Finally fed up with Vista.

[Adrian Fogge]

I started out wanting to give Vista a really fair test, because either way I will need to be supporting it for 2-5 years depending on when Vienna is actually released.

The point is that after 5 years of continuous development and a code reset, it must have some improvements and appealing factors beyond it's new clear windows.

 

Last night, I needed to create a presentation for a meeting on Wednesday and figured that it would be a good test for me. Away from home and all my other computers for the week so just stuck with my Macbook Pro with only Windows Vista Ultimate and the installation DVD that I was finally able to make from Windows Marketplace. (See other thread).

 

So, I went back online to Windows Markeplace (yes, I know) and bought a copy of Office 2007 Standard.

 

Installed it on my finally working Vista machine and started work on creating my presentation on a new product we are going to be launching to select companies for testing in the next few weeks.

 

Went in and grabbed some screenshots of our app which worked fine. Not quite as smooth as Grab for OS X as you still need to paste into Paint, crop and then save rather than just selecting a window or region to copy, but oh well... still works just fine.

 

Next, I opened up PowerPoint and started on my presentation by creating the slides just as I would in Keynote, adding line items, everything, no problem.

 

Then came the time to add the images, went in no problem.

 

Finally, it was time to take my completed presentation and add some color to it rather than just using the black and white.

All the sudden the formatting went crazy. Fonts were still the same, and were still the same size, but they were wrapping in different places.

One minor set back, but I will deal with it.

 

So, now my presentation is all in color and it comes time to add some transitions and have my line items appear on a key press...

Whoops, you can not animate individual bullet points. After reviewing Microsoft's Help Viewer, I find out that the only way to do the kind of animation I need under PowerPoint 2007, I need to go in and highlight each line independantly and add a new effect and apply a modifier to it from the Custom Effects Editor of (On Click #).

 

Fine, just some more annoyances that I should come to expect from using a new Application.

 

And then, all of the sudden I come to the realization that when having text grow on the screen, it will appear pixelized around the edges during the effect before flashing disapearing and being replaced with the full size version! Obviously a bug, but one that immediately makes my presentation look like a hunk of 3 week old {censored} left out in the hot, hot sun.

 

So, I decide that I will just ignore those effects and go with the regular fades because they appear to work just fine (although are hidden).

 

In the end after I managed to complete the presentation and have it looking somewhat professional, I try to save it for the last time and Powerpoint crashes.

I saved just before adding the final round of effects, so no big deal. I open it up and find it all working with every effect I had up to the moment of the crash, but all of the sudden my version of Powerpoint has this really great message in the titlebar and ghosted over the slides that it is for "non-commercial use".

 

All the sudden, I am going "WTF, MAN!!!"

 

Get on the phone with Microsoft and they come to the conclusion that my registry had become corrupted, possibly when PowerPoint crashed, making the license data invalid and is now a Trial Version.

They tell me that I will need to reinstall Office, but only after I have done an OS Repair from my Vista DVD to replace the System Registry with a clean version.

 

So, now I have this newly repaired installation of Vista, however in the process I lost all my drivers because Windows decided that the ones that shipped with Vista are NEWER than the ones that I installed from BootCamp.

 

After 3 days of Vista, I have finally come to the conclusion that I am fed up and am going back to OS X.

First time I try to actually get some work done "the Microsoft Way", I find myself having to reinstall my stuff because of a Microsoft Licensing Screwup.

 

Point is that I went strait into the Apple Store with a thumbdrive to test my presentation on Keynote and PowerPoint 2004 to make sure that my Presentation would still run without needing to be completely redone. To my surprise it worked immediately in both of them, looking exactly like the one I did in PowerPoint 2007. Sure it was the copy that I saved in *.ppt rather than *.pptx. The new Powerpoint format would not work for obvious reasons. Everything still looked the same with the exception of a font substitution of "Segue UI" for "Arial".

 

Before I left I bought a few blank DVDs so I could head back to the Hotel and download 10.4 from ADC. Ah...

At the end of the day, I am left thinking that Vista was not ALL bad, it just isn't ready for actually doing anything with.

It is great for web browsing and E-mail has never looked so pretty, but still it is time to put it to bed and deal with it in Parallels, where it belongs.

 

~Adrian

[aberracus]

Vista is {censored} it doesnt let me in stall autocad!!! and i need it..

 

googling for a solution: "Reinstall windows XP". OMG!!!