Re: How do you wintrolls...

In article <g42dnSiPC8ArOFfUnZ2dnUVZ_gGdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Dan Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"ZnU" <znu@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:znu-6953DA.15483225032009@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <rt6dneE9hINvm1fUnZ2dnUVZ_oKWnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Dan Johnson" <danieljohnson2@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I suggest you let Vista be Vista. Forget the menu bar and the mapped
drives;
it'll serve you better if you do.

Here's the thing, though. Here's how this process would have gone in
Leopard:

1) Connect both computers to the same subnet.
2) Turn on file sharing on the machine with the files you want to copy.
3) Click that machine in the 'Shared Places' sidebar on the other
machine (where it will automatically appear)
4) The system will automatically connect as a guest. Choose 'Connect As'
and enter the remote user's name and password.

This is apparently what Mr. Baker expects to happen; he's not trying to make
Vista behave like DOS but like OS X, which is apparently kind of DOS-like in
this particular. It was perhaps unfair of me to accuse him of DOSiness.

Windows workgroups are like a cheesy active directory domain; you are who
you are, and that account gives you access to what you have access to. In a
workgroup, you have set up your user account on each computer. Unlike a real
domain, you have synchronize your passwords manually. But once you do that,
no more prompts; you are you. It's quite nice in its way.

A PC user exposed to a Mac will be annoyed that it logs in as 'guest'
automatically. That user will find he can't access his files, and will have
to figure out that he needs to *tell the computer* that he wants access as
himself, and *re-enter his password*. Which is obviously pretty lame.

But the Mac isn't broken; it just isn't Windows.

Sorry, but Windows was shiite.

The only way I could get access to the files I needed was to go back to
the old laptop, start it in Safe Mode, use the access to permissions
that I was then given to give "Everyone" "Full control" and propagate
those permissions changes to the entire drive.

That's broken.


[snip]
The system shared the items the user probably wants shared by default.

I am quite astonished at this. Sharing the users personal files *by
default*?

There are no silly counterintuitive permissions issues.

Oh? How the Mac different in this regard? I thought they had ACLs,
ownership, and all that jazz these days.

Yup. But they *work*.


There's an
obvious one-click way to re-mount the volume with the right credentials
after the system automatically mounts it with guest permissions.

That is to say, with the wrong credentials. This isn't a particularly good
thing.

It's a great thing. If the server's administrator has setup access for
guests, then you get that access immediately, if you need more, there is
an obvious way to do so...

....something Vista lacks entirely.


Oh, and there's no file manager with both a menu bar and a pseudo menu
bar (the former of which is hidden by default). That's such classic
Microsoft that it borders on parody. Too timid to make things simpler
and more user friendly by actually *removing* complexity, they paper
over it instead.

Yeah, MS is always one for the greybeard switches. If they just dropped all
this stuff, a lot of people would be unhappy because the have to change
their ways. But they might be better off if they did change their ways.

OTOH, it does help to save their butts when they make a mistake. There was
much unhappiness when Apple introduced stacks and did *not* include any way
to get the old menus back. They eventually had to put one in, such was the
bitching and the moaning. MS puts those thing is from the start; think of it
as insurance.

Sorry. But in this case, there is just insufficient UI to do the job
properly in Vista.

--
Alan Baker
Vancouver, British Columbia
<http://gallery.me.com/alangbaker/100008/DSCF0162/web.jpg>
.

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