Hiawatha Bray reviews Windows Vista Beta 1 in today’s Boston Globe online. His snarky opener (with matching headline) praises Windows Vista for being pretty but lacking substance:
The new software sure is pretty. Maybe that’s why Microsoft recently dropped its rough-and-tumble working title of Longhorn. The new product will be called Windows Vista, a handle that calls to mind a ski lodge in the Rockies, instead of a bedroll on the Chisholm Trail.
Vista uses a new graphics engine called Avalon for drawing windows and icons on the screen. Windows feature translucent edges and hurl themselves onto the screen with a zoomy animated effect.
The toolbar with its familiar Start button is now black with glowing green accents, and the Programs listing has been revised in a way that keeps it from running all over the screen as you install more applications.
Still, after a few days’ use of Vista, it’s hard not to feel disappointed. Dolled up though it is, Vista still resembles good old Windows XP, only with a lot more bugs.
That’s funny. I could say the same thing about this review. The writing sure is clever and witty – too bad the review manages to make at least three major errors in the first page. Let’s review the list:
- “Vista connected easily to the Internet, but wouldn’t link with other machines on a local network.” You have to open the Windows Firewall and enable Printer and File Sharing manually. This process will be automated in later betas. (And it’s the first place that a knowledgeable technical beta tester would look.)
- “[I]t would not make friends with a Serial ATA hard drive — the kind found in most new computers. Good thing the test machine had an extra drive that uses the older parallel ATA interface, or you might not be reading this.” My copy of Windows Vista, on the PC I’m using to write this post, is installed on a SATA drive. Not every SATA controller is supported initially. If you’re doing the installation from scratch, you have to provide a storage driver disk (Windows XP drivers will work) during the first phase of the installation process. This procedure is documented in the readme file. To be fair, that document doesn’t mention SATA disks, but a Google search for “Windows Vista” install SATA turned up thousands of pages that describe the necessary steps.
- “[In the new Internet Explorer] you can’t drag its toolbars around to rearrange them, a pleasant feature of today’s Internet Explorer.” Unless you right-click on the toolbar (or choose View, Toolbars) and clear the Lock the Taskbars option. Once you do that, you can move and resize any toolbar any way you like. This feature is in Internet Explorer 6, in fact.
It doesn’t get any better on page 2.
- “Windows is notoriously easy to infect with rogue programs. Just ask Massachusetts workers who had to fend off last week’s attack of computer worms.” Yes, in a review of Windows Vista it’s important to mention problems that occurred with people running Windows 2000 who did not have a software firewall configured and who had failed to install a critical update.
- “Such things rarely happen to Apple Macintosh computers, or machines running Linux, because their operating systems block unauthorized programs. Microsoft says its new security features will do the same, and make Vista machines as secure as a Macintosh. Not a moment too soon. An effective security upgrade might help Microsoft overcome its toughest business rival: Microsoft.” Ahem. Had they been running Windows XP Service Pack 1, which was released in 2002, they would have been immune to this worm. The additional protections in SP2 would have prevented even more of the problems Bray ticks off. The baseline work on security has already been done and is available today. Bray doesn’t mention the actual security features in Windows Vista, like the much greater support for limited user accounts and a two-way firewall planned for later betas.
And what else didn’t Bray mention? How about the new Explorer, with a Virtual Folders feature that makes it possible to find documents very quickly and to save those searches for reuse? It’s the single most innovative aspect of the Windows Vista interface, but it doesn’t get a mention. The Quick Search bar at the top of every Explorer window? Windows Parental Controls? Might as well be invisible. A slick new preview tool for pictures and videos? Labels for digital pictures? Missed it completely.
A Beta 1 release of any operating system is, by definition, rough and incomplete. The reason this is available to developers and technical beta testers and not to the general public is precisely because of the issues that Bray raised here. I assume that a PR person for Microsoft sent Bray this version of Windows Vista. Even an hour on the phone with a support professional would have helped him work through every one of his issues. Instead, Bray paints a misleading picture based on fundamental misunderstandings.
