What will Vista do for me?

[ssampier]

How does Vista handle extensions?

On XP, I set it to show all extensions. When I rename a file, I find it irritating to have to type the dot extension each time. Does Vista handle this differently?

 

[Felon]

Believe it or not, for most people it IS easier - once they LEARN it. It's like Dvorak keyboards. It makes no sense if you're used to something else, but once you learn the layout it's actually easy.

Also, help is still there and it's an order of magnitude better than it ever was.

"LEARN"? I'm not trying to program in Visual Basic or C+, I just want to print out my timesheet or type up a letter. Office-productivity tools should pretty much offer basic functionality right out of the box. Don't get me wrong, it's nice that you guys have doped out this little cryptex, but this isn't going to go over within any company that tries to make 2007 a standard.

You say Help is still available--improved, even. In actuality, Help is no longer available anywhere obvious, so it's another buried feature along with all those others I'm hearing about. And I don't think I'm mistaken for equating "burying" with "getting rid of". After all, we bury things to get rid of them.

 

[Felon]

One good thing I'll say about Vista: it's the bomb when it comes to plug-and-play.

I made an image of a Fujitsu laptop and cloned it onto a Dell desktop. No sysprep at all (a damned foolish thing to do if I hadn't been testing) and yet it came right up. No errors at all.

That's a really big deal for IT folks. Previously, an image would have to be made for each model of computer being used throughout their company. Now it's a lot closer to one-size-fits-all.

 

[Imruphel]

Has anyone used EToools with Vista?

Does anyone use eTools?

 

[DonTadow]

One good thing I'll say about Vista: it's the bomb when it comes to plug-and-play.

I made an image of a Fujitsu laptop and cloned it onto a Dell desktop. No sysprep at all (a damned foolish thing to do if I hadn't been testing) and yet it came right up. No errors at all.

That's a really big deal for IT folks. Previously, an image would have to be made for each model of computer being used throughout their company. Now it's a lot closer to one-size-fits-all.

I'd do more testing before I say this is a 100%. I've done system clones from two laptops to two desktops and have had them work with xp. Then again i've done two near identiical systems and have been screwed.

 

[Mercule]

"LEARN"? I'm not trying to program in Visual Basic or C+, I just want to print out my timesheet or type up a letter.

I agreed with you, at first. Being a bleeding edge kinda guy, though, I left 2007 installed on my machine for a while. It took about a month (which, btw, is how long it took me to adapt to Dvorak), but I do find the ribbon easier to work with than the menus. Sometimes I still get lost looking for some obscure feature, but it's generally better. Plus, the added features in 2007 make it nice to work with, regardless.

My understanding, though, is that part of the learning curve is fighting existing knowledge. I'm definitely a power user for Word and Excel, and I'm betting you are, too. Apparently, the ribbon is much easier for Grandma, or the guys in marketing, to use than a menu/toolbar -- according to MS market research. The philosophy is that a power user is likely to be able to adapt pretty easily to a new control interface, so cater to the beginning user and the user base, as a whole, is both enlarged and empowered.

MS has said that 8 in 10 of the requests they had for new features were things that were already in place in Office, often for multiple releases. The goal of moving to the ribbon is to de-obfuscate the existing abilities in Office. Apparently, the beta feedback says that it's doing it's job pretty well, overall.

 

[XCorvis]

"LEARN"? I'm not trying to program in Visual Basic or C+, I just want to print out my timesheet or type up a letter. Office-productivity tools should pretty much offer basic functionality right out of the box. Don't get me wrong, it's nice that you guys have doped out this little cryptex, but this isn't going to go over within any company that tries to make 2007 a standard.

You say Help is still available--improved, even. In actuality, Help is no longer available anywhere obvious, so it's another buried feature along with all those others I'm hearing about. And I don't think I'm mistaken for equating "burying" with "getting rid of". After all, we bury things to get rid of them.

Yikes, you sound like I've seriously offended you somehow.

It took me a couple of days to figure everything out, we're not talking dedicated study or research here. Just open the thing and start typing. You'll have to stop and look around the first few times, but weren't you poking around the menus before anyway? It took you time to learn where the options are, and this is the same. Remember the first time you ever used Word? I don't, but I'm sure it's not that different.

If you want, you can add ANY button (like print, or page setup or merge) to the "quick access toolbar" at the top. (That's where Save is by default, near the button with the Office logo.) Just right click on it and choose "customize". It's not part of the ribbon so it's always showing.

Also, Help is the little question mark in the upper right corner. Again, it's not part of the ribbon. You can also hit F1, which opens help in nearly every program ever made for Windows.

 

[ThirdWizard]

How does Vista handle extensions?

On XP, I set it to show all extensions. When I rename a file, I find it irritating to have to type the dot extension each time. Does Vista handle this differently?

In Vista if you click to rename something, it only highlights the area before the extension. So if you click to rename "GreatWhiteShark.jpg", it will only highlight the "GreatWhiteShark" area and leave the ".jpg" unhighlighted for change.

"LEARN"?

Are you advocating for lack of change because it takes time to adapt to new GUIs?

MS Word in the past has been horribly designed. So much so that an estimated 80%+ of its functionality is not used by most users, because they either don't know it exists, don't know how to find it, or it was too complicated to use. It's arguably the most horribly designed interface Microsoft has ever created.

The new interface is different. By definition it is going mean there's a learning curve associated with this change. The question becomes, once a user is more intimate with the new GUI, do they prefer it to the old one. And, I would give an unequivocal "YES!" answer to this question. Learning new things is not bad. That's why my company is using Lotus Notes instead of the far far (repeat that 100 times) better MS Exchange. Lotus Notes quite frankly sucks, but because people at corporate know it and don't want to learn something new, we're stuck using it.

In the world of software even end users can't just stick with what they know. They have to be willing to adapt and keep up with the times. I'm sure when the accounting department, for example, here learns that I can add functionality to Office to make their life easier, they'll take the 2 or 3 hours to learn to use 2007 in exchange for the countless hours of work it will save them in the future. At least, I would hope that from them.

 

[Felon]

I'd do more testing before I say this is a 100%. I've done system clones from two laptops to two desktops and have had them work with xp. Then again i've done two near identiical systems and have been screwed.

Well, y'know, 100% is tough to achieve, eh?

But so far I'm impressed. Imaging is more along the lines of what I do than word-processing or spreadsheet-crunching.

 

[Felon]

Yikes, you sound like I've seriously offended you somehow.

Nope, I just really have had an aggrivating time with it, so much so that I uninstalled it. I also don't care much for online activation. That's the kind of thing that'll drive me to buy a Mac.

Thanks for the advice.