Vista -- A Short Look

So like a lot of other folks I also downloaded Vista Beta 2 (granted had I subscribed to MSDN earlier this year I would have been able to eval Beta 1, but I digress).

Initially my view was not so great, during the first day of availability I found the ISO I had attempted to download wouldn't load :\ into my VMWare session. Once I had a clean ISO though I reinstalled and all was well for the most part.

Due to the nature of VMWare the installation was somewhat troublesome as it ran at 800x600 resolution since Vista couldn't match up the display adapter. Once installed however a quick load of the VMWare Tools resolved the issues with the Video and LAN drivers. Audio drivers still appear to be at a loss but I'm sure I can find a workaround.

One of the things about the revised interface of Vista which I think may be off-putting to new users is that familiar reference menus such as the proverbial File, Edit and so forth are not typically on by default. Most of the internal Windows tools use a very spartan interface. While I can understand the reason for this, I found that some of the placement of menus and icons to be rather unproductive. From a support standpoint I can imagine this to be a nightmare.

Smaller quirks also exist. If you look at the Windows button (or what normally is the Start button) you'll notice the menus are again streamlined. However rather oddly to me, the lower right field consists of a 3-item cluster which I'll refer to as the Suspend/Lock/Shutdown trio. The catch here is that the two prominent buttons are the Suspend and Lock, the Shutdown panel is actually a very small Right-arrow subpanel. Thus far I haven't seen any option using the Vista theme and desktop appearance to change that.

Sometimes the user protection system which requires you to manually verify changes gets a little too annoying. As an example creating folders under the Programs folder to organize your apps requires 2-verifications with default User permissions.

Visually I was unable to test Aero due to limitations stemming from testing in a VMWare session, but overall the interface changes aren't so bad that a good IT admin won't be able to adapt, but I worry for newer users or folks who are just now becoming familiar with the WinXP theme style.

In some ways I can understand the attempts to streamlining the UI but in some ways I find it a good way for confusion to form for end-users. Context menus don't always seem to be pop up when I expect and every once in a while a context help bubble will seem to give TOO much information, to the point that the panel is occluding a good portion of the UI itself.

All in all I'd imagine users familiar with Windows will not have a hard time of the change but menu navigation may take some adjustments early on.