The continuing saga of a Mac guy in Vista land

I have been using Apple products since 1982 and PC products since 1983 so I am pretty hard to surprise.

This morning I got surprised.  I had booted up my Vista machine just to get my mail synchronized before my office duty this afternoon.

While Outlook was doing its thing, I was writing a friend in NJ in Gmail.  It was a lengthy email, and all of sudden Firefox closed.  Then the whole computer started shutting down.  It did not warn me or ask me before shutting down, and just before the final the shut down, it installed three or more updates.

I felt like a foreign being had taken over my computer.  I signed up for auto-updates so I guess I am to blame.  The auto-update mandate along with having my Vista machine turned off overnight when the updates are usually installed must have made Windows Update antsy.

Still it was annoying, and when the machine rebooted, Outlook was unresponsive for a while and Windows Live couldn't log into the service.  Then Google Desktop hung.

I switched over to my MacBook and got another surprise.  As is often the case I have a Gmail tab open in Firefox.

There was my email, rescued by Gmail's auto-save feature. I doubt that I even lost a character.

The combination of my MacBook waking instantly from sleep and Gmail saving my draft even as Windows is shutting itself down shows the way computers should be.

Unfortunately most people do not know how good computers can be.  What is more surprising is that many people do not want to know.

After I came to my personal revelation that no amount of patches would rescue Vista, I did a post over on one of the real state blogs.  I recommended that agents give Macs a serious look.

In the post I mentioned an article, Do Young, Tech-Savvy Buyers Need a Real Estate Agent's Help?

The article hints that agents are not making efficient use of technology. I have to believe that Windows is part of the problem.

Yet I sense no tidal wave of real estate agents trying to figure out how to make better use technology perhaps through buying a Mac where technology rarely gets in the way of what you are trying to do.

Most people are "comfortable" in the Windows world and afraid to try anything different.

Having worked in Windows centric companies, I know that some people can get a lot of work done with Windows.  In fact I have gotten a fair amount of work accomplished with my Windows XP systems.

The problem is that most people are not those "some people" who seem to do well in the Windows world.

Most people have problems with Windows, and I do not think the solution is Service Pack 1.

Windows remains complex.  When I insert one of my SD photo memory cards in my Vista laptop nothing happens other than a little icon popping up to show me that there is a card in the computer. 

I can remember wrestling with the settings early on because I wanted my Vista laptop to open Picasa when a card was inserted.  While Vista gave me some choices, launching Picasa was not one of them which is surprising since it was one of the choices on XP.  So I gave up and now manually launch Picasa and import the photos.

When I put that same card in a reader for my Mac, iPhoto launches.  At one time I had it set to launch the Nikon photo program so switching around which program launches on the Mac is not much of a problem.

Perhaps a more knowledgeable Vista user can tell me now to get Picasa to launch when I insert a card.

If I step back and look at the Windows world, it seems disjointed.  On the one hand the computer is asking me to approve actions where I have no clue.  Then it turns around and shuts down by itself while I am in the middle of an email.

It is as if the user is an afterthought in the Windows world.  On the other hand in the Mac world, the computer seems to make a conscious effort to stay out of the way of the user.

Vista makes me feel like my computer has an agenda of its own, and I am only there when it is politically correct for me to be involved.  If what I am doing gets in the way of what the computer wants to do, I am out of luck.

That just seems backwards to me.

I wonder if all those people who are determined to stick with Windows until Microsoft gets it right with Vista have ever considered how much better their computing experience would be if they just made the effort to move to a Mac?

How can you be so loyal to a vendor who has abused you?

Comments

[Wes]

The thing is I never had the mess of troubles you have had with Vista. I'm not saying this because I don't believe you. The thing is that (in my guess) depending on the computer, Vista can work just completely fine or it can just the most broken thing out there.

As for me, I have no wireless or sleep issues whatsoever, and the notebook is faster than my old one. (This one came with Vista,so I have no way to compare how it would work with XP.) That said, my friend could not get it to work on her machine, no matter what we tried.

I don't know what to say, other than I was much luckier than you were in the PC department.

[Sebhelyesfarku]

You moron, Gmail autosave works in every browser on every platform... not just on your crippled Macbook

[ocracokewaves]

The funny thing is that I have added nothing very unusual to the system. I run Firefox as my browser, Outlook as my email client, use Picasa and Snagit. The only other thing that I usually have running is Google desktop.

95% percent of the time there is nothing more than those apps running except Norton which for all I know might be the problem, but it came on the system.

It is mystery to me also since I have a Dell laptop with XP and Ubuntu and it works great. I actually think the HP hardware is very good.

My only conclusion is Vista doesn't like me.

