Windows Vista Update

Vista is pointless imo

by Sergey
(Canada)

My breakdown of the article

Windows Aero - ok, Aero is good.
Windows Sidebar - almost completely useless
Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 - useless
Windows Search - ok, that could be useful
Parental Controls - useless
Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC) - useless and annoying, I think everyone disables this
Windows Firewall - ok, good, but read on
BitLocker Drive Encryption, Windows Defender - better, free alternatives are available.
The new Start menu - matter of preference
Improved folders: My Documents, My Music, My Videos, and so on are simplified and appear simply as Documents, Music, Videos - noone uses these anyway
Live Icons - marginally useful

So what is left? Aero, Search and improved security.
Downsides?
It is slow. On My dualcore, 2 Gb RAM laptop it is noticeably slower that XP in everything from boot to copying files to 3D games.
It has compatability issues. Kudos for Windows firewall, but I happen to own Outpost, which is better and more secure, and now it doesn't work. I can't mount my Acronis volumes, TrueCrypt has bizzare bugs, Firefox can't restore profiles saved from XP without some serious PITA, Nero has bugs, etc. Half of these are just show stoppers. I am supposed to contact a bunch of vendors, some of which are open source and unlikely to respond anyway, to solve "known compatibility issues"

And the best thing is that XP drivers for my laptop are not available and removing Vista voids warranty. Great!