Vista

Archive for the 'Vista' Category

My move from OS X to Vista - Day 3

Published

on 27/3/2007

. 19 Comments

I know it is a cliche that you don’t really realise just how much you love something until it is gone but I am proving that true with this move to Vista from OS X!

What is it that I miss so much? ExposÃ©!

ExposÃ© is a fabulous, much underrated feature of OS X whereby you can, at the click of a key or the flick of a mouse, expose all the windows you have open (or expose all the windows you have open for a particular app, or you can call up the desktop, or the screensaver).

This is an incredible timesaving feature. I regularly have multiple emails open. The ability to hit F10 (or flick into the top left corner) to move between windows of just the Mail app, is fantastic. Similarly for browser windows, or any other app where you are likely to have multiple windows open and need to move between them.

There are a couple of ExposÃ© clones out there for Vista but I have yet to find one which will emulate the app window tiling.

I now find myself constantly let down when I flick the mouse up to the top left corner in Vista and nothing happens

My move from OS X to Vista - Day 2

Published

Tom Raftery

on 26/3/2007

in Email, Microformats, Vista, Windows and os x to vista

. 11 Comments

It is taking me a while to get into this Vista machine.

On the Mac, I live in browsers (I generally have 4 running) and email. The browsers on Vista are pretty much the same as they are on the Mac but the email experience is very different.

The main choices I have for email client software are Thunderbird and Outlook 2007. I am using both for different email accounts and, frankly, I don’t like either!

Thunderbird has already crashed on me so it is not that stable and Outlook hangs from time to time, seemingly contemplating the task I have just asked it to do, before finally snapping to attention and displaying my mail.

Outlook also has an incredibly cluttered interface (seven panes) in comparison to the clean crisp interface of Apple’s Mail app. This can be very off-putting if you are not familiar with the program.

I also hate the way Outlook deals with IMAP. I like it as a protocol but it is unusable in Outlook (if I delete an email, I want it to disappear, not stay in my inbox with a line through it). I originally set up my mail account in Outlook 2007 as IMAP but when I realised Outlook still deals poorly with IMAP I decided to switch to POP.

This is where I hit another UI bug.

When I asked Outlook to remove the account it gave me the above error message which basicly says, “I know what you were trying to do but because you haven’t done it the exact way I mandate, I’m going to display this error message scolding you and make you do it again until you do it properly!”

Listen Microsoft, if the app is clever enough to know what I was trying to do, why not just do it, instead of forcing me to start all over again, the way Outlook wants me to do it?

Another Vista bug?

Published

Tom Raftery

on 23/3/2007

in Vista, Windows and os x to vista

. 6 Comments

I have discovered another issue with Vista which may well be a bug. If not, then the OS is certainly not behaving as expected.

On a pc the standard key combo for switching between apps and windows is Alt + Tab. Vista is no different. On holding down Alt and pressing Tab you are presented with a series of windows to chose between. Tabbing selects forward. Shift-tabbing selects back and where you stop, the selected window opens.

But, you can also use your mouse to select out of sequence (if you don’t want to continue tabbing. Selecting the window with the mouse though does nothing. If you let go of the Alt key at this point, you won’t get the window you selected with the mouse opening up.

What you have to do is click on the window you want to have open up. Why? Surely if I select it with the mouse, that should be enough to tell the OS that this is the window I want to have open.

It is the little things like this guys which annoy users.

UPDATE - post updated to correct the incorrect insertion of the image above. Completely my fault - nothing to do with Vista. Thanks to Tis me for letting me know about the error in the comments.

Switching from OS X to Vista (kinda)

Published

Tom Raftery

on 23/3/2007

in Email, Mac, Microsoft, Vista and Windows

. 5 Comments

Microsoft gave me a Sony Vaio laptop with Vista Ultimate and Office Ultimate installed to try out. I have been toying with the Vaio but not using it heavily. To be fair to Microsoft, I’m going to try to switch as much as possible of my work from my MacBook Pro to the Vaio to see how I get on over the next few weeks.

A lot of my work is done online so that part shouldn’t be too difficult (I installed Firefox on the laptop last night!). However, for presentations I will continue to use the Mac as there is no comparison in the quality of presentations created in Keynote versus those done inÂ PowerPoint.

Oh, and for my photos I will continue to use iPhoto because that is where my current extensive library of photos resides.

The most difficult move will be my email I suspect. I love Apple’s Mail app. It will take a lot to win me back to Outlook.

Wish me luck!