Does Microsoft Windows Vista suck ? Why, yes it does.

Ever since we got a laptop with Windows Vista at my company, I keep being amazed at how incredibly sucky Windows Vista is. Yes – the interface is pretty cool and much prettier then most anything out of the box1. But the behavior and usability, especially those new access controls, is horrendous!

Here is just one example:

The person using said Vista-bound laptop made a mistake in setting up the directory structure in her own document directory – she created directory “A” inside directory “B” instead of in the same top a directory inside another when it should have been in the same directory where “B” is. A problem common enough, and a simple solution – drag directory “A” into the directory that holds directory “B”, but oh no – what’s this ? This operation requires administrator privileges – please type in the user name and password of a user with such privileges.

Again – this is a privilege escalation required for a user to move a directory owned by the user, containing 4 files owned by the user, to another directory owned by the same user all under the user’s private documents directory.

Instead of relenting and providing (yet again) the admin password, I did something else – I created a directory with the exact same name as “A” in the directory where it was supposed to have been, and manually moved the files contained in “A” to the new directory. I then deleted “A”. All with the same user account and without privilege escalation. This is EXACTLY what Vista should have done when it was asked to move the directory, but somehow breaking it down to distinct actions is allowed but as a single action it requires administrator access.

And that’s why I think Vista is a lousy operating system.

  1. I much prefer the Mac OS-X out-of-the-box experience, but that is a matter of personal taste – its definitely not prettier, just cleaner. Linux based operating system can look as pretty as Windows Vista if not more, but by default all Linux distribution, including the new (and yet unreleased) Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon don’t look even close to the prettiness that is Vista (with the bells and whistles – which aren’t available in all versions) []

2 Responses to “Does Microsoft Windows Vista suck ? Why, yes it does.”

  1. nimba:

    i heard a lot on how vista sucks and it sounds like it to be that UAC is worser than MAC(unix) and linux (unix) because anything in MY home directory works fine and I can move/delete/change/add/remove anything in there fine without being asked for a password, again like the persons above said that MAC nor Linux may not look PRETTY on the outside but INSIDE it is a Hidden Gem. 🙂 anything can look pretty but not anything can be a gem.

  2. Guss:

    Apparently I’m not the only one who encountered the problem I described above – a couple of other people I talked with mentioned noticing it as well. Both people, BTW, just entered the Administrator password and got on with their lives.

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