[gui-talk] Fwd: Windows Vista In Review

Thu Mar 1 09:51:28 CST 2007

Why don't you buy a used computer with XP on it?

-----Original Message-----
From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org]On
Behalf Of George and Pamela Dominguez
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 11:05 PM
To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Fwd: Windows Vista In Review

Thank you for this.  It makes me wish I had jumped on the new computer band
wagon a couple of months ago when I could still get xp.  I called Gateway,
and found that they don't even have xp computers even for a dirt cheap
price; everything now that vista has come out is vista.  But i am going to
have to bite the bullet and do it anyway, since this horse is dying, and
it's not a very pretty sight!  Pam.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Pattison" <srp at internode.on.net>
To: "GUI Talk" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>; "Access-L" <access-l at access-l.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 6:03 PM
Subject: [gui-talk] Fwd: Windows Vista In Review

>
> >From: Thomas Ward
> >To: Gamers Discussion list
> >
> >Windows Vista In Review
> >
> >by Thomas Ward
> >
> >Hello gamers, friends, and fellow developers,
> >As many of you are no doubt aware over the weekend I took my desktop PC
> >apart, did some hardware upgrades, and ended the weekend with a from
> >scratch install of Windows Vista Home Premium. In this email article I
> >have decided to take a very independent review of the operating system
> >neither condemning or praising Vista, and let the facts I present speak
> >for themselves.
> >All of us have no doubt already heard absolute horror stories about
> >Vista. Same is true there are some articles out there stating Vista is
> >the greatest os since sliced bread. I think both views are biased, and
> >are not looking at both angles of this issue. Therefore, I am going to
> >attempt to take a neutral roll here, and just state what I both liked
> >and disliked about my Vista experience so far.
> >
> >Installation
> >
> >  I've been installing operating systems alone or aided by a sighted
> >reader for on 15 years, and the Vista Home Premium install was extremely
> >simple and strait forward compared to earlier installations of Windows.
> >In this regard I found Vista's installation scored high points with me
> >as far as ease of installation for a new user.
> >Basically, I began my install by placing the Vista dvd in my dvd drive,
> >and rebooted the system which landed me in the Vista setup wizard. The
> >first screen had several options such as keyboard type, language for the
> >install, and other general stuff which for me was fine since it was all
> >ready setup for a standard American PC user.
> >One other button available here was a utility that would scan your
> >system for Vista compatibility. I find this nice as it will trouble
> >shoot hardware and software issues you may have if you proceed with the
> >install. As I had already tested this with Microsoft's Vista Adviser
> >tool earlier I knew I would pass this check, and skipped it. However, as
> >a technical adviser for many home users I like knowing Vista has the
> >ability to check this stuff out before totally blowing an install not
> >aware of what to expect.
> >On the next major screen I was prompted for my registration name and my
> >company. Again a no brainer here.
> >On the following screen I was prompted for the installation product key
> >which my wife read to me off the back of the product case. Once entered
> >it was time to move on.
> >  As I recall the following screen asked me how I would like to do on
> >line product activation. I checked run automatically the first time I
> >logged on to the Internet. No big deal here.
> >Following that screen we get an option to select our installation type.
> >My version gave two options upgrade or custom. Upgrade will update your
> >Windows 2000 or XP system to Vista not overwriting your data, settings,
> >etc like a usual upgrade would do. Custom allows the power user to clean
> >the hard drive all operating system files, data, etc and do a from
> >scratch install. I chose the custom advanced installation since I am
> >just that kind of guy.
> >For those running an upgrade the custom screens I will see next don't
> >apply. In short they involved selecting a drive partition, adding and
> >deleting partitions, formatting and allocating space, etc...
> >Once I finished with the custom screens the Vista install began
> >extracting the operating system to the cleared hard drive. This took
> >around 45 minutes give or take a few.
> >Following the copy Portion of the install Vista configured my hardware,
> >did a bunch of internal setups, and took us to the post install faze.
> >After everything is configured the post installation faze had three or
> >four screens that are very easy to answer. Basically, Vista asked for my
> >primary user name, password, colors, background, and end user
preferences.
> >After I supplied all that Vista restarted one more time and install was
> >complete. It came up with the new Vista desktop theme, and the new
> >welcome center.
> >
> >Vista Accessibility
> >
> >Many of us have no doubt have heard about Vista's new graphical
