Re: Am I the only one actually using Windows Vista?

On Tue, 22 May 2007 10:37:33 -0500, Bruce Tomlin wrote in
<bruce#fanboy.net-15489D.10373222052007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

In article <3ol453tajel7785gltu1toftahs52esa7b@xxxxxxx>,
Joe Bednorz <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

- Half a fskcing gigabyte of memory and it's worse performance than
Windows 3.1. Far more frustrating.

The poor thing. I wouldn't even use that piteous amount of memory with
$FRUITY_OS{$CUR_VERSION} and expect any kind of performance.


It's not just the slow speed. Win 3.1 was slow, but it was
consistently slow. Even that could be alleviated by some surprisingly
good free or cheap third party software.


This approach worked up through Win98SE. There was enough of a sound
basis down deep that good programmers could somehow overcome the
tentacles and write solid responsive code. (Even that's somewhat
misleading. When my laptop stopped booting into Win98 I was amazed at
how solid and responsive MS-DOS was by comparison. The difference
between a motorcycle and a 1960s station wagon.)


Since then it's become more of a struggle with each new release of a
M$ OS to avoid losing ground. (I blame an evil synergy between worse
code in both apps and the OS.)

With Vista they didn't add a new skin on top of the old OS engine.
Instead they jacked up the nameplate and put a rusted-out Winnebago
underneath. Slow, bloated and weakly brittle. Like a bridge built out
of shoe-string potatoes it's so fragile it's not a question of if you're
going to break through, but when. Any apparent feeling of solidity is
just a trap.

The psychological warfare potential is tremendous.


I've even done a number of things that improved performance and made
it more consistent. That was a trap. Yes, it's a tremendous
improvement^W change, from unusable all the way up to suicide-inducing.
(What's that Bill Cosby routine? "... shoot Bill Gates in the face with
a bazooka" - and smile.)

A user study in the late 1980s showed that users weren't really
bothered by slow response. Inconsistent response, OTOH, drives users
bug***. Vista has turned inconsistent response into an art form.


Typing into a webpage, for instance. Usually no problem. Sometimes
the response is delayed 30 seconds or more. When the characters do
appear, they do so in slow motion. (I've seen other people complain
about this on the web.) (Seeing my attempted edits in slow motion is
eerie double déjà vu. I haven't seen that since VAX/VMS back in the
late 1980s.)

Lines of characters change size, becoming larger or smaller. Vertical
lines appear between characters in selected text, but not all of them,
just most. It's like characters are constantly undergoing slight
changes of size and typeface as windows are scrolled.

I've worked with machines that thrashed heavily due to lack of memory,
or even swap space. They were easier to deal with than Vista. Find out
where the limits are and stay below them. If the machine starts
thrashing unexpectedly just step away from it and check back every 5-10
minutes.


Vista makes me feel like I'm having random attacks of Tourette's
Syndrome. It's not just that it's flaky. It's invented whole new forms
of flakiness. The buzzing mouse pointer is a perfect example. Resizing
a window requires blindly stabbing at the edge to drag it.

Somehow arrow and placement keys no longer work in Agent's editing
window. Or rather, they've been "repurposed". Instead of moving the
edit point, they move the screen (when they work at all). (It's as
pointless as businesses "repurposing" my email address in order to spam
me, and just as frustrating.)


This is why I asked if anyone is actually using Vista. This is the
kind of teeth grinding experience that must be personally encountered to
be appreciated.

OTOH, if people are using Vista without these kind of problems, then
I'll take the blue pill and happily and quietly report myself for
re-education at the nearest Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy Centre.

<BZZZT!>

"Thank you, sir! May I have another?"

<BZZZT!>



--
Links to Gigabytes of free books on line, emphasis on SF:
<http://www.mindspring.com/~jbednorz/Free/>
All the Best,
Joe Bednorz
.