[ocracokewaves]

Gee, Sebhelyesfarku, I would have never figured that out without your brilliance.

I just assumed that the email which I wrote on the Windows machine didn't get saved there.

I thought perhaps when I touched the keys on my MacBook what I have typed flowed from my fingers through the keyboard, then to Gmail and was auto-saved on the Mac.

Actually what was amazing was that I was using one computer which shut down and I turned around and in less thirty seconds I opened another computer which got on the network and had my email back instantly.

Trust me, I don't think there is a Vista box out there that can think that fast.

Of course sometimes thinking and fast are two unrelated things.

[vrn]

Seems like a Picasa problem - it's there in my autoplay handlers. If you're comfortable with editing the registry, you could add a key to handle it. Or you could reinstall Picasa. Wouldn't hurt your library of pictures. Or you could edit the registry. Or use an application that can modify Autoplay Handlers. Here's one, though I'm not sure it'll work for your issue: http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/02/27/fix-or-remove-windows-autoplay-with-cleanhandlers/

But I do point out that what's in the box and on the hard drive when it's shipped from Cupertino is entirely work from Apple. When that HP came from Palo Alto, it's got an Intel motherboard from Santa Clara, and a Seattle operating system. And then there's Picasa, from Mountain View. So all of those interlinking parts have to join together. It sometimes doesn't work out. Having total control of hardware, software and the entire package from start to finish is a huge advantage. And Microsoft hasn't had the advantage of wiping the code base and starting over ala OS X.

That's not to deflect the blame. Microsoft deserves a lot of it. But sometimes, it's not Microsoft's fault - it's the fault of some other vendor, and I suspect Google's since it works okay on all the installations I've ever done. With Apple products if something goes wrong, you can bet it's Apple's fault.

Any BIOS updates for your laptop?

[ocracokewaves]

I ran HP Update tonight to see if the system needs a BIOS update. Apparently everything is up to date.

[Dave M.]

"If you are comfortable editing the registry..."

This is a big reason I finally made the switch back in 2006. That and peeking at the Vista Beta/RC1/RC2 releases. I have used Windows PC's for years and years. Mostly happily, but the Blue Screens and crashes kept me from being perfectly happy.

I was one of those folks who were "comfortable" editing the Registry. However, every time I opened up the Registry, I just saw more and more junk going in and even after "uninstalling" programs, would see that entries were still there.

OS X is such a breath of fresh air compared to Windows these days. Even when OS X wants to do an update, it simply brings up a window telling me that there are updates ready. It doesn't reboot my system without my approval.

I have had absolutely no regrets after making the switch. Programs on the Mac are very consistent. Programmers on the Mac tend to follow the Human Interface Guidelines setup by Apple. I seemed to never see guidelines in Windows followed. Even Microsoft seems to ignore them or change them on a whim. Look at Office 2007 or IE 7 for examples. Programs do crash, but I have yet to see a program take down the OS, where with Windows XP that was an almost daily occurrence.

I understand that there are programs that are only on Windows that some folks have to use like Real Estate software. Thanks to the switch Apple made to Intel, running Windows on a Mac is a fairly trivial and inexpensive thing to do. I run Parallels when I want to do something in Windows and when I need the system's speed, I'll reboot into Windows, do what I want or need to do, then reboot back to OS X. That's pretty rare these days though.

[Chuck]

Sebhelyesfarku is a Windows troll. His immature comments show up everywhere decent people want to discuss things. Maybe he should go work for MSFT since he seems to be so smart in the ways of computing, but I don't think they hire 13-year-olds.

[ScottinFla]

I can understand your frustrations but I simply haven't found Vista to be all that bad. My G4-based Mac Mini was replaced by an HP Slimline desktop running Vista Home Premium.

The system has been stable and reliable for the most part. It's not perfect - but perfectly useable. On occasion, the wireless signal drops and requires a re-connect. But aside from that...

Vista has its advantages. I do prefer the text rendering (ClearType?) found here. With Mac OS X, text has always had that slightly fuzzy look. The Pages app is a good example. Also, the Vista Start Menu and Taskbar get the nod over the Dock. The latter seems almost cartoon-ish in contrast. Both Firefox and Thunderbird have been rock-solid and hassle free. I can't say the same about running Safari on my Mac.

As for Windows Update, I've set it to simply notify me when updates are available. That seems to work without much trouble. The updates are installed when it's convenient for me.