> >environment. Yes, that is true Vista's user interface has completely
> >changed, and visually is totally a different experience for us. However,
> >it was not he accessibility nightmare I thought it was going to be upon
> >starting this upgrade/install.
> >Before installing Vista I downloaded the new Window Eyes 6.1 beta for
> >Vista at
> >http://www.gwmicro.com/beta
> >and burned it to a cd for handy installation.
> >Since the Window Eyes beta was lacking a self-voicing install for some
> >reason I had my wife read me the install screens, and then I rebooted
Vista.
> >Since I am already a pretty big fan of Window Eyes anyway I had no
> >issues here jumping in and exploring the new Vista environment. I would
> >classify the default graphical user environment more confusing than
> >inaccessible. It was very accessible just confusing.
> >One of the first areas I'd like to explore is the totally new start menu
> >under Vista. This is one area that has been under going changes the past
> >two versions of Windows and has really changed under Vista.
> >When you click the Win Vista start menu the blind user is immediately
> >confronted with a triple pained Window which is categorized in three
ways.
> >  First, on your left most pained is your commonly used applications.
> >This is a list view of all the programs you have recently used. At the
> >bottom of this  left pain is a button which opens your programs menu.
> >The programs menu opens up more or less in a traditional tree view.
> >Although, I noticed right and left arrow keys no longer open and close
> >the branches like they did on XP and earlier versions. Instead you run a
> >risk of having the screen reader jump to another pain.
> >One final item on this left pain is the new Vista search bar. This
> >feature is pretty slick. It has search completion which means Vista
> >tries to guess at what you  are searching for and as you narrow down the
> >list options Vista will change the possible items it is looking for
> >allowing you to interactively search for something in real time.
> >Second, we have a center pain. This center pain is a tree view which
> >once  use to be My Documents, my computer, my network places, etc under
> >XP. From this tree view you can use Explorer to browse your hard drive,
> >documents, music, videos, disk drives, etc. It all depends on what
> >branch of the tree you happen to be exploring at the time.
> >Third, we reach the right and final pain of this Window. This right pain
> >contains several buttons such as shutdown, logout, help, etc..
> >The only thing I complained about this third pain is there is no option
> >for run as I thought there should be. Instead someone at Microsoft has
> >decided to move run to accessories of all places. Can you believe that
one?
> >I didn't find navigating the new start menu system particularly hard,
> >but I did at first spend lots of time getting lost. I have found this
> >start menu is very easy to get lost in when browsing around. Especially,
> >for the first few times.
> >Fortunately, Microsoft has offered a classic start menu system for us.
> >If you go to the task bar, do alt+enter, control+tab, to the appearance
> >page you can set the start menus to classic. Once set things should
> >return to a state we are use to, and might ease you in to Vista. Though,
> >there will still be some changes such as My Computer is called Computer
> >and My Documents is simply called Documents.
> >Windows Vista has certainly become more web-centric out of the box, and
> >if you aren't a good Internet Explorer user now you kind of need to be
> >to get around some of the areas of the os at least until you turn off
> >things here and there. One of these areas is the control panel. When you
> >press enter on the control panel option it opens up in a Internet
> >Explorer style window, and is itself a web page. If you are a web page
> >fan you might like this new feature. You can use all your exiting I.E.
> >commands to navigate around the panel to add and remove programs,
> >configure security settings, sounds, etc.. If you hate it there is a
> >button called classic view which allows you to have the typical control
> >panel with the rows of icons we all remember from earlier versions of
> >Windows.
> >While this feature has been around in XP Vista has built upon this
> >concept some with the web page background. If you are a huge Internet
> >fand you can literally add google,yahoo, etc as your desktop and do web
> >searches read web mail, etc directly from your desktop. Not something I
> >need or want, but is kind of cool all the same.
> >As for the highly publicized Windows Arrow experience I neither found it
> >especially useful, or desirable to keep activated. My family thought it
> >looked nice, and with the better icon animation, desktop background
> >colors, etc Vista is visually more appealing. That however has nothing
> >to do with accessibility. I chose to disable Windows Arrow as it took up
> >nearly the double the processing power and memory to keep it running.
> >Bottom line from an accessibility standpoint Vista steams all and all
> >accessible with Window eyes, and even with NVDA which I played around
> >with earlier. Although, Window Eyes clearly had the better access here
