Just over two years ago now I wrote a post giving 13 Reasons Why Vista Is Crap. In it I mentioned that I couldn’t wait for Windows 7 to be officially released later that year, and at the time, I couldn’t! Vista really is the biggest piece of shit out there! Well, after running Windows 7 for almost 2 years, I’m ready to kick this OS to the curb as well. It’s definitely nowhere near as bad as Vista, but it’s still crap.

So what wrong with Windows 7?

Well, for starters, it’s memory management sucks ass. I’m talkin’ serious suckage! I got so sick of applications constantly displaying “Not Responding” whenever you had more than one app open! God forbid you have multiple apps running in a multitasking Operating System!

Both Vista and Windows 7 run SuperFetch technology. It basically fills up your RAM with what it thinks you’ll need. This is why, if you look in Task Manager on the Performance tab, you’ll see your Free memory usually sitting around the low teens or single digits. Personally, I don’t think it does a very good job of working out what I want running. In previous OS’s such as XP, it simply loaded the application into memory when requested and dumped it when finished. WinXP would occasionally freeze for a second or two but nowhere near as often as Vista or Windows 7.

Other things on my long list of annoyances are…

Icons in the System Tray constantly disappear, even when they’re set to “Display all the time”. This is really frustrating when you have an application running and the only way to bring it into view is by clicking on the System Tracy icon!

Device drivers constantly reinstall. I would plug my iPhone into the same cable, which in turn is plugged into the same USB port, everyday. I can’t tell you how many times Windows would popup a message saying “Installing device driver”. Aaargh! FFS! It’s the same fkn device I had plugged in yesterday! And, if you dared change the device to use another USB port, well… you’d definitely get the “Installing device driver” message then!

Network drives would constantly disappear. Up until recently I was running a Windows Server on a standalone PC as a development web server. It was never turned off and sits on the same subnet on my network yet somehow Windows 7 would just occasionally forget about it and I couldn’t access my development files.

Devices plugged into USB Hubs would frequently not work after booting up. At least a couple times a week I would have to unplug my Wacom tablet and plug it back in just so Windows would see it after booting up in the morning. I even had a batch file in my Startup Folder that would Stop and Restart the Tablet drivers as suggested by Microsoft Australia.

Windows would constantly lock files and folders even when they’re not being used. I’ve lost count how many times Windows told me that I can’t delete a folder because it says it’s “in use”, even when there are no files open in any application. So many times I would have to close down Windows Explorer and then reopen it before it would let me delete a folder.

And do I even need to mention how slow it is to boot up!? Yeah, the desktop and icons display within a couple of minutes, but big woop! The hard drive is still beating itself to death and you can’t start any applications because the system is still loading all it’s files and drivers.

Are Mac’s really that good?

As much as some of the Apple Fanboys will tell you otherwise, Mac’s aren’t perfect. I ordered my new iMac online and after having it for only 3 days, it got sent back as it was having problems. It wouldn’t wake from sleep. The only way to power it up was to physically unplug the power cord, wait a few seconds and then plug it back in and turn it on. After making an appointment at my local Apple Genius Bar, they recommended that I return it for a refund and then order a new one from them. Several weeks later, here I am am with my brand new iMac. One of the truly great things about Apple products though is their support. It really is second to none!

Technically, my PC was quite powerful. It was running an Intel Quad Core i7 @ 2.6Ghz. My new iMac is also running an Intel Quad Core i7. It’s obviously a newer generation chip and it’s also running slightly faster @ 3.4Ghz. The speed difference between the two is amazing though. No longer am I sitting, waiting for an application to start loading. I’ll click on an app and a couple of seconds later it’s up & running. I really do feel a lot more productive as I’m not waiting for the OS all the time, like I was in Windows.

I’ve found with the majority of the Mac applications I’ve run that they never seem to have as many options or preferences as Window applications. This has it’s pros and cons. Too many options can make applications confusing but too few, obviously means sometimes there’s “features” or settings that can’t be changed or are missing.

Apple hardware tends to be a bit pickier when it comes to accessories. On a PC you can plug pretty much any device in and it’ll work. Not so on a Mac. I’ve got a USB hub and an external drive, both of with worked fine on my PC but have problems on the Mac.

One of the things that I find really annoying is the Apple Finder application. It’s basically Apples equivalent to the Windows Explorer app. Within Windows Explorer, say you’re copying a series of folders and files from one location to another, if the destination location has folders or files that have the same name as the ones you’re copying it gives you the option to “Move & Replace” the files/folders in the destination location or “Don’t Move” the files/folders, leaving the original intact. You can also have it keep both versions, whereby it will rename the file(s) your copying by appending a number on the end (eg. mydoc (2).txt). If you’re moving a lot of files, you can apply your selection to “all files” in the case of multiple duplicates. Using the Apple finder application, when you’re copying files and it finds duplicates, the only options you’re given are to replace the duplicate files, keep both files (by renaming one) or stop, which cancels the copy. What’s worse is that if you are copying folders, then the “Replace” command will do just that. It won’t merge the files you’re copying with the target location, it will actually remove the target location and replace it with the folder you’re copying. What this means is that if there are files in the target location that are different from the ones you’re copying, they’ll actually get deleted since the whole folder is replaced! That’s ridiculous! I can see it being quite easy to lose files when you’re using the Finder app to move files and folders around.