It’s going to be a very, very long year.
Ed Bott 
As far as the toolbars are concerned I think I understand when he says they cannot be moved. The tab bar and address bar are currently locked in the top two rows. But, MS has assured testers that this is just for the time being…
Hmmm. That would be an odd definition of “toolbars.” I can move the standard toolbar, the menu bar, and all three add-in toolbars I have installed on this computer.
I don’t know of any other browser that treats tabs as a toolbar. In Firefox and Maxthon, you can specify that you want tabs to appear at the bottom of the window rather than the top, but that’s a far cry from moving it to any location.
Likewise, older versions of IE treat the Address bar as a toolbar, but if Bray meant to say he couldn’t move the Address bar, he should have said so rather than saying “you can’t drag its toolbars to rearrange them.” (Plurals highlighted.) The more likely explanation is that the toolbars were locked and he didn’t realize it.
Ed, why is Microsoft offering a two-way firewall in Windows Vista? Is this feature mandatory or optional? Is Microsoft now suggesting or implying that the XP Firewall (which blocks only unauthorized incoming communications) is now longer adequate?
I ask because I have used the XP firewall since XP came out with no problems whatsoever. I have had firewall problems only when experimenting with two-way third party firewalls, most notably Zone Alarm.
Ken, until I actually see it, I won’t be able to answer questions about how it works. I presume, however, that it will be fully configurable, just as with the current version.
My guess is that this change is partially in response to market demands. It’s also related to a new feature called Windows Service Hardening. See this article for some details.
Anyone who knows practically anything about technology and is a regular reader of the Boston Globe knows that Hiawatha Bray is an idiot when it comes to technology. (His ethics have been called into question as well here
In the same newspaper (22August2005) he also makes the claim that vinyl records sound better than CDs and that MP3 players aren’t as good as walkman cassette players.
I wouldn’t take his “review” too seriously.
“How about the new Explorer, with a Virtual Folders feature that makes it possible to find documents very quickly and to save those searches for reuse? It’s the single most innovative aspect of the Windows Vista interface, but it doesn’t get a mention. The Quick Search bar at the top of every Explorer window? Windows Parental Controls?”
How about ’em? They’re Grrrrreat!
They’re also “borrowed” from Mac OS X “Tiger”.
Anyway, that Hiawatha guy is not exactly known for his accuracy in reporting, so I understand your frustration.
Ed, you seem to have a problem with Hiawatha not “reviewing” some of the features of vista that DON’T EXIST YET. Until the features exist in the software in front of him, it’s nothing more than vaporware. Are you in the habit of reviewing vaporware?!
As far as Bray not mentioning “the new Explorer, with a Virtual Folders feature that makes it possible to find documents very quickly and to save those searches for reuse? It’s the single most innovative aspect of the Windows Vista interface”.
“Innovative aspect?” = translation= already exists in Mac OSX Tiger, twelve to eighteen months before Windows Vista will be released.
Hiawatha, along with virtually every columnist I’ve read, is totally underwhelmed with the list of features which MAY OR MAY NOT show up in Vista over a year from now- particularly as compared to the robust, mature version of OS X (now in it’s 4th generation) that is available… today. Let alone the version that will be available when Vista finally comes out.
Dave, you need to chill out just a bit.
All the features I mentioned, with the single exception of the two-way firewall, are in the current beta that Hiawatha reviewed.
And if Hiawatha wanted to criticize a significant feature as being a copy of OS X, fine. But to not mention it is a glaring omission.
Yeah, where does Bray get off criticizing an OS without even spending a measley HOUR on the phone with a support guy to debug his installation?
Sorry Ed, but your complaints are ridiculous.
