I got a new machine for work about a month ago now. My last machine is now over three years old, and had numerous problems. The soundcard failed over a year ago, the hard drive failed back in May (replaced), and now it decides that it likes rebooting itself randomly a few times a day. I suspect that the crappy fans on it can't handle 30 degrees.free erotic games k750

Anyway, so I got a new Dell OptiPlex 755 with a Core 2 Duo CPU, and a few gigs of RAM. And of course Windows Vista.free erotic games k750

I hadn't used Vista previously, so I was interested to see how well it worked, and whether it really was as annoying as has been indicated.free erotic games k750

In general, I really like it.

• Aero looks really cool (yes Linux has had that for years, but who cares).


• There have been a ton of really nice improvements in all the standard UI components (e.g. Explorer).


• I love the new start menu. I tend to install a ton of software on my computer and struggle to keep my start menu organised. Now I don't even try. Just hit the Windows button and type the first couple of characters of the application and it finds it.


• Windows Update is at last integrated with the OS.


• The Vista gadgets bar is a vast improvement on their last attempt with Active Desktop.

Anyway, the feature I expected to give me the most trouble was User Access Control (UAC). This is the annoying dialog that gets you to confirm a lot of actions. While setting up my machine I encountered this ALL the time and it annoyed me a lot. However, once I had my machine setup, it hasn't really been a problem at all, and in fact has saved me multiple times.free erotic games k750

I'm not an Administrator on my machine for two reasons. Firstly, it provides some protection against rogue applications and my mistakes (as they don't have sufficient privileges to cause lasting harm), and secondly, to ensure that the software I write works if you aren't an Administrator (and I've found and fixed a number of issues by doing that). Generally I only require confirmation for an action about once per day, which is about the same as when I was running Linux regularly.free erotic games k750

However, I do of course have a number of minor problems / gripes:

• Why does Vista create the default user account as an Administrator, but still prompt to confirm actions? This seems to be a contradiction - if someone is an Administrator, they shouldn't need to confirm everything. I'd much rather all users were normal users, and had to have explicit elevation of privilege to do anything important.


• I have Windows Update set to notify when there are new updates available - instead of downloading and installing them automatically (because it always seems to want to restart in the middle of an overnight test). However, I don't receive those notifications when running as a regular user. I have to explicitly check Windows Update to see if there are new updates. This of course is a security issue. If my wife gets a new laptop, I'll set her up as a regular user, and it could be months between administrative logins... plenty of time for security issues to arise.


• Windows Explorer's new overwrite option dialog can't handle multiple monitors. It always wants to display in the middle of the primary monitor, even if the Explorer window is on the secondary. It gets really confusing when it appears behind another window on another monitor...


• I've had two bluescreen crashes after resuming from hibernation. These don't get reported back to Microsoft unless you then login as an administrator. My next login as an admin might be some time away...


• You can't launch a copy of Windows Explorer running as the Administrator when logged in as a regular user.


• Visual Studio 2005's command line compiler doesn't work on Vista unless it is run with administrative privileges. Okay, this is problem not the Vista teams' fault. But it is a real pain in the ass. I understand that I can't use it to debug any process on the system if I'm not the administrator, but all I want is to compile some code in a directory that I have write access to, which compiles fine through the IDE.

But in general, I quite like it. Hopefully the service pack irons out a few of these problems.free erotic games k750

Posted by Dave Bryant at 8:29 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0) free erotic games k750