It’s only since owning a Mac that I’ve found out that they don’t have anything like the System Registry on Windows machines. This is awesome news! The Registry is where Windows keeps all it’s application configuration settings and options. It’s also one of the main causes when applications stop working or don’t work properly. You’ll also find that a huge amount of applications never delete all their information when the application is uninstalled so you end up with all these “orphaned” settings for applications that no longer exist. To uninstall an application in Windows you have to run an application within the Windows Control Panel. When you choose an application to uninstall, this will then run that particular applications uninstaller. To uninstall on a Mac, you simply drag the application from the Applications folder to the Trash. So simple!! All Mac applications are bundled together in a special “package” unlike Windows apps that can put files in numerous locations and settings all throughout the System Registry.

There are obviously lots of other little differences between a PC and a Mac, which you’d expect, but most of it just comes down to getting used to how it works. The Home & End keys are a good example. Within Windows, pressing the Home key will place the cursor at the beginning of the current line and pressing End will put the cursor at the end of the line. On a Mac, pressing Home will place the cursor at the beginning of the application and End will place it at the end. So, if you’re writing up a document for example, pressing Home takes you to the beginning of the document and pressing End will take you to the end of the document. This I don’t think I could ever get used to and thankfully I found a cool little app called DoubleCommand that allows me to easily remap these two keys so they work the way I’m used to.

You’ll quite often hear Apple users boast they they don’t need to run anti-virus software like you do (or should) on a PC. This may be true but it’s not because Macs are immune to getting viruses or malware. What a lot of Apple folk don’t seem to realise is that the main reason that they don’t need anti-virus is because the majority of viruses are developed for Windows based PC’s. A-holes who write viruses aim to do as much harm to as many people as they can and since Window PC’s have the greater market share, this is who they target. If this market share ever starts to even out, I’m sure you’ll see viruses targeted for Macs.

So what’s the verdict?

Overall, I love my new iMac. It’s extremely fast and responsive and the new version of their Operating System, OSX Lion, has some really great features and, with all the touch gestures, really is a joy to use. The display is amazingly crisp and vibrant and being a 27″ iMac, is HUGE!

It will be interesting to compare  Microsofts implementation of gesture control when they officially release Windows 8. I doubt they’ve put as much time and effort into perfecting them as Apple have. I think Apple have successfully integrated their iOS gestures into a desktop Operating System. From all the videos I’ve watched regarding Windows 8, Microsoft seem to be more concerned with making their OS work on tablets and seem to be forgetting about all the people who’ll actually be using a desktop with a keyboard and mouse.

</end rant>

Have you switched from using a PC to using a Mac? Leave a comment and let me know, I’d love to hear how your experience was.

Over this time I have come to loathe the Vista operating system. Personally, I think it’s even worse than the dreaded Windows ME, which was listed at #4 on PC World’s 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time list.

I’m not alone with my hatred of Vista either. Ask most IT experts and I think you’ll find that a large percentage will agree that Vista is just plain crap. Even Microsoft started to offer a “downgrade” option to PC manufacturers, allowing customers to switch back to Windows XP on some new Vista machines. That’s gotta tell you something when the company that wrote the software doesn’t have confidence in it.

Come October 22 this year (2009), I’ll be going out and buying a copy of Windows 7, which from experience with the Release Candidate version and from various articles around the web, is far superior (and less crappy).

Here are my top reasons for why I hate Vista so much (in no particular order).

1. Extremely slow

One of most common complaints of Vista is how slow it is. It’s slow to start, it’s slow to operate and it’s even slow to shutdown. As an example, it takes my workstation approximately 10 minutes to boot to a useable state. One of the few programs that I have in my startup folder is Microsoft Outlook 2003. Outlook doesn’t even start loading until the 8 minute mark. The desktop itself takes approximately 3 minutes to fully display.

You’re probably thinking that I’m running a fairly slow PC. Well, I’m not. Remember, I just recently upgraded my machine and I’m now running one of Intel’s latest Core i7 processors. See further down this post for more information on the type of hardware I’m running.

2. Browsing folders using Windows Explorer

To browse the contents of your hard drive, you use the Windows Explorer application. In every previous version of Explorer, whenever you clicked on a folder in the left-hand Folder pane, that folder would automatically expand to show you all it’s sub-folders. Within Vista, if you simply click on the folder, the only thing it will do is display its content in the right-hand window pane. If you want to expand the folder to see all the sub-folders, you now have to double-click the folder name.

It may seem like a small thing, but when some basic functionality like this changes from hows it’s operated for years and years and for for no valid reason, I find that annoying. It also means that it’s doubled the amount of clicks required to perform the same action.

3. Folder sort order disappears

When I’m developing a website, I quite often like to sort a folder on the “Date Modified” column within Windows Explorer. This allows me to see the most recently changed files at a glance. I’ll do the same thing when viewing a folder full of images.

