The Persistence of Time in Windows Vista

Time and tide wait for no-one. Tempus fugit. Time flies when you're having fun. There's no time like the present. Time time time - there is so much time then there is Microsoft Vista Time !

From this article in the Guardian today, this chica has put her finger on it - for all the supposed bells and whistles, Vista developers have paid no attention to how Vista deals with time.

Quote :

Take Windows Vista. In many areas, it outperforms Windows XP, but it doesn't feel that way. In fact, Vista often feels more sluggish. Why? Because the designers at Microsoft haven't addressed the user's perception of Vista's performance.

Human beings, it turns out, don't perceive time in a perfectly linear fashion. We perceive that things are progressing more quickly if that apparent progress is smooth, and if it speeds up towards the end. Because the Vista copy progress bar doesn't move smoothly, and slows down toward the end, it's perceived as slower than it really is. Gmail has done better. Its developers have recently included a loading screen with a progress bar. The transition from the login screen to this intermediate screen makes the load-time feel faster, even if it isn't.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/22/iphone.vista

I don't think it's the fact that Vista is just slower than XP or Ubuntu - Ubuntu boots up in exactly one minute, Vista spends two or more cranking up - but that it has no manners. When Vista finally gets to the point, for example, where you can see icons on your desktop, clicking on them is often ineffective as it is still loading other icons or the flaming windows sidebar which I am threatening to delete from my computer (that's the little windows with the clock and stocks and calendar on the right of your desktop).

Why does it show you icons if clicking on them doesn't have an immediate effect? Your click is obviously put into a queue behind other shite that is yet to be loaded up. To me this is bad programming and the simple way that ubuntu deals with this is to keep the desktop blank until all the programs are ready to take your orders. Fortunately Ubuntu is pretty fast and can afford to do this while Vista is embarrassingly slow and cannot.

Rant over.

I've noticed this too, of course - but I don't have ubuntu to compare it to, so I just accept it. It's faster than the old thing I had so I'm not complaining. I

Did you just lose half a post?

I deleted a rake of programs which try to get onto my desktop and now Vista boots in just over a minute. It's good. I've also not got the Aero theme installed as it's Home Basic and probably doesn't have it but that's a memory glutton too.

It's an interesting thing in the article in that Apple makes their software seem like it's quicker - we like that things are telling you they are doing something - it's reassuring.

I've a lot of stuff I don't use on my desktop - but I never know when I might need it...!

No, I didn't lose half a post, just left in the 'I' when I delete the rest of the waffle.

I changed back to XP.