The marketing genius who picked out “Vista” must have been looking at this definition: a far-reaching mental view: vistas of the future.

It is, after all, a pretty good name.

Right after though, was the following definition: a view or prospect, esp. one seen through a long, narrow avenue or passage, as between rows of trees or houses.

A week ago, high from caffeine and the arrival of a newly purchased PowerBook Pro, I decided to use Boot Camp to install Windows on my Mac (gasp). Now, now, prior to a slew of negative comments, I am not a complete Mac-head. I love my ThinkPad and its bulbous battery allowing for hours of fun-filled Excel exploration while flying to gay Paris.

Having learned from previous mistakes, I started with a gentle installation of Windows XP SP2. Smooth, done in 45 mn, works like a charm (I won’t go through the install procedures, they’re explained elsewhere and it’s not the topic).  5 gigs of space taken out of 20, I was close to fitting my 17gig of email (yes, the IT guys love me). Feeling gutsy, I erased XP and installed Vista.

Hot dog, this UI looks better than my beloved OS X??? Yes, yes, I can see the touches of genius here: the slick start-up and login screen, the dark toolbar with a very elegant background. Wait, are these good looking icons I see? Well, well… someone’s been learning.

Checking the hard drive size, this bad boy clocked at a hefty 17 gigs! It’s good to know that America is not the only thing that’s obese nowadays.

After getting a few blue screens of death and missing drivers (Boot Camp does not support Vista yet), I was impressed enough with what I’d seen – and a sucker for running the latest and greatest – I upgraded the Thinkpad… The IT guys had not heard from me in a couple of days and I figured they were getting bored without my antics.

Installation went without a hitch. Desktop looked good. I started noticing the blatant OS X parts.

Signed up as an administrator. Kept it clean with nothing but MS Office 2007 (oooooh, larger icons), Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, ActivePDF and Quicktime. That’s it. Pretty restraint.

Then it started.

Outlook Web Access wouldn’t work anymore (wait, it’s “normal” to see an “X” icon in the compose window with IE 7… Ok, so there is a patch. Alleluiah. I’ll download and run it.

Neuuuuh, not so fast my fearless friend. You could be a phenomenal foe and need to run this as an administrator (I guess that’s what it means because the error message was actually: “THE REQUESTED OPERATION REQUIRES ELEVATION.”)

My karma must be shit for Windows to tell me I need to elevate myself.

Not a problem, I’ll change the user setting. Nope, already an admin… Mmm, let me check online. Oh, I see, it’s quite simple really: one only has to right click on the application and select “run as administrator” to watch the install, er… fail.  
Alternatively, you can easily access the Command Line Interface and install as admin from there. Right then, like whistling in the shower. Expect for the slight disadvantage of HAVING TO RUN A COMMAND LINE INTERFACE TO LAUNCH AN .EXE!

Remember the joke on Windows 95 = Macintosh 1984, yeah, I thought that was funny too. Well, here we are with Vista (don’t be shy, read the definition above once more and let it soak in) and we’re back to CLI. I can’t tell you the joy of running an application through that puppy. Yeah, who needs a mouse? Finally, it told me that my 30 free gigs weren’t enough storage to install the hotfix.

I called my shrink.

I talked. He mainly listened.

It felt good.

He told me to update my version of Windows before doing anything I might regret. Then he hung up because he was on a VoIP line and downloading a file that was sucking his bandwidth.

I updated (there were 8 updates within 10 days of the release) knowing full well this wouldn’t change the problem but needed some fresh air. The screen went black and asked if it was ok if Windows Updater was unresponsive. I didn’t find the F U button combination, so I clicked on “yes”. It crashed.

After that, I added Firefox to my list of apps, just so I could run Outlook Web Access. Ironic

Ctrl+Alt+Tab doesn’t do much either. I haven’t been able to stop a crashed app yet. It‘s cool though; I actually like rebooting: it’s my favorite part of the OS.

I could go on. The “blackening” of the entire screen each time some communication with the outside world happens asking if “I allow”.

“Windows need your permission to use this program.” 
“Windows need your permission to continue.”

Why do I prevent pop-up windows on my browser if I get even more in my OS?

You can thank the User Account Control (UAC) for this, which basically transforms any administrator into a de facto user. Whhhhhaaat? Ok, thankfully, it’s fairly easy to turn off, once you know about it.

And that is my other gripe with the OS. I haven’t opened a manual in years but there are so many choices and funky details going on, I’m not comfortable with the basic functionality.

Yep, the Wow starts here. It’s taking me twice as long do tweak things in the control panel (good luck finding your way there) and I don’t understand half of the “features” – which is a bummer because I’ve always pride myself in being so computer avant-guardist and quite nifty for a non techy. Guess Microsoft finally wanted to show guys like me who was the smartest. Well done, boys, well done.

I like the icons and the 3-D thingy when doing an alt-tab. Interestingly, that’s the type of details that enhances the experience. It’s a shame that a fruit-named company has been laughed at for focusing exactly on enhancing the user experience for the past 20 odd years.

Bottom line? Love the icons, boys.

And the theme.

Kicks ass.

Really.