What I do miss about the Mac has little to do with the big ticket items. I have no interest in the iLife package, nor in Apple's pro-grade versions. Leopard is a bit heavy on the glitz factor as well. It's more the simpler advantages at work. The System Preferences app is one example. This utility is a pleasure to use compared to the mix 'n match approach of my Vista machine and all of its third-party input. HP, nVidia, RealTek, Adobe...they all have their fingers in the pie. Setting up and configuring a Mac is a much simpler process.

I also miss the "connected" aspect of Cocoa-based apps. The common spell checker, the Font Panel, built-in support for the PDF format, the System Services menu...these do make my day to day computer use a bit less of a chore. The Get Info window is another example. If I never see another Properties dialog box, it won't be too soon.

Anyway...

[ocracokewaves]

I don't disagree that Vista is usable. I am using it right now, but when I shift from home to office to other locations, the system sometimes doesn't do well.

Wireless has been around a long time.

To me it should almost be like ATMs, it should work all of the time.

I guess the screen rendering is a personal preference. I like the Mac's better.

Having said all that I have made the point more than once that I am not sure that Apple's hardware is as good as the operating system.

There is a huge gap in the Apple product line between the iMac and the Pro systems.

I can understand looking at other hardware because the Mac Mini doesn't seem competitive to me except for it runs OS X.

I am not using Leopard so I can't comment on it yet.

Photography is a big part of what I do so I find the iApps pretty close to what I need though I do use the Photoshop that I bought in 2004 once in a while.

I have never been a Safari since it does not work well with any blogging software that I have seen.

I am a Firefox user on all three platforms. I have a number of email accounts and a fair volume of email stored on IMAP servers.

I had trouble with Thunderbird and those servers and multiple accounts so I switched to Outlook which handles the accounts but does have a problem about once a day.

I think if my Windows machine stayed in one spot, on one network, it would probably be fine except for occasionally dropping off the network.

I did download and install the free PDF addition for MS Office, but the reality is that having it built in across the operating system is nicer, but maybe that is Adobe's fault.

I just expected more from a package called Vista Home Premium after that many years in development.

Maybe if Vista were fast at what it does I could forgive it, but taking so long to reboot and be ready for work is just unacceptable.

Based on my experience using OS X 10.4, Windows XP, Ubuntu 6.06, and Vista Home Premium, I cannot recommend Vista to friends until it gets better.

I had a friend who switched to Vista call me yesterday and ask if it was okay to allow his system to do something.

I could only tell him that his guess probably wasn't much worse than mine.

[vrn]

@Dave M.: There are portions - large portions indeed - of both Mac OS X and Linux that cannot simply be edited at all without resorting to command line hackery or worse. Editing the registry is far more forgiving for many users than typing arcane commands into the command line, where exact spacing, punctuation and other things matter. Despite having grown up on DOS and using Linux extensively, I cannot for a moment think of a time where I was more eager to enter (even using copy-paste) command line arguments than I was to edit a file or the registry. It may suck as a whole, but it sucks less than potentially destroying your entire system because of a misplaced comma.

@ocracokewaves: HP Update is a piece of crap. You may as well delete it for all the good that does. What I meant was, go over to HP's support website (here: http://tinyurl.com/avd3j), enter your model number (it's either on those accursed stickers if you still have them, or underneath near a bunch of barcodes) and then navigate through Software & Driver updates -> Windows Vista to see if there is a BIOS category. (No - not the best designed website...) Even if the post date is prior to the date your machine was bought, it may have an older version. I still remember the first update I had for my original Mac Mini was a firmware update dated two days before I bought it.

Wish I could take a look at the machine. I've had a lot of conversations with misbehaving HP machines. They don't misbehave any more. ;)

[vrn]

@ScottinFla: I have to say, the one thing I truly miss about Windows is the properties window. There just isn't as much useful - and usefully presented - information in a Get Info window. The defaults also confuse me quite a bit - when I select a whole bunch of folders and choose Get Info, I wish it would summarize it all in one window ala Inspector and the properties window as opposed to spawning a Get Info per selected item.

[Edmundo]

When you buy a computer for the first time, especially a laptop computer, you become very excited because it's, well, your personal computer! But you never expect that you need an IT guy to help you fix problems that happen every single day of your life, like you were terminally ill.

My family has an IT guy, it's me. They all have laptops, and they constantly have problems because they run Windows XP. They are clueless about so many concepts that windows take for granted normal people know about. The things described in this blog post are the things they call me about. They are also thousands of miles away from me, and fixing their Windows problems is always, and will always be, a pain in the ass.

I have a MacBook myself. I seriously got fed up with dealing with Windows at home. Sure, it doesn't let me play games and run certain applications, but it's a tradeoff I'm willing to give in order to minimize a nagging girlfriend (Windows) I should have dumped out on the street long, long ago.

