Wirt Atmar wrote:
> One of the most unfortunate aspects of this business is the tendency of
> people to exaggerate, to try to protect whatever nook and cranny they're
> comfortable in, rather than look at the situation as the way things are.
>
> On the whole, I'm very impressed with the design of Microsoft's OS.
Most unfortunate indeed, but exaggerated or not? This situation is
trivial for a small organization, of technical people, and compounded
exponentially in large organization of non-technical people. Some of us
on this list are very educated, with lots of technical experience, and
take to new technology very quickly. Most end users are not that savvy
and may require much more than ten minutes to become familiar with
Vista, mostly because they just don't want to. So, how do you tell an
upset user over the phone to right-click on the START button, when Vista
doesn't have a button labeled "start", and that is just the start of the
problem. I had one woman call me 2 or 3 times a week, for months with
Vista problems. She is a experienced and highly respected sales rep who
had suddenly (without a choice) had to use Vista, because XP was not for
sale!

I think some people see it differently because they are so intelligent.

--
Michael Anderson,
J3k Solutions
Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst
832.515.3868

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Embarrassed to say, but it took me a couple weeks to figure out how to do a "Save-As" in the Vista version of Word. I finally broke down and used "Help".

Who would have thought they'd move key functionality to their banner logo, and it would not have a hover tag on it. You actually have to click on it to figure out it does stuff. I empathize with the users struggling with Vista.

George

Michael wrote: Wirt Atmar wrote:
> One of the most unfortunate aspects of this business is the tendency of
> people to exaggerate, to try to protect whatever nook and cranny they're
> comfortable in, rather than look at the situation as the way things are.
>
> On the whole, I'm very impressed with the design of Microsoft's OS.
Most unfortunate indeed, but exaggerated or not? This situation is
trivial for a small organization, of technical people, and compounded
exponentially in large organization of non-technical people. Some of us
on this list are very educated, with lots of technical experience, and
take to new technology very quickly. Most end users are not that savvy
and may require much more than ten minutes to become familiar with
Vista, mostly because they just don't want to. So, how do you tell an
upset user over the phone to right-click on the START button, when Vista
doesn't have a button labeled "start", and that is just the start of the
problem. I had one woman call me 2 or 3 times a week, for months with
Vista problems. She is a experienced and highly respected sales rep who
had suddenly (without a choice) had to use Vista, because XP was not for
sale!

I think some people see it differently because they are so intelligent.

--
Michael Anderson,
J3k Solutions
Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst
832.515.3868

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *


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George Kinsler wrote:
> Embarrassed to say, but it took me a couple weeks to figure out how to do a "Save-As" in the Vista version of Word. I finally broke down and used "Help".
>
> Who would have thought they'd move key functionality to their banner logo, and it would not have a hover tag on it. You actually have to click on it to figure out it does stuff. I empathize with the users struggling with Vista.
>
> George
>
Like rearranging a blind mans furniture!

--
Michael Anderson,
J3k Solutions
Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst
832.515.3868

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* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *

wow, I thought I was the only one who spent a while thinking that was
just a graphic up there. I also spent much time looking through all
those giant ugly menus looking for things. Then one day I accidentally
clicked on the big graphic and found a "hidden menu"...

There should be an advanced option you can check to go back to regular
file menus. Keep the picture menu for the kiddies, give me back my
skinny bar, I want more document space and less clutter...

-G



On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 10:58 AM, Michael wrote:
> George Kinsler wrote:
> > Embarrassed to say, but it took me a couple weeks to figure out how to do a "Save-As" in the Vista version of Word. I finally broke down and used "Help".
> >
> > Who would have thought they'd move key functionality to their banner logo, and it would not have a hover tag on it. You actually have to click on it to figure out it does stuff. I empathize with the users struggling with Vista.
> >
> > George
> >
> Like rearranging a blind mans furniture!
>
> --
> Michael Anderson,
> J3k Solutions
> Sr.Systems Programmer/Analyst
> 832.515.3868
>
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
>



--
Gehan Gehale
gehale@gmail.com

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In message , Wirt Atmar
writes
>Michael writes:

>> You are correct, the Bill Gates platform is not going away, but with
>> every new release of the Bill Gates platform, (from Win 3.x, (95/98/me),
>> 2000, XP, and now Vista) end users and developers experience something
>> similar to a blind man having his furniture rearranged.



>I purposefully develop all of our software on a ten year-old 300 MHz,
>64 MB Windows 98 for two reasons: (i) to be sure that I'm not doing
>something dumb and excessively resource comsumptive. If I am, it
>certainly shows up on this machine. (ii) But the second reason is for
>compatibility across all versions of the operating system. I can be
>assured that if my code runs under Windows 98 it will run on every new
>version of Windows as well.

>So far, that's always proven to be true. QCTerm, QCShow and QCReports all
>run equally well on Windows 98/NT/Me/XP and Vista, with one exception.
>QCShow doesn't work on Vista reliably due to its intensive security settings,
>and that's a bit of a bummer. Some machines under Vista work well with
>QCShow and others don't, and I have to figure out why.

What was true before is no longer true, as you have found. Before Vista,
pretty much everyone ran with Admin capabilities, as that was how the OS
came out of the box. Only companies, with heavily configured Group
Policy settings, ran their users as Limited Users.

