So...do WE like Vista?

There's been so much written about Vista (yes, including here) that you can find just about every perspective of whether it's good or bad and whether is a success or failure. Just last week, Eric Lai of Computerworld wrote an article in that publication entitled Developers confirm, explain why they're avoiding Windows Vista, including the results of a survey that found fewer than one in twelve programmers are currently writing programs targeting Vista. And MSNBC writing about Corporate America's rejection of Vista. And while millions and millions continue and will continue to run XP, all eyes are on Microsoft to see if they will officially extend the life of XP.

                   

But what about our developers here at Raxco? Of course, PerfectDisk supports it and was the first defragmenter to be certified for Vista by Microsoft. We knew that whatever the overall market trend was, there would still be millions of people that would expect and demand PerfectDisk to run on Vista. So that was a given. But do the developers that write the PerfectDisk code actually like Vista? It seems that, just like around the world, there are mixed results if you surveyed the team.

To start with, they definitely like the GUI - the interface is a big step up. But besides the looks, Vista has a lot more going for it that our development team applauds. Such as new technologies like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), BitLocker, DirectX10, restoring with Shadow Copy, fast installation and on-the-fly shrinking and expanding of volumes, to name a few.

Not surprisingly, and like many, they generally don't care for Vista's User Account Control - it's too restrictive, intrusive and generally annoying. They see it as a productivity killer, and users generally don't read the security prompts or just ignore them. And the user interface rendering model takes too many resources. Also, there are various usability issues - such as too many event logs, an overly complicated Boot Configuration Data (BCD) Editor, unimpressive search and some of the new control panels. 

But for the bottom line, with all things considered, the PerfectDisk developers generally give Vista a thumbs up. Of course, that assumes they've turned UAC off and have some hefty hardware to take advantage of Vista's good side.

Now that's certainly not going to sway corporate America or other enterprises around the world, or move millions of happy and content Windows XP users. Not to worry.

      

XP or Vista, and all others -- PerfectDisk has your back.

Comments

[PerfectDisk]

Hi Kay,

Good point. You sure do need a lot of juice in your hardware to take advantage of Vista.

Thanks for the comment.

Joe

[Kay Brenner 'the PC doctor']

Vista requires a more methodological approach to program design. While Vista certainly does have the components for a secure environment, its far too consuming to put together with today's average computer hardware