> >with Vista out of the box and using default settings.
> >If you wish to customize things Vista can be made even more accessible
> >by enabling the classic start menus, Explorer browsing for files,
> >classic control panel, etc...
> >
> >Vista Security
> >
> >One of the new areas Vista has both been praised for and slammed for is
> >the new levels of security in Vista. Over all I think the security in
> >place is for the better, but it might not fit the general public.
> >One of the areas is better management of ownership, read, write, and
> >execute access of every file and program on Vista. Operating systems
> >like Linux have always had better management of this, and those users
> >will be familiar with what Vista is doing now.
> >  If Joe write a file called notes.txt as Joe, and Bill logs on he won't
> >be able to view or modify Joe's notes unless Joe sets the file
> >management properties to give Bill read, write, execute access on that
> >file, or adds it to the Vista's everyone group.
> >For most home versions of Windows software file management and security
> >was very basic, and as not as strict or as secure as what Vista now
> >offers here.
> >Many of Vista's detractors have named Vista the paranoid operating
> >system. In many respects this is true, but I can kind of see where the
> >paranoia comes from. Especially, when it comes to installations and
> >approving running untrusted unsigned software for the first time.
> >For example, with Vista's security enabled if you place a software cd in
> >the drive, and try to load it Vista will intercept the installation, and
> >then ask you to allow the setup to run. For me doing a full from scratch
> >installation this was very tedious. However, I appreciate the fact were
> >this a virus or other less desired program running for the first time
> >I'd like to know about it, and tell Windows to never run it again.
> >As far as the DRM, (digital rights management,) goes I haven't had a
> >chance to put this to the test. I'm very interested in testing it, and
> >finding out exactly what my limitations are and how much it effects
> >system performance over all.
> >
> >System Proformence
> >
> >One of the things that has been widely discussed is Vista's system
> >performance. Truly it is an os for a state of the art computer. I
> >personally would not recommend less than 2 GHZ processor, and 1 GB of
> >ram, to have reasonable performance out of Vista. I know the MS
> >recommended is 800 MHZ and 512 MB, but from what I have seen it would be
> >too slow to run with adaptive tech.
> >My test system was a Pentium IV 2.4 GHZ processor and 1 GB of ram, and
> >the system took a massive system performance hit after taking on Vista.
> >It's hard to make specific comparitions, but I just noticed things are
> >much much slower than before even with Arrow, and the other graphical
> >stuff turned off.With it on the system was very slow compared to XP.
> >Bottom line if you are running something in the 800 MHZ to 2.0 ?GHZ
> >range stick with XP. Vista will make your system run like a hobbled
> >horse. It will run, but your over all system performance will drop
> >significantly. To the point it is very noticeable.
> >
> >Early Conclusions
> >
> >I  think Windows Vista is a rather nicely designed operating system as
> >far as graphics, accessibility, and multimedia is concerned. The new
> >security is also an added bonus is this may turn out making Windows more
> >secure, and this remains to be seen as Vista becomes more widely tested
> >in the public sector. From my own early testing it seams fairly stable
> >having less crashes than usual for a first Microsoft release. It also
> >seamed to have a smooth setup and deployment.
> >On the down side Vista is an extremely resource intensive operating
> >system with most of those extra resources being used on stuff the
> >average blind user doesn't need or want. Vista is not likely to run very
> >well on systems more than a couple of years old. Even with the cutting
> >edge systems you still may end up getting a larger hard drive, ram, or
> >video upgrade just to run Vista. All of it adding up to extra cost.
> >When it comes down to XP verses Vista there isn't much in Vista that you
> >can't get with XP already. XP SP2 is fairly stable, reliable, less
> >resource intensive, and many of the Vista toys like I.E. 7, .NET
> >Framework 3, direct, etc are being back ported to XP. With the end
> >result the differences for a blind user is very small. Especially, once
> >we remove all the graphical goodies that make Vista visually appealing
> >to our sighted counterparts.
> >Am I sorry I upgraded? No, I felt I got a very good operating system for
> >the money, but the upgrade or switch to Vista could have come a little
> >later on. I generally enjoy testing new things, and I like to run with
> >the bleeding edge software. However, I can not in truth say that
> >everyone should make the switch, or make it soon. Vista is just to knew
> >with too little gain to be cost effective for allot of people not buying
> >a totally new computer.
>
> Regards Steve
> Email:  srp at internode.on.net
> Skype:  steve1963
> MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
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