I go with Apple because it's not that I agree with 100% of their philosophies, but I do think they went about it the right way. More importantly, there's no better choice. Microsoft is out of the question (Gmail vs. Hotmail, anyone?), and the Linux world is too high maintenance for me to care. I just want things to work, is that too much to ask?

PS- I have a degree in computer science. Blasphemy! I should have a custom-built laptop instead!

[dave]

I started using a PC when I was about 8 years old when my dad had me format and reinstall Windows 98 on an old Compaq that he had. Ever since then I have used Windows and I haven't bought a Mac until quite recently.

I must say though I find myself using the Mac more than the PC not because it's *easier* or because it *works*. I use it because I feel it's more intuitive with the way I work. For me there is consistency and unity across my applications on the Mac and therefore I can have all of my hotkeys and all of my applications work as a single unit.

I don't have a problem using Windows and never will. I've done my fair share of messing up Windows installs and having to format but you know what, that's how you learn. Windows has been around a very long time and I say that's done it's job well but, more and more people are moving to Apple because they notice quality in their products. People are getting busier and busier and don't have time to figure out issues that happen with their machines.

By the way, all of these allegations that Windows is just "having problems", that has *never* happened to me. You put a user in control of the system, there is no one else to blame but the user. There are things called user accounts and permissions for a reason...

[Dave M.]

@vrn: First off, show me one Linux/Unix system that allows you the ability to damage the OS by simply typing a command in at the command prompt as a standard user. Anyone using a Linux/Unix system as "root" should be taken out and shot.

Same goes for OS X. There is not one single command that I can type that will do harm to my system even as with an administrator account without first being asked for a password.

Second, what commands would I need to operate my system? Oh sure, there are a bunch of commands that can be entered in OS X to make changes to the GUI of the OS or a program or change how the pgm operates. However, there are also free or inexpensive programs that will do those commands for you without you having to type them in yourself. Quite similar to TweakUI in Windows.

My problem with the Registry is when a user has to go digging around in there to clean up crap left behind by programs that don't know how to uninstall themselves properly. There are way more programs out there that don't uninstall themselves correctly than correctly remove themselves.

This is not an issue with OS X. You simply move the APPLICATION.app folder to the trash and your done. There are text files left behind for preferences and such that a free or $10 program can help you remove so that those get removed too. However, they don't slow down the system like in Windows.

[kenny baird]

Re Dave

I've had a load of problems with Ubuntu and the xserver, and the last time I tried to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg (I would not like to spell that command out down the phone to my mother), I got fatal no screen found. So I went on google, and the top 3 hits were blogs or a 20 page forum posting on ubuntuforums. Now, without having a clue what I was typing, I put a load of gunk into the setup and it worked again. The thing is, if you want ubuntu to go mainstream, then you're going to have this problem. namely - casual users typing sudo commands they got from blogs into terminals. In my view, the difficulty / unwillingness of casual users with command line will lead to a vunrability - such as blogs with dodgy posts instructing dodgy sudo commands.

As for your thing about uninstalling - surely this is the third party software's fault, and therefore more likely to be a problem because third party software is much more prevolent on a pc

[Dave M.]

Kenny, your absolutely correct about the uninstall in Windows being a 3rd party problem. Being a developer, and having created a few install images of applications myself, I fully understand why Registry entries get left behind. Microsoft makes it very difficult to understand the Registry and how to work with it. Even install creation software makes this very difficult.

However, this is totally my point. Microsoft made a decision to use the Registry to contain information about installed programs. Originally they used .INI files and I get the feeling that they should have stuck with that idea. It was a lot cleaner in the long run.

The deal is that with the Mac and OS X, programs that are "installed" are easily removed by simply dragging them to the trash. Their "Registry" data is in a folder that can easily be found and removed the same way. If the user of the OS isn't that savvy (and who really is), then using a program like CleanApp or AppZapper or a free program like AppTrap or AppCleaner can take care of getting rid of the few files that are scattered in different folders after a program is used on a Mac.

As to command line use, sure, I have tried my share of those on the Mac. However, now someone has created a program that allows me to execute them without the fear of mistyping them. It's called "Secrets" (http://secrets.textdriven.com/). The website has a list of command-line modifications that are in a database that can be downloaded into the program running on a Mac. Pick the modification you want to try out and it's executed safely. If you don't like it, you can always revert it back without any worries what so ever. This is by far, the best way to dealing with such modifications and the tool is free.

This has been my experience with software on the Mac. There are so many people out there working to make the Mac the best platform ever. Thanks to Microsoft Windows Vista, Apple has seen record increases in sales of it's Mac's both in Notebook and Desktop computers. February was a banner month for them.