Filed under: OS Updates, Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Microsoft, Commercial
Vista Countdown: 6 Days - Tips and 20 Qs
by Jordan Running Jan 24th 2007 at 5:00PM
I wasn't planning on doing a countdown to Windows Vista until yesterday, and though there are piles of articles out there I could link to about Vista's failings, it seems unfair to focus on that for the week leading up to its release. Maybe I'll alternate days. Today I bring some tips and info for those who are all jazzed for Redmond's new baby.First a tip from the How-To Geek on the Built-in Quick Launch Hotkeys in Windows Vista. Here's how it works: When you have some programs in your Quick Launch menu, each one will automatically be assigned a number--1, 2, 3, etc. from the leftmost icon to the right--and pressing the Windows key and that number will launch that program. Head over to the How-To geek for a more thorough explanation. Handy!
Another handy feature is Vista's built-in Snipping Tool, about which Lifehacker gives us the low-down. It's a huge improvement on Windows 95 and XP's nearly nonexistent screenshot functionality, though not, as Lifehacker's Gina Trapani points out, as robust as some third-party tools like the venerable SnagIt or my lightweight and free favorite FastStone Capture. Still, for basic screen-capping needs, the Snipping Tool is an invaluable and obvious bundled app.
Finally, you may have heard some of the huffing and puffing over Vista's thoroughly integrated DRM technologies. I won't get deep into it now, but if you want an overview Wikipedia is, as ever, a great resource. If you're concerned about Vista's DRM, you may want to check out Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers) at the official Windows Vista Blog. In it, Dave Marsh, Vista's Lead Program Manager in charge of video technologies, says "It's important to emphasize that while Windows Vista has the necessary infrastructure to support commercial content scenarios, this infrastructure is designed to minimize impact on other types of content and other activities on the same PC." It's a pretty one-sided article, as you might imagine, but I suggest you read it and judge for yourself.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Remo said 6:14PM on 1-24-2007
Thanks for the positive post and links on Vista. The new os has a ton of new and useful features, so I'm looking forward to upgrading next week. I love the new media center software built into Vista.
Reply
omgitsdev said 8:45PM on 1-24-2007
Anyone who has any sense will wait until OSX Leopard comes out in the spring or until the first service pack of Vista comes out. Looks are not everything, to put it nicely. OSX has had most of the "new" features in Vista.
Reply
JT said 9:37PM on 1-24-2007
No use waiting for OSX Leopard... majority of users don't waste their money on expensive mac hardware...
Reply
westudi said 9:44PM on 1-24-2007
I got my copy of Business Vista in the mail today from that promotion that was linked to from this site. I am looking forward to taking a closer look at it soon, and I would sooner remove myself from all aspects of the world of computing before I would switch over to any Mac OS.
Reply
alex dante said 12:01AM on 1-25-2007
"It's a huge improvement on Windows 95 and XP's nearly nonexistent screenshot functionality, though not, as Lifehacker's Gina Trapani points out, as robust as some third-party tools[...]"
And this is what I can't understand about Vista. We don't get real improvements like WinFS, we get substandard-but-integrated versions of already plentiful-and-lightweight utilities.
I'd like to see the O/S take care of looking for and installing _all_ application updates, rather than having every application handle this itself (making your machine freeze when a bunch of apps all decide to check with their homesite at the same time). Having it as a managed process that occurs on demand or at a scheduled time would mean not having to deal with Acrobat's updater when I just want to quickly look at a file...
I'd like a new user interface that isn't an optional add-on. If you're going to change the GUI, make the changes _useful and relevant_. I hate flipping through a stack of DVDs to look for something, why would I think being able to do the same with open apps would be useful? How about trying to maximise the amount of information in a _meaningful_ way?
Then again, maybe I'm just not seeing the "ton of new and useful features" because I've already taken it on myself to scratch whatever itch they address _years_ ago, rather than wait for MS to painfully inch towards their idea of perfection.
Reply
killertwin said 1:56AM on 1-25-2007
Wicked, bring it on.
Reply
Dude Dean said 2:29AM on 1-25-2007
Station.
Reply
westudi said 4:00AM on 1-25-2007
The snipping tool is quite cool, but it leaves a red border. That's kind of lame. I do rather like the quick launch hotkeys.
Reply
Yatrik said 9:34AM on 1-26-2007
This is the first time I've bothered to look at screenshots of Vista, and it looks like they really gayed it up. Maybe Vista should include a limp-wrist friendly mouse with each package. And don't you apple guys start... The only reason windows looks so gay is because of OS X.
Reply
James said 11:36AM on 1-26-2007
Meh. The function of an OS is to provide a stable platform on which (3rd-party) software can run, and a useful library of consistent system functions to make writing (3rd-party) software easier. It can be "pretty", I guess, but that's about it. All the other crap they throw in and call a "feature" is actually just cruft that you can replace if somebody else does it better, which eventually will pretty much always happen.
When I read the original post, I saw:
- Piddly upgrade - you can already assign hotkeys to a program, you just use CTRL+ALT+KEY instead of WIN+KEY
- Useless upgrade - those of us that don't run software-review blogs don't need to take screenshots that often, and ALT+PRNSCR seems to work fine when I do
- Massive, crippling albatross defended as "not that bad"
They can say what they want, but the content protection architecture is a nightmare at best. *Drivers* can be revoked remotely. I wanted to test Vista out on a PC here at work that was going to be passed on to a lesser department because it's ~3-4 years old. It has a preposterously-expensive CAD 3D card from 3DLabs in it -- a Wildfire 4, I think. Long story short, the company is getting out of the workstation business; no Vista drivers. I installed before I knew this, and it defaulted to *4-bit color* graphics. There wasn't enough of a color pool to even show buttons as a different color from dialog-box backgrounds, so you couldn't tell where to click.
Needless to say, I don't want to be there when somebody finds an HD-video leak in the last drivers released by a bankrupt video-card company. "Sorry, you can't watch that HD-DVD you own, on hardware you bought and paid for, because the company that makes your memory controller has since moved on to making cell phones, and their last driver got hacked. Tough luck, buy a new motherboard." Two words: Fuck. That.
Reply
liam said 11:21AM on 1-27-2007
Hey, Jordan, do you fingertips hurt, after a positive post about MS ?
Reply
joe said 12:13PM on 1-27-2007
im using windows millennium and when i tried windows vista i found little if no use for it as millennium did it all anyway without DRM without encrypted hardware (what is it supposed to make my hardware an xbox???) and without a expiring license when i shift machines.
frankly, bill gates, you can shove it with xp.
lets keep resources REAL and don't tell me what i can play with.
Reply