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I’m taking a bold step to write this Commentary. I’m writing it in Word 2007 beta version under Windows Vista Release Candidate 1! You may wonder at my temerity, but I do like to know what the future reserves for us. You will no doubt imagine that I’ve not burnt my boats, because this installation is a dual-boot, thus keeping my Windows XP installation intact.
Vista is bloatware par excellence; it requires nearly 15 gigabytes to install with 10 Gby for the completed installation. The size of the registry alone takes on gigantic proportions, over 100 000 lines for a basic set-up. The installation itself passed without incident in a bit over 30 minutes. Any user of Windows XP will have little difficulty navigating round Vista. Appearance-wise, it is a vast improvement, having lost a great deal of that “Fisher-Price†look. One of the first things anyone will notice is the User Account Control, which is an irritating dialogue that comes up for little or no reason, such as taking a deep breath. Happily, it can be disabled. Another semi-annoyance is Windows Defender. It appears to be a good malware shield; what annoys me is that if you have an application that you want to start at boot-up time and it has not been approved by Microsoft, the way to get it to start is far from intuitive. This is possibly even obstructive.
From the Internet point of view, what is now Windows Internet Explorer is improved and has somewhat caught up with some of its rivals, such as Firefox and Opera, although it has some way to go yet. For example, it now has a feature, tabs, that has been popular with the others for years. It may appear much lighter than Firefox with only a bit over 2 Mby, as against about 16 Mby for the latter but don’t be fooled, because most of WIE is embedded in the Vista OS. I suspect the change of name is to prove to the European Union that it really is part of the operating system and not an add-on. Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail, with a few more bells and whistles to catch up, at least half-way, with the competition.
Happily, both Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird install beautifully under Vista and I’m delighted to be able to continue using them. I also have POPFile working well, to sort out my mail automatically into various mailboxes. What is less joyful is that the Windows Firewall is still protecting only incoming connections; there is still no protection for outgoing data. Worse still, my AVG anti-virus and ZoneAlarm firewall are prevented by Microsoft from installing. A check found that a new download from AVG resolved the situation and I do now have anti-virus protection, but there is no way I could get the two-way firewall to install.
This brings me directly to my other bone of contention regarding Vista; many softwares will either not install or they won’t run: not just one or two but about half of those I tried. What is the use of an operating system that will not run an application? Worse still – wait for it – some of my hardware lacks drivers for it. For example, my 18-month-old scanner cannot be made to work nor even my programmable keyboard (it works as a non-programmable one). Furthermore, on the desktop, there is a very visible Program Compatibility Wizard icon. This is supposed to guide you to “downgrading†Vista to an earlier Windows version for a specific application. This does work with some, but not with most applications. Microsoft is going to have to do some serious work here before the definitive version is released.
Some of the software that does work on my machine includes OpenOffice, Microsoft Office 2007, Audacity (an open source audio editor), Vutrax (my favourite ECAD suite), Registrar Lite, some but not all of my Ulead video products etc.
Vista does, of course, come with an enhanced number of accessories and gadgets, some more useful than others. An optional sidebar will display any number of them, such as your local weather, time (with a visible clock), date, CPU usage and so on. There are more games than ever, including chess, but the XP Internet games have been dropped; the card games are much uglier than in XP, despite a choice of card styles. The Run feature is now well hidden under Accessories unless you select the Classic Start Menu, which I find more intuitive than the new one, but that is probably just a question of habit (I use the Classic configuration under XP, as well!)
One of the features of Vista is that it incorporates voice recognition. Initially, I could not get my microphone to work under Vista. It seems there was some driver incompatibility with the sound card. This was cured by downloading a new driver. The application permits both navigation and dictation. I have used VR, initially with IBM and later with Dragon Naturally Speaking, for 15 years, so I consider I know a little of what it is about. Its accuracy and “speed of learning†is not as good as DNS or even IBM Simply Speaking Gold and its interface is downright poor. However, correcting an error when dictating text is counter-intuitive. In the first place, the correction dialogue box puts itself over what you are trying to correct, so you cannot see what you are doing and then it offers every single iteration of the word you are trying to correct; as short words, such as of, in or be, have the fewest phones, they are the most likely to be misinterpreted and to have to choose between 20 or 30 examples of the same word in an article is rather ridiculous. As Microsoft is a relative newcomer to VR, it will obviously take them some time before they catch up with others with 15 or more years experience in the technology.
