How I Fixed Some Vista Productivity Pitfalls
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the new-PC dilemma I was facing: whether I should desperately cling to Windows XP, bite the bullet and accept Vista as my new OS, or take the plunge to Mac. I was concerned about the productivity issues that might plague me with a significant change in OS. Turned out I was right to worry.
I opted for choice #2 for practical reasons: I didn't want to pledge continued allegiance to an OS that would soon lose Microsoft support, and I saved about $1,000 by buying a Dell PC instead of a similarly tricked-out Mac. Guided by a good friend who's a sysadmin extraordinaire, I proceeded to migrate from my old PC to the new Vista machine.
Argh.
Never mind that doing this took all weekend and the better part of Monday (PCMover isn't the foolproof solution it would like you to think it is, by the way), and that I had to repurchase some software that didn't play nice with Vista. Those things, I expected. But there were several Vista-centric annoyances that rubbed me the wrong way and cut into my work until I found fixes. Here's a brief list:
1) Vista has the incredibly annoying habit of asking the user for permission every time an admin-level task is performed. I understand that increased security is one of Vista's big bragging points, but adding an extra layer of clickage in the name of "user account control" made me want to scream. Thank goodness I figured out how to get rid of those annoying UAC messages.
2) A known bug with Microsoft Office 2003 and Vista made the EULA agreement pop up every time I launched Excel, Outlook, or Word. Every. Single. Time. No matter how often I clicked "accept." I finally fixed that with a registry edit, but for a while there it was worse than fighting pop-up ads online.
3) My supposedly Vista-compatible mouse played Russian roulette with dialogue boxes and window controls. If I wanted to click "OK" to a message, it took a half-dozen tries to find the right zone somewhere in the approximate ZIP code of the button. The fix? Disable the Aero mouse pointer scheme. Now it only takes one click to close a window, not 10.
4) Why did Vista rename a bunch of tried-and-true stuff such as My Documents and Add/Remove Programs? I mean, it's not the end of the world to realize that My Documents is now CC/Documents, or that "Display Settings" is now found under "Personalize," but it slows down my process. There's no real fix to this except time, and a week and a half into my new machine I'm getting used to it. Still, figuring out new organization schemes is not the most efficient use of my time.
This all might be old hat to those of you already on Vista, and if you've discovered workarounds for other annoyances, please feel free to post them! Meanwhile, I'll continue my attempts to ascend the Vista learning curve -- and to get back to my old levels of productivity.