I was reading through APC Mag’s 10 reasons you should get Vista and I thought I’d give some responses, as I found the list alternately interesting an amusing.

1. UI built for the era of video and digital photography
It’s not actually Microsoft’s key selling point, but the thing that everyone will probably find the most useful about Vista is that photos, videos and music are not treated the same as Word documents any more. When you open a folder of photos, they come up as they’d appear in Google Picasa or Apple iPhoto. There’s inbuilt basic photo editing. Music folders come up in columns of ID3 tags, a bit like iTunes.
Frankly this type of behaviour annoys the hell out of me. When I open a folder of photos, I want to see the files, I don’t want my PC grinding away trying to read and display the content of the files. Also sounds like a security hole, if someone creates a malicious image that causes an overflow in the display engine…

2. Image-based install
PC enthusiasts spend a lot of time installing and reinstalling Windows for their own and other people’s PCs. The Vista DVD is actually a pre-installed version of the OS in a compressed form, making it substantially quicker to install.
I like it when I don’t have to re-install Windows for the umpteenth time…

3. Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation
Enjoy the just-baked driverbase while it lasts (19,500 drivers large). If you do need to use a special disk driver during installation in the future it won’t have to be on floppy disk. Now you can use a USB memory key or CD.
But you can already use a USB memory key or a CD, or even a directory on your HDD or a network drive…

4. Desktop search and search folders built in
No. Just no. I know there’s a lot of debate going on around this, but frankly this feature is one of the biggest reasons not to get Vista. Windows’ search function already doesn’t work properly, and it looks like this one will rely on the creation of additional meta tags that get searched, rather than searching the actual files.

5. Sleep mode that actually works.
Sleep mode works fine on my laptop under XP…

6. Rock-solid laptop encryption
OK, this one I rather like, although you can already get third party encryption tools.

7. Better file navigation
Vista now has some time-saving features like favourite folders displayed in the left column of every Explorer window, as well as “breadcrumbed” folder lists allowing you to quickly jump backward and forward through a path.
Again, this is a matter of choice, and these functions are already mostly available., or unwanted (like “favourite folders” - ugh)

8. Inbuilt undelete
Or, depending on how you look at it, inbuilt rolling backup. Every time you make a change to a file or delete it, Windows keeps the previous version.
And so we go back to VMS…

9. DirectX10
OK, this isn’t so much a benefit as your hand being forced: DirectX 10 will never be made for XP, and a raft of games have already been announced ‘exclusively’ for 10.
DX10 for gaming, even though I love computer gaming, is not reason enough to go to Vista, not yet. If a game is exclusively DX10, then I’ll treat it like a game that requires Steam - I just won’t play it.

And number 10 - perhaps by the time I’m forced to move to Vista, there’ll be enough known about it that I can use it the way I want, rather than the way Microsoft wants me to use it.

I never thought I would see this happen, but I am so happy it has: Shiina Ringo’s new single, KonoYonoKagiri (この　よの　かぎり） has been listed on, and is available to buy from iTunes in the UK:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=211809442&s=143444

Not bad for £1.99 - I just hope the new album is also listed on iTunes UK so I can buy that as well. (Yes, I do have the album on pre-order with CDJapan, but if buying it from iTunes UK means there’s more impetus to list her back catalogue, all the better!)

Pitch, the social networking site I’ve been working on since last August, has been nominated for an award!

Pitch has been shortlisted for the MoMo Global Peer Awards. From the Mobile Monday website:

Pitch, the UK’s first advertising-funded mobile content provider, has launched a brand new service offering users a fully-interactive entertainment community on their mobile handsets. Bringing the Web 2.0 social networking phenomenon to the mobile phone, Pitch’s new service features instant messaging, photo and video upload and sharing as well as access to an exciting new online community. Through the new service, Pitch customers can build their own mobile home page, complete with a unique user name and inbox, allowing them to send messages to friends or groups, as well as participating in real time group chat with other Pitch members. Thus users can create and join interest groups, enabling them to stay in touch with old friends or meet new people with similar interests - all through their mobile phones. Pitch does not charge for this service, so the only costs users incur come from data charges, making instant communication significantly cheaper than sending a text through a network operator.

Woo!

SoE have announced that the forum for their new MMO Vanguard: Saga of Heroes will close once the game launches. In place of these forums, the company is asking fan sites (’affilited sites’) to take up the slack and provide chat forums around the game.

Of course, spreading out the community in this way will only ensure that it remains fragmented and disconnected, and will also ensure that any problems which could have come to the attention of the developers through the forums will be missed, as it’s much harder to monitor multiple forums than just one.

That said, since none of the affiliate sites will actually be official, there will be no need to monitor those forums for potential problems, ensuring that there is little to no communication between the players and the developers or publishers of Vanguard, and that the level of notice generated by any problems which do occur will be minimised.

SoE did something similar with Star Wars Galaxies a couple of years ago, closing the official forums to the public (which were full of customers complaining about problems with the game) in what appeared to be an attempt to mask problems that subscribers were facing.

By closing the official forums, it appears SoE are trying to avoid a repeat of this by removing any official way for subscribers to communicate directly with all other customers. And it also makes the support cost much lower, as the company also doesn;t need to employ community managers or forum moderators to interact with the game’s players.