My conclusion on Vista: it appears interesting but it’s not ready for the average user to rush in and install it. If you keep your status quo for at least a year, it should have most of the bugs ironed out and drivers should be available. Many people wait for at least one service pack to be issued before they take the plunge and this might not be a bad policy.
I’ll confine my remarks about the Office 2007 suite essentially to Word, although I have tried some of the other applications: Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access. I’ve been using it for some time under XP, before migrating it to Vista, comparing it to earlier versions. You may think there would be little or no difference between the OSs. Visually, there is nothing much but I have found a few functional differences. For example, the Thesaurus works fine under XP but it’s awful under Vista; it defaults from Thesaurus to Research in French, with automatic translation, at least chez moi, and I don’t have anything French installed. However, do remember that this is a beta version, not even a Release Candidate, so there is plenty of time for it to be corrected.
Unlike Vista, the Office suite has a totally new look (Plate 1). At first, this is a shocker; you can forget where you found such-and-such an item before, because it is no longer there. As a guess, I’d say the best part of 90 per cent of the old version remains almost unchanged, once you have found it. The traditional menus and toolbars have been replaced by a series of seven “Ribbonsâ€, each with a specific context. The one shown in the Plate is the “Home Ribbon†and is the easiest to understand because many of the icons are already familiar, with the possible exception of the Styles box to the right of centre. Even these do not require an Einstein to understand. Note that some of the boxes have little arrows to the bottom right for expansion.
Possibly, the “Insert Ribbon†will be the most surprising one because it replaces a whole host of purely menu items, with a simple drag and drop, with all sorts of shapes, such as flowchart symbols, arrows, balloons or customisable shapes. References and, above all, Review have been much enhanced, which will be a great help to those doing committee editing of documents. Mailings are greatly simplified.
Vista is bloatware par excellence; it requires nearly 15 gigabytes to install with 10 Gby for the completed installation. The size of the registry alone takes on gigantic proportions, over 100 000 lines for a basic set-up. The installation itself passed without incident in a bit over 30 minutes. Any user of Windows XP will have little difficulty navigating round Vista. Appearance-wise, it is a vast improvement, having lost a great deal of that “Fisher-Price†look. One of the first things anyone will notice is the User Account Control, which is an irritating dialogue that comes up for little or no reason, such as taking a deep breath. Happily, it can be disabled. Another semi-annoyance is Windows Defender. It appears to be a good malware shield; what annoys me is that if you have an application that you want to start at boot-up time and it has not been approved by Microsoft, the way to get it to start is far from intuitive. This is possibly even obstructive.
From the Internet point of view, what is now Windows Internet Explorer is improved and has somewhat caught up with some of its rivals, such as Firefox and Opera, although it has some way to go yet. For example, it now has a feature, tabs, that has been popular with the others for years. It may appear much lighter than Firefox with only a bit over 2 Mby, as against about 16 Mby for the latter but don’t be fooled, because most of WIE is embedded in the Vista OS. I suspect the change of name is to prove to the European Union that it really is part of the operating system and not an add-on. Outlook Express has been replaced by Windows Mail, with a few more bells and whistles to catch up, at least half-way, with the competition.
Happily, both Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird install beautifully under Vista and I’m delighted to be able to continue using them. I also have POPFile working well, to sort out my mail automatically into various mailboxes. What is less joyful is that the Windows Firewall is still protecting only incoming connections; there is still no protection for outgoing data. Worse still, my AVG anti-virus and ZoneAlarm firewall are prevented by Microsoft from installing. A check found that a new download from AVG resolved the situation and I do now have anti-virus protection, but there is no way I could get the two-way firewall to install.
