[gui-talk] Fwd: Windows Vista In Review

Thu Mar 1 10:16:18 CST 2007

You'll not only get used to Vista but it has some advantages over XP.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Good, John" <John.Good at city.pittsburgh.pa.us>
To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 01, 2007 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Fwd: Windows Vista In Review

| 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
| > _______________________________________________
| > gui-talk mailing list
| > gui-talk at nfbnet.org
| > http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk
|
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