Vista experience
This past weekend my PC was infected by malware and basically it keeps opening the Firefox windows with different websites. After spending hours on how to remove it I gave up. Frankly I think a lot of those sypwares or malwares are created by people who sells the spyware removal software but it is another subject.
So I upgraded to Vista hoping for a more secured OS.
I have read a lot of negative reviews about Vista and I was always hesitant to upgrade but so far the experience has been quite positive.
The PC I am running Vista on has Intel Dual core processor and 3G ram on it so I didn’t feel a slight slowdown while running applications on Vista. As a matter of fact, I feel everything is a bit faster than XP.
The graphic interface is quite nice and there are certainly a lot of improvements. It seems to me Microsoft also borrowed some ideas from Max OS X, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
A lot of people are complaining about the Vista’s User Account Control (UAC) security prompt. Basically you get a lot of popups when you try to install something or run something that needs to open a port or changes system files. Yes it is annoying but I am not too much bothered by it, as long as it really helps to protect my system (fingers crossed 
).
The areas that I think can be improved:
Why so many versions? “Home”, “Business”, “Premium”, “Ultimate”…they are just confusing. The pricing ladder can probably help Microsoft targeting different users and make more money but too many version also create more work on marketing and support.
The UAC is there for a reason but it can be designed better. I know it is not Unix so “sudo” command is not an option but maybe something cleverer so less users will choose to disable it after installation?
Sometimes Vista feels clunky to use. Possiblly because it is designed to incorporate the new features and the old ones so there are many ways to get to the same destination. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and Mac OS shows. Maybe WIndows 7 addresses this issue better?
I have only used it for a week so I can’t say for sure Vista’s improved security really delivers. Hopefully I didn’t waste my time and money to upgrade.
Update:
One big hassle that I ran into using Vista is the “safely remove the USB drive” feature. I have a Seagate portable hard drive and I used to use the “safely remove hardware” icon on the toolbar in XP to make sure the data doesn’t get corrupted when unplugging it from USB port. But the feature doesn’t work well in Vista. The icon is still available but Vista always tells me “it is in use and close any program or window that might be using the device…”. I tried some suggestions such as disabling the caching but it didn’t work. Finally I found this Drive Tool page that really saved my time. Thank you Uwe Sieber!