade. The stripping out of killer features meant it offered not much more than Windows XP, and of course the usual Windows OS teething problems meant "The wow starts now" became "The ow starts now". The ramped activation requirements didn't help either. Unfortunately not much has changed in the year that has passed since its release.

Its major draw card is still the exclusive support for DirectX 10, but it will be a long time before games are DirectX 10 only (and even then, supported games are being hacked to get around Vista exclusivity). The eye candy can be by and large added to XP as well, with a few limitations. Some have gone so far as to hacking the OS, but I'd fear what that'd do to stability, let alone Windows Update.

Is there something appealing about Vista? Sure. It certainly handles error recovery more gracefully, which is fortunate as Internet Explorer 7 crashes repeatedly, although I suspect that's something to do with Flash video. Plus if you open too many tabs, new links won't open, download dialogs come up empty, and everything in the application gets covered with a big black square, occasionally flickering the web page behind it as you move the mouse around. I've yet to determine how many tabs are too many — sometimes it's two, other times it's 30. IE7 on Windows XP exhibits neither issue. Perhaps it's time for the good ol' Windows wipe and reinstall.

Right now in the world, a zealot is screaming "use Firefox!". I prefer IE7 — at least on XP. I know, I know, shoot me. Perhaps Firefox 3 will convince me.

I won't start on the design issues or long term Windows bugs, or writing this column will become my full time job. Needless to say the sidebar is pants and the weather gadget has told me it's been 13 degrees Celsius for months on end.

The trend of not delivering on promises continued with Vista's launch as well — Media Player integration with the Sanity Music store didn't happen (although Soundbuzz seems to have ended up there in its place), and sending photos to print at Kodak has disappeared into the ether.

So have we made any progress in a year? Well, NVIDIA and Creative finally have passable drivers (but don't read the documentation, you'll pass out at the number of missing features), and there's been the usual compatibility, stability and issue fixes. That's about it; nothing to increase Vista's value proposition.

And don't get me started on the Vista Ultimate Extras. They've been few and far between, mostly useless except for Bitlocker, and quite frankly if the newly announced Vista Plus pack doesn't fit under the free Ultimate Extras banner, we'll know Microsoft has run well and truly off the rails, down the ditch and into the lake.

Given that Vista is still having teething issues with gaming, I've recently been playing with another OS largely pointless for gaming — Mac OS X. So far (despite the malnourished Finder as a file manager) I'm finding it a much better experience than Vista, and if I want to flex my power muscles, there's a perfectly wonderful console sitting underneath to do so.

It's compelling to your wallet too. Jobs' mob may completely overprice their hardware, limit your hardware choices, charge for what are essentially service packs and give away your right to high-end gaming (unless you want to dual boot with Windows, but then you're just doomed to repeat the same problems), but I'm almost willing to live with that.

Let's look at the biggest selling points — the PC looks to be losing gaming importance as the slow and inexorable march towards consoles continues, and the fully featured, non-hobbled OS X runs at a measly AU$158, in spite of Apple's drastically smaller market share. Sure Leopard has its problems, but it currently holds more promise than Vista. The expensive hardware can be avoided too, if you're willing to dabble on the wild side and run OS X on perfectly ordinary PC hardware, even if the legalities are dubious at best.

With this in mind, and taking into account Vista's crazy prices, I've come up with this handy dandy table that pretty much sums up the current situation:

Operating System	Price (AU$)	Copies of OS X this will buy	How crippled is it?
OS X	$158		Not crippled. Not great for gamers. Some other weaknesses, but otherwise quite good.
Vista Home Basic	$342		Quite crippled, doesn't even have Aero. Not good for anyone.
Vista Home Premium	$405		Good compromise features wise, except for businesses. Comparatively good price to XP. Sadly little compelling reason to upgrade.
Vista Business	$515		No Media Center. No compelling reason to upgrade from XP. More expensive.
Vista Ultimate	$673		Not crippled, but Ultimate-ly not worth it.

Source of Vista pricing: CitySoftware

The picture gets even worse if you're technically minded and take Linux into account.

Okay, the above might be slightly unfair. Boxed copies of XP Professional still go for around AU$500 if you can find them (thanks, Staticice!), and OEM costs are vastly cheaper for all concerned. In both cases Windows Vista Home Premium scores better than XP, and so appears a good deal. Those who use a laptop for both personal use and work should probably opt for Vista Business, which doesn't cost that much more and Media Center is unlikely a deal breaker for most. There's even upgrade bundles, which Apple doesn't offer at all, so it's not all doom and gloom. Still, there's nothing ultimately persuading there to make the move. The volume licensing scene might be different — but I'm not in a position to comment from that perspective.

It's sad that one year later, Vista isn't much further along than when it started, apart from the perpetually released security updates and compatibility roll-ups. It seems Microsoft is so hung up on security that they've forgotten about usability. Even the first service pack is looking like a phone-in, a simple patch roll-up to convince businesses to jump on board.

With development videos already flying around on Windows 7 and the recent service pack tests, the message is that not only is the public not putting faith in Vista, but neither is Microsoft. Oddly, Microsoft's profits are saying otherwise, although this could be because Vista is the default OS on the majority of new machines — there's certainly no stat for how many people wiped it off. Perhaps the current 6:1 advantage in XP's favour through Steam's surveys is a little more accurate an indicator, as is the business sector. For now, as long as Vista remains murky, I'm going to keep exploring the alternatives — if Windows 7 is a farce, consider me switched.