I finally got to work with Windows Vista yesterday, on a new laptop with Vista Home Premium. After waiting nearly 45 minutes for the laptop to start up for the first time, and after creating a single Administrator account, the first thing that happened was that Windows Vista decided I did not have enough permission to copy a file I created from a network computer I was administrator on to a folder I created on the new laptop.

So the very first thing Vista did was stop me working.

I’ve not been able to get around this issue either, so I’m basically stuck with a bunch of files that I created but am not allowed to work on, since Vista has decided that it knows better than I do whether or not I should be allowed to work on files I created.

I spent several hours trawling the Web regarding this issue as well, and it seems to be a common one, and one that Microsoft have been entirely silent on, leaving many people unable to access their own documents if they’re stored on a remote Windows XP computer. To answer some of the common ’solutions’:

• I don’t have Kaspersky AV installed
• I have a single Administrator account which has taken ownership of the entire hard drive - except those bits that Vista has decided I’m not allowed to take ownership of. Sorry, I thought this was my laptop?
• UAC is disabled.
• I have full administrator permissions on the remote XP network share.
• This is an issue that is not being addressed at all by Microsoft, yet it continues to affect people. From what I can gather, there’s absolutely nothing being said by Microsoft about what is causing this, or why this is happening.

Which leaves me unable to work using Windows Vista, and in the situation where I no longer have control over my own computer. Microsoft’s love affair with security has reached insane levels, and has literally got to the point where someone in America has more control over how I use my own computer than I do, and is essentially dictating to me what I can and cannot do with my own files on my own computer. And we’re not talking ‘protected or commercial content’, we’re talking about files I own and created, where the rights are mine. Vista is stripping me of the right to work with my own intellectual property.

I’m just glad I can still buy a copy of Windows XP over the counter, because even though this new laptop came with Vista pre-installed (and I had no choice in the matter), it’s likely to be wiped in favour of Windows XP, which at least lets me have control over my own files.

Update: I found a workaround for transferring files - install an FTP server on the remote machine - to get around Vista’s insane security issues. However, Vista had another trick up it’s sleeve. After transferring several gigabytes of files (yes, gigabytes) to one of Vista’s default folders, an attempt to move the contents of this folder resulted in Vista deleting all the files in the folder. All of them. And it didn’t move them to the recycle bin, or to the desired location, it permanently and irretrievably deleted them.

Vista is proving to be more of a headache than an upgrade, and there is serious thought to reverting back to Windows XP by buying a retail copy, or installing an alternative OS. Ubuntu or switching to Mac are looking attractive right now. Except for gaming, there is now nothing I can’t do on Windows that I can’t also do on either of these OSes.

Update 2: There are a number of new games coming soon that will only run under Vista with DirectX 10, including the incredible-looking Crysis. However, having now worked with Vista for a few days, even my desire to play a game like Crysis will not make me install Vista - I’m too worried that Vista will suddenly decide I don’t want some of my files again and arbitrarily decide to delete them without telling me.

Perhaps I’ll have to build a second gaming machine with Vista on it that’s not connected to the Internet, and just use it to play DX10 games and nothing else - I certainly won’t ever trust any of my work machines to have Vista installed.

The feature I hate most in Word 2007 is the new user interface - the Ribbon. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I have found that all the new ribbon does is serve to frustrate me when I am working with Word documents. All the functions I used to use are hidden and not easily available. Word now insists that it knows how I want to format my document better than I do, and consistently display unwanted, un-needed and inappropriate options for formatting.

It takes more clicks to find the function I want, and often times I’m unable to find what I am looking for. Here’s a very explicit example:

When working on a document, I rely on document styles to mark up parts of the document. Document-derived styles are hidden under a very small button, and the ‘quick styles’ can not be set to the document styles, only those that Microsoft think I want to use.

The same goes for colours. There’s a colour missing from the default colour set: Blue. That’s RGB #0000FF. There are variants on the shade of blue, but not blue.

Then there’s the ‘themes’. Apparently when I select a font, what I want is a font from one of the ‘themes’, rather than a font I’ve already used. And you can’t disable themes, much as I have no use for them and never want to use them.

Lastly, I used to have all the functions I wanted on a single toolbar, and could access them all with a single click. Now it takes several (3 or more) to access common functions that used to be a single click away.

The upshot is that Word 2007, even after using for a couple of weeks and ‘getting used to it’ is having a detrimental effect on my productivity.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the 3 second pause whenever I bring the program into focus…

I’ve got a new PC at work, and with it comes some new software in the form of Office 2007 (and not Vista - if I ever get given a PC with Vista I think the first comment I run will be FDISK…)

Already, after a day of using Office 2007, I hate it. I know there’s been a lot written about how it takes a while to get used to, and it certainly does as it changes all the accepted and usual paradigms about controlling software.

I can deal with the new menus, that’s not a problem. What annoys me though is that the close document button (the little x in the top right) has disappeared…

Update: Guess who can’t spell…