And a lot of software blithely assumed Admin capability would be there,
this making itself harder or impossible to run as a Limited User.

Of course, with everyone having Admin capabilities, it was open season
for all the malware out there.

But with Vista, Microsoft determined to tackle this. Some people say
they've gone too far, but I see no sign of them backing off any further
from how Vista first shipped. And Microsoft's view is that application
software needs to come into line and provide its part of the security
jigsaw puzzle, really thinking about when and why Admin capabilities
might be needed, and only requiring them when unavoidable. And not that
Microsoft should slacken off and go back to the bad old days.

Hence the dreaded UAC and its prompts. Of course, you and I can turn it
off; but most users won't, and that is the environment we have to code
for.
And only the uppermost Vistas give any granularity in choosing bits of
UAC to use and not use; even on Home Premium, it's either On or Off.

In beta, Vista gave a great deal more UAC prompts than it does now. So
they came up with this wonderful thing called Virtualization; if your
app wants to write where security will no longer allow, in Program
Files, the Windows folder, and a few other places, then rather than put
up a UAC prompt and/or refuse your request, it will automagically build
a folder that you *can* write to, and put your files in there. And after
that, it will look in that folder first, and use the file there for
preference.

It works great if you just use it, but it's a pain if you try to unravel
it.

I've been working with the author of an email utility to help make his
product more Vista-compatible. One feature it has is that it can
download and install new DLLs as it finds it needs them; works great on
a default XP, was failing on a default Vista. Temporary elevation of
privilege is needed to put those DLLs in its Program Files folder on
Vista and this is now the preferred option; but if the user can't grant
those privileges, the program has to get creative with the Virtual Store
folder.

In which, BTW, nest the current files that the user can no longer write
to the Program Files folder; but the (probably) obsolete first copies of
these *do* exist in the Program Files folder, as they are usually
created on the first run of the program. And that, being spawned from
the Installer, inherits its Admin privileges, but for that run only.

As you might imagine, it took us a while to figure out why it worked
first time through but not subsequently, and our first 8 guesses at the
reason why were all wrong :-)

Me, I grant one extra permission on the program's folder in Program
Files, and all this grief goes away. But that would prejudice MS' new
security model if used blindly, so you can see why we had to avoid it as
a generic solution.

> Some machines under Vista work well with QCShow and others don't, and
>I have to figure out why.

BTDTGTT. Though I expect you will have found some new wrinkles...

>Vista right at the moment is a bit of a mess and I tell our customers
>to hold off on purchasing it. XP is currently a far better choice. The
>mandate that obviously governed Vista's design was "security at all
>costs," and the result is that the intensive security that was put in
>place makes Vista very slow and clunky, but Microsoft is downloading
>new updates for Vista almost every night, and I expect within a year
>it's going to be a relatively nice operating system.

As I say, I'm not sure they are going to relax any of the UAC stuff.

We've now had SP1, and it's hard to notice any differences; certainly
nothing obvious in that area.

They might make some actions less atomic, though - currently, it takes 3
UAC permissions to copy and rename a file in Windows Explorer, because
it is currently 3 separate actions. If they were bundled it would help.

>Vista certainly is pretty. In fact, I think that they've passed the
>Macintosh in attractiveness, and that's saying something, which was the
>second of Microsoft's design goals for Vista.

Have you pressed the 'Switch Between Windows' button? That's nearly as
pretty as browsing album covers on an iPhone or an iPod Touch, though of
course nowhere near as dynamic.

But the iPod Touch (which I think is "an iPhone that can't make calls",
and costs less accordingly has raised the bar here.

Want to know whereabouts exactly someone lives? Go to Contacts, touch an
address, Google Maps opens up to show you where it is. It would even
give you directions there if it knew where you were at that moment, but
I think that needs GPS or cellphone tower triangulation, and it can't do
that. But I bet in the next version, you'll be able to tell it where
your start point is (unless you already can, and it's too intuitive for
me to figure out with my MS-conditioned mind).

Want to browse the web in seconds? Just switch it on, and there's
Safari, ready to go out over your existing wi-fi link. Writing on the
screen too small? Touch with two fingers, spread them, and it zooms in.

>But most importantly, I don't believe that it requires any significant new
>training. It took me about an hour to get used to it, and I care about details
>much more than the average person. For most people, it shouldn't take ten
>minutes.

Vista is not too bad to get your head around. Office 2007 is *hateful*,
and I think the interface is worse than Office 2003. I still struggle
with it.

>In regards to computers, things on the whole are getting better, not worse,
>and their betterment is actually accelerating. I credit automatic updates a
>great deal for that.

Security patches and bug fixes. For enhancements, MS want their $$. Even
Apple wanted $20 for the extras on the iTouch that did the Maps thing
:-(



>I expect Vista to recapitulate this experience as well. But my recommendation
>for the moment is to stick with XP, not for any worries about training or
>massive new investment, but simply because it's not quite ready for prime time
>yet.

I fear that the things it will need for prime time may never come. Not
for nothing is Vista known as Me II; and Windows 7 has been brought
forward in the MS timeline :-(

--
Roy Brown 'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd useful, or believe to be beautiful' William Morris

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