This brings me directly to my other bone of contention regarding Vista; many softwares will either not install or they won’t run: not just one or two but about half of those I tried. What is the use of an operating system that will not run an application? Worse still – wait for it – some of my hardware lacks drivers for it. For example, my 18-month-old scanner cannot be made to work nor even my programmable keyboard (it works as a non-programmable one). Furthermore, on the desktop, there is a very visible Program Compatibility Wizard icon. This is supposed to guide you to “downgrading†Vista to an earlier Windows version for a specific application. This does work with some, but not with most applications. Microsoft is going to have to do some serious work here before the definitive version is released.
Some of the software that does work on my machine includes OpenOffice, Microsoft Office 2007, Audacity (an open source audio editor), Vutrax (my favourite ECAD suite), Registrar Lite, some but not all of my Ulead video products etc.
Vista does, of course, come with an enhanced number of accessories and gadgets, some more useful than others. An optional sidebar will display any number of them, such as your local weather, time (with a visible clock), date, CPU usage and so on. There are more games than ever, including chess, but the XP Internet games have been dropped; the card games are much uglier than in XP, despite a choice of card styles. The Run feature is now well hidden under Accessories unless you select the Classic Start Menu, which I find more intuitive than the new one, but that is probably just a question of habit (I use the Classic configuration under XP, as well!)
One of the features of Vista is that it incorporates voice recognition. Initially, I could not get my microphone to work under Vista. It seems there was some driver incompatibility with the sound card. This was cured by downloading a new driver. The application permits both navigation and dictation. I have used VR, initially with IBM and later with Dragon Naturally Speaking, for 15 years, so I consider I know a little of what it is about. Its accuracy and “speed of learning†is not as good as DNS or even IBM Simply Speaking Gold and its interface is downright poor. However, correcting an error when dictating text is counter-intuitive. In the first place, the correction dialogue box puts itself over what you are trying to correct, so you cannot see what you are doing and then it offers every single iteration of the word you are trying to correct; as short words, such as of, in or be, have the fewest phones, they are the most likely to be misinterpreted and to have to choose between 20 or 30 examples of the same word in an article is rather ridiculous. As Microsoft is a relative newcomer to VR, it will obviously take them some time before they catch up with others with 15 or more years experience in the technology.
My conclusion on Vista: it appears interesting but it’s not ready for the average user to rush in and install it. If you keep your status quo for at least a year, it should have most of the bugs ironed out and drivers should be available. Many people wait for at least one service pack to be issued before they take the plunge and this might not be a bad policy.
I’ll confine my remarks about the Office 2007 suite essentially to Word, although I have tried some of the other applications: Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher and Access. I’ve been using it for some time under XP, before migrating it to Vista, comparing it to earlier versions. You may think there would be little or no difference between the OSs. Visually, there is nothing much but I have found a few functional differences. For example, the Thesaurus works fine under XP but it’s awful under Vista; it defaults from Thesaurus to Research in French, with automatic translation, at least chez moi, and I don’t have anything French installed. However, do remember that this is a beta version, not even a Release Candidate, so there is plenty of time for it to be corrected.
Unlike Vista, the Office suite has a totally new look (Plate 1). At first, this is a shocker; you can forget where you found such-and-such an item before, because it is no longer there. As a guess, I’d say the best part of 90 per cent of the old version remains almost unchanged, once you have found it. The traditional menus and toolbars have been replaced by a series of seven “Ribbonsâ€, each with a specific context. The one shown in the Plate is the “Home Ribbon†and is the easiest to understand because many of the icons are already familiar, with the possible exception of the Styles box to the right of centre. Even these do not require an Einstein to understand. Note that some of the boxes have little arrows to the bottom right for expansion.
Possibly, the “Insert Ribbon†will be the most surprising one because it replaces a whole host of purely menu items, with a simple drag and drop, with all sorts of shapes, such as flowchart symbols, arrows, balloons or customisable shapes. References and, above all, Review have been much enhanced, which will be a great help to those doing committee editing of documents. Mailings are greatly simplified.
An informative and useful read.
Obviously, it was cut'n'pasted and this board doesn't support Word formatting. Sorry for the dimness. Maybe I'll be more with it on the morrow. Dinner will be on the table shortly, so G'night, all!
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