I originally thought that the critics were just being hard on Windows Vista. All Microsoft products draw skepticism. After my experience with Windows Vista though, it became clear to me that it sucks bad. I thought I’d share some specific examples.

Options aren’t available unless you are on a specific screen

Many of the options for certain items just aren’t there anymore. You have to find the setting in the Control Panel instead of simply right-clicking the item and accessing them. A good example would be the dialup connections that are located under Start > Connect to… There used to be a Delete option when you right clicked on these items. This option, along with several others are no longer there. I liked being able to access options from several different screens.
You have to sift through tons of screens to find what you’re looking for

You know the 3 click rule? Everything should be within 3 clicks. Well, Vista shoves that aside. It can take up to 6 clicks to find some options. If you don’t know where a specific setting is, good luck!

Dialog boxes start minimized or in the background

When certain programs throw up a dialog box to notify you of an error or event, you might not know it’s there. You often have to look at the taskbar and notice the extra item down there. I’ve sat for many minutes staring at the screen not knowing what my programs are doing only to realize there is something else going on. Only by clicking on the entry for the dialog box on the Taskbar will allow to see what the message is.

Various video problems

I’ve tried 3 different systems running Vista, all with different video cards. They all exhibited some type of video freeze during the time I’ve used them. Not to mention, all the stupid video animations are too much for most systems to handle. Why do I need fancy video animations to get my work done?

These are just a handful of problems I’ve encountered with Vista, and I haven’t used the the operating system for more than 12 hours total yet. I can only imagine what people are going through that have to use it every day.

There is a registry hack that allows you to make Windows Vista crash to a blue screen of death whenever you want.

1. Hold down the Windows Key and press R. Type REGEDIT.

2. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
then SYSTEM
then CurrentControlSet
then Services
then i8042prt
then click Parameters

3. Double-click on CrashOnCtrlScroll and set the value to 1 to enable this feature.

Restart the computer. Now when you hold down the CTRL key and press the SCROLL LOCK key two times, Windows Vista will automatically crash to a BSOD.

An alternate way to make Vista crash would be to simply use Windows Vista.

I recently created a post about making an icon to lock your screen. Since then I have been playing around with some of the RUNDLL32 shortcuts available for Windows Vista. One of them I found handy was this one to put Windows into Hibernate mode.

1. Right-click an blank area on your desktop.

2. Select New >Shortcut

3. Type ‘ RunDll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState’ for the Location.

Give the shortcut a name like ‘Hibernate’. Now you can just double-click the icon whenever you want Windows to hibernate. This command works with Windows XP and Vista.

Create an icon that will lock your screen in Windows XP and Vista.

1. Right-click an blank area on your desktop.

2. Select New >Shortcut

3. Type ‘rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation’ for the Location.

Give the shortcut a name. Now you can just double-click the icon whenever you want to lock your screen. I like to place mine in the Quick Launch area on the Taskbar. There, I only have to click it once.

Windows Key + L will also lock your screen

How to change how thick the glass window borders are in Windows Vista.

7. Click OK 3 Times.

Vista is not only struggling because it’s a bad upgrade. It’s struggling because it’s just not necessary. Windows XP runs fine, it has all the bells and whistles we need to run efficiently. If it’s not included in XP, power users can find free, open source alternatives. Power users can also find satisfaction in other operating systems such as Ubuntu.

Businesses around the world have no need for Vista either. XP is stable and suits them just fine. It’s too bad power users and businesses don’t decide the fate of what really dominates the market, because Vista will find it’s way through the rough time it’s going through right now. Do you know why? Because when people like your grandma call up Gateway for a new PC, what do you think they will offer her? A PC with Vista pre-loaded. Eventually, PC manufacturers will stop selling XP because it’s “too old”. PC manufacturers can make or break an OS’s success. No way will they decide to offer XP forever.

So Vista will be out there for the novice users, which means software and hardware will be created for Vista and will not be supported under the “older” XP. Which will then push businesses and power users into finally buying the upgrade. The master plan of Microsoft will then be complete once again. Just as it was with XP, 2000, 98, 95, 3.1 and DOS.