(I won’t even go into why this is still just a beta, after all the years of delays.)
chuckle I didn’t realize that when a feature appears first in an OS that makes it better. Ahh, OS X has a similar feature to Virtual Folders and it was first so that somehow detracts from the feature in Vista? Who cares if a feature was first in something?
People reviewing a product that is still a year away based on the first widely available (to testers and MSDN devs) beta is just silly. Maybe the latest patch to the Mac OS with… what was it? 20? 34? 40? (the sites couldn’t keep it straight) fixes wasn’t glamorous enough. I still don’t understand how journalists miss the fact that if everything worked… it wouldn’t be a beta.
I think what bothers some of the Mac users is that MS makes such a big deal about how innovative these “new” features are. It’s one thing to add new features, it’s quite another to pretend that you’re innovating by adding them, when a competitor’s OS has already had them for some time.
At least Apple admitted it was borrowing fast-user switching from MS, and even praised it for being a great idea. Why can’t MS do that, instead of pretending that they invented it?
But that’s not the biggest complaint I have with this article. Doesn’t anyone see the irony of Ed’s complaints? Even though Hiawatha isn’t known for having the best reviews, why should he write a reveiw from the perspective of a techy? Isn’t the whole point of most of the Vista technology that it will be easier for the average user to “use”?
Oh, he didn’t spend an hour hunting down SATA drivers, well why should he?!
Oh and the reference to viruses (or virii, whichever you prefer) isn’t out of place. In case your memory has gone bad, there was a virus for Vista on the first day of its release. Granted, it wasn’t particularly dangerous, but good grief! It hadn’t been out for ONE DAY and it already had a virus. That’s real confidence inspiring.
Sorry, but MS needs to tighten their focus and consider putting less developers to work on Vista. Having too many coders is a recipe for problems.
Surely the question to ask is why is anyone in the mainstream press writing a review of Windows Vista in the first place? It’s an unfortunate reality of the world today that everything needs to be done yesterday, regardless of whether the results are coherent and qualitative.
It is fun to play with new operating systems (for us geeks anyhow!), but everyone should accept the fact they are playing with an unfinished product and be happy that they have access to it. Feel free to criticise the final product – even compare it to Mac OS XI (or Mac OS X 10th gen) – I am sure the Mac aficionados will be saying it is even more innovative. Maybe it will be, maybe not. It’s not necessarily about being first with new features.. for Microsoft, I should imagine it’s more about maintaining market share 😉
klinux says, “…why should he write a reveiw from the perspective of a techy? Isn’t the whole point of most of the Vista technology that it will be easier for the average user to ‘use’?”
The key words are “will be.” This is a beta. It doesn’t pretend to be ready for the average user yet.
And no, it would not have taken an hour to hunt down a SATA driver. Any computer that includes a SATA controller should have come with a CD containing a SATA driver. And anyone who chooses to run Beta 1 of an operating system release should be able to find that driver in less than two minutes.
As for the statement, “In case your memory has gone bad, there was a virus for Vista on the first day of its release.” Sorry, that’s not even close to correct. It was a demonstration of hostile code aimed at a component called the Monad scripting shell, which is (1) not in this beta and (2) not scheduled to be a part of Windows Vista. But if you get all your news from scary headlines on sites that don’t do research, I guess you’d believe that.
Ed, I sympathise with your frustration. As a part-time, unpaid, reviewer myself (of home theater gear and DVD-A and SACD releases) it really ticks me off when people who actually get paid to do this, do a half-baked job. In my field it annoys me intensely when I read magazine reviews of products where it is clear that the reviewer (a) is just rehashing the press release, (b) has probably not even taken the thing out of the box, as revealed by the large number of errors in the copy (c) not configured the thing to use half of its features, or (d) all of the above…
Isn’t reviewing a beta version like “calling” a baseball game after the 2nd inning? Except for describing features, it’s uninformative to call something crap based on personal incompetence. I’ve never read a tech reporter in a newspaper nor seen one on TV that knew much more than the basics at best. Who hires these people?