I picked up a new laptop several months back and of course it came preloaded with Windows Vista. Not having heard much about the new OS, I was excited to try it out. After months and months of pain, I am convinced that Vista is NOT ready for general consumption and should not even be considered until Microsoft releases service pack 1 (until then, demand XP!).

Specifically, here is a list of why you should avoid it (at least everything that comes to mind):

• Vista is dog SLOW – my 4 year old laptop and 6 year old desktop (both running Windows 2000) both run faster (do you have *any* idea how much faster processors have gotten in 6 years???). More specifically:
• File actions, copy/move/rename are intolerably slow. It takes upwards of 30 seconds to copy a lousy 100 MB, and upwards of 30 minutes to copy 2GB
• The control panel takes *forever* to just display the damn icons
• Windows media player takes literally 10-30 seconds before it will play an MP3 (thankfully, it is instant when you play from WinAmp)
• Networking hell:
• I can’t connect to wireless networks with Vista that my Win2K box could – I either won’t connect or will connect and get “access local only” where I am technically connected to the network, but I can’t see outside (to the Internet)
• The built-in wireless network detector just doesn’t work that well. It often doesn’t detect all available networks and doesn’t necessarily refresh when you tell it to.
• From home, plugging directly into the router I get “local access only.” At least I get full access over the wireless
• User interface – it’s brighter, it’s shinier and the changes add NO value *whatsoever*. It doesn’t make things easier to use and just serves to confuse/annoy existing users:
• The way the file pane updates relative to the folder pane is annoying and WAY counterintuitive – the files displayed don’t necessarily correspond to the highlighted folder
• Periodically, for no apparent reason, a window will take forever to open
• They’ve changed the meaning of some keyboard shortcuts and removed others. One that bothers me specifically:
• In explorer of previous version of Windows, [ALT]-[Left Arrow] was “back” and [Backspace] was “up.” Now in Vista, [Backspace] is “back” and there is no keyboard shortcut for “up.”
• It’s much harder to turn off the folder pane in explorer (if I want a window with *just* icons, I should be able to have it, dammit!)
• It doesn’t show keyboard shortcuts for the menu until you hit alt – WTF, *this* is an improvement??
• Aero transparency and previews in thumbnails are cute but sooo not worth the performance hit
• Endless queries for confirmation, and for dumb things…
  I wanted to rename a lousy file, a simple operation, right?
  • You need to confirm this operation, continue? [yes]
  • (everything freezes) Windows needs your permission to continue, continue? [yes]
  • Access denied, try again? [yes]
  • Access denied, try again? [yes]
  • Access denied, try again? [yes]
  • Access denied, try again? [yes]
  • Access denied, try again? [drop kick computer]
    [punch computer in the nose]
    [Fly to Seattle, punch Bill Gates in the nose]
    sigh… [yes]
  • Access denied, try again?

  Arghhhh!

To be fair, there are some improvements in Vista.

• Better security I suppose, tho based on my experiences with Win2K, if you run the appropriate countermeasures (anti-virus etc) and are careful (don’t blindly click yes on everything), I never really had a problem.
• [Windows]-[Tab] is the *only* new feature of value… it is a neat effect and does make the system more usable, but this SO not worth upgrading the whole OS!