If you duplicate a file within a folder, Vista takes it upon itself to remove the sort order on that folder. It doesn’t even reset it to the “Name” column. It simply removes the sorting altogether. So, after you’ve duplicated a file, you then have to reset your sort order again.

4. System Tray icons disappear

The “Sytem Tray” within Windows is that small row of icons in the bottom right-hand corner of your display. It’s also where the system clock is displayed. These icons show some of the applications you currently having running within your system. One of the “features” of Windows is to automatically hide icons that aren’t accessed or used frequently. Unfortunately though, Vista has a tendency to occasionally (and randomly) remove icons all together. It doesn’t just simply hide them, it completely removes them from the System Tray. It doesn’t actually remove the application from memory, but the icon does disappear.

There is a properties setting that allows you to configure these icons to “Show”, “Hide” or “Hide when inactive”. Changing this setting though does nothing to stop them from randomly disappearing.

5. Application windows constantly display “Not responding”

As a constant reminder to how bad Vista memory management is (just in case you needed it. lol), application windows are constantly displaying the “Not responding” message. Normally, you’d expect to see this when the OS is “busy” performing a lot of background tasks and can also be caused by not having enough system RAM. Well, with 6GB’s of RAM in my system, I think I should have plenty for Vista to operate smoothly on.

6. Errors when saving network files cause automatic file deletion

This is one problem that can cause significant issues. As part of my hardware setup, I have all my PC’s networked, either wirelessly or via Gigabit Ethernet. For development purposes, I have my own web server. This server obviously stores all my web files (ie. HTML, PHP, ASP, CSS, JS etc). When I’m developing a website, I’ll access the files on my webserver, from whatever machine I happen to be using at the time. Sometimes when saving files across the Network, Vista displays a “sharing violation” error advising that it is unable to save the file in question. This in itself, is not a huge deal as you can simply try again. What is a big deal though, is that not only will it advise you that it can’t save the file, it will also delete the original copy of the file. So, if you happen to exit out of your file editor without saving the file again, you’ll find that not only have you lost your changes that you just made, but you’re also missing the original/source file as well! WTF!? To me, that’s a serious #fail!

7. Network shares don’t map on startup

I have a drive mapped to my web server to make it easier to access files when using Windows Explorer or performing backups. No matter how many times I enter in the Username and Password and select the “Reconnect at login” check box, Vista refuses to store the details and subsequently wont re-map the drive correctly on startup.

8. Editing filenames no longer highlights the complete name

Previously, whenever you single-clicked or pressed F2 on a file to edit its name, the whole filename (including the extension) would highlight. This was perfect for when you wanted to copy filenames into documents or source code. You could hit F2, then Ctrl-C to copy the name and then simply Esc to discard any changes. Now, whenever you edit a filename, only the actual filename gets highlighted and not the file extension. if you want to copy the WHOLE filename, you have to then manually click and drag to highlight the full name and extension.

9. Data fails to be stored in clipboard when copied

The “Clipboard” in Windows is the temporary location where items are copied whenever you select “Copy” from an application menu, hit Ctrl-C or the “Print Screen” button. Vista has a tendency though, not to copy things to the clipboard at random times. Throughout the day i have have to perform the same copy multiple times so that whatever I’m copying, will actually get transfered to the clipboard.

10.Folder View setting constantly needs resetting

Within Windows Explorer there is an option to set how you would like to view the contents of a particular folder. Even after configuring Vista to remember this setting for each folder, it still constantly needs to be reset. Vista seems to think it knows best when it comes to how you view your folder contents.

11.Folder Type setting constantly needs resetting

Another option within Windows is the Folder Type. You can use this setting to automatically adjust the Folder View. For example, you can tell Vista that a particular folder contains “Pictures and Videos”. It will then automatically adjust the Folder View setting according to these default “template” settings. Being a bit of a g33k, I like to view my folders with the “Details” view and with the Folder Type set to “All Items” so that you can see a list of filenames (as opposed to icons) and their type and modification date. If the folder contains mostly images, Vista has a tendency to automatically change the Folder Type to “Pictures and Videos” which then automatically changes the Folder View setting and the columns that appear. No matter how many times you reset it back to “All Items”, Vista is constantly changing it behind your back.

12.Intermittent rearranging of desktop and Quick Launch icons

Although not as frequent as some of the other problems I’ve encountered, I’ve found that occasionally the icons on my desktop or in my Quick Launch toolbar get rearranged. Hello!! I put them where they are for a reason, how about you just leave them be!

13. Devices randomly reinstall themselves on connection

How many times do devices need to be “installed”! I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve plugged and unplugged my iPhone from the exact same USB port, yet every so often Vista decides that I’m installing a new device and that it needs to re-install the device driver.  What a crock!

As mentioned above, I’m running one of the latest Intel Core i7 Processors. This chip runs 4 cores/8 threads @ 2.66GHz. My box also has 6GB of RAM, 2 x 1TB HD’s and 1GB NVidia graphics card. These specs should be more than “adequate” to run Vista.

So there you have it. My top 13 reasons why I think Vista is crap. Have you got any other reasons that you’d like to share or perhaps you actually like Vista? Leave a comment and let me know.