As any of you have worked with me know I’m very pragmatic about operating systems, if it works for the app – good on you. Regular readers of the blog might question my OS agnostic attitude due to the frequent Vista bashing, so here is my list of favorite things about Vista. Promise, I’ll try to stay all positive; operative word here is “try.” 

 

            It Looks Great

 

Solitare 

 

Face it, if you can make a classic Windows productivity app like Solitaire look this good, it just makes you happy. From the new 3D effects to the simple addition of transparencies, Vista makes for a pleasant visual retouch of the windows UI. BTW, if anyone has a hack to adjust the transparency level for the contents of a CMD window, please share – I so miss that capability, visa vie KDE/Gnome.

 

The new user folder structure

User folders 

 After years of conditioning us to use the infernal “C:\Documents and Settings\XXXX” directory structure for storing My Documents and other user configuration, things are now where they should have been all along – \Users\XXXX.Not only is the Unix style top level user folder the “right” place for this type of data to be located, Vista has added some useful new default sub-folders as well. The new default downloads location is a welcome addition, as is the relocation of IE Favorates.

            Un-hideable Fields

 

While some will find this a lazy man’s feature, the ability to see and encrypted fields contents while entering them, I will argue this is a very useful feature. I can’t tell you how many times I have made typos while entering those long 128-bit WEP keys, not once but twice!  


            Explorer Location/Browsing Trail Memory

 

In a world where terabyte drives are virtually common place, its easy to have dozens, or even hundreds of sub-directories in a folder; the Vista Explorer has taken this fact into consideration. Nothing is more frustrating then moving through a deep folder structure say I’m down in a folder named “Symantec”, realizing I need something back in the “System” folder, that is at the same level as the Symantec directory, I hit the back button, pleasantly I’m returned to the previous level in the “S” vicinity, in fact the Symantec folder is selected so I can even use arrow keys to move down to the System folder I want to open. This is a delightful, yet simple, addition; But I still miss the “up” folder icon.

                      Media Center and Windows Media Player 11

 WMP11 

As I said back in January, shortly after CES 07’, Vista’s new incarnation and integration  of Media Center Edition (formerly XP MCE), is truly impressive, while I have not quite killed off the TiVo yet, Vista Media Center is looking better all the time.

Powering Vista Media Center is Windows Media Player 11, which is still burdened with too much DRM crap for me give it an endorsement, I have to be honest – WMP11 performance is surprisingly much better then past versions I have avoided like the plague. 

 

The key point I’m trying to make about Vista is; it’s not all bad. While none of the above are compelling enough reasons to upgrade to Vista, they do fall into that “pleasant addition” category. Are you running Vista? Share your favorite new features in the comments, I’d love to learn your tricks.Â