Recently I’ve been paying close attention to the people who say that Vista sucks for what they feel are valid reasons. Sometimes they say that the operating system has issues working hardware inside of the custom-built PC, and that’s something I definitely understand. Or maybe there is a program that they can’t live without that doesn’t run quite right…I understand that, too.
An increasing trend, however, that I’ve been noticing is the people who actually say they hate Vista without ever having used it, or they just tried it out for a few minutes. Sure Vista didn’t turn out to be the operating system that everyone was expecting, but don’t be so quick to judge without taking it around the block.
In my experience Vista has a lot to offer over XP, but many of the benefits may not be visible from Vista’s surface. I’ve managed to round up a list of five “tiny” features that many people, including power users, may never notice if they haven’t tried to see what lies beneath.
- Faster File Renaming When Showing Extensions
I’m the type of person that always likes to see as much detail as possible, and for that reason I always have it show the extensions on all files. That way I can easily tell what type of image a photo is (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc…), and there are many times where it’s nice to be able to edit an extension. In XP whenever I went to rename a file it automatically highlighted all of the text including the extension, but not in Vista! The amount of frustration that this has saved me is insurmountable.
- File Previews
Windows Explorer has a file preview window that can be enabled by going to Organize -> Layout -> Preview Pane. With this turned on you can view documents, presentations, and the contents of several different types of files without ever having to open them up. In the screenshot below I have a PowerPoint presentation open in which I’ve navigated halfway through the slides by using the scrollbar on the side.
- Hey, that File is in the Recycle Bin!
Have you ever deleted a file or program, and when you go to launch it from a leftover shortcut it tries to search your computer looking for the file (you know that stupid flashlight that rolls back and forth). It never finds the file though, and one of the first things you probably do is go check the Recycle Bin to see if it’s there. Vista brings it’s “A game” when it comes to stuff like that, and if the item you’re trying to open is in the Recycle Bin you’ll be notified immediately:
- Grouping Files in Windows Explorer
As Ashley’s already pointed out Vista has some advanced sorting, grouping, and stacking features in Windows Explorer that are really helpful. You can group files in a folder that you’re viewing based upon name, size, type, or whatever you want. You can than expand or contract the groups giving you more room to work with in Windows Explorer. In this example screenshot I grouped the files by file type:
- Advanced Photo Management
Taking pictures is almost an addiction of mine, and right now I’ve got almost 7GB worth of them on my hard drive. The new Windows Photo Gallery makes it possible for me to tag, organize, fix (crop, color correction, etc…), and create DVD’s of my photos in no time at all. It’s a remarkable addition to Vista, and undoubtedly one of its shining points.
There are also some features in Vista that I haven’t taken advantage of yet, but would have probably made this list if I had:
- I don’t have any kids so the parental controls doesn’t do me much good, but it would be nice if I had a family.
- We all know about the nightmare that was known as Vista speech recognition. I’m more of a typing person myself, but IStartedSomething demonstrated how nice Vista’s speech recognition actually is:
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Tags: MyFive, Features, Reviews, Screenshots, Windows Vista
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Heh, those people who haven’t even tried Vista say they hate it…I hate that…
I haven’t tried Vista yet but I will soon be getting a laptop with Vista.
Seems to me I won’t be needing Picasa anymore because of the Windows Photo Gallery…
Nice features.
I like the way Vista automatically highlights the file name without the extension; however, it’d be even better if the cursor doesn’t move after the dot after we press the right arrow key, i.e it should be Restore Deleted File|.jpg, not Restore Deleted File.|jpg
Yea I could never go back to XP. IMO the best reason not to switch to Vista, is because it’s a resource hog. But I love it
About speech recognition. What do you need to have it work? Vista Home Prenium with microphone? That’s it?
I use Vista Home Premium, and I haven’t been able to get #2 to work. Perhaps it isn’t available in the Home Premium build?
Giving up Picasa for WPG? - your bubble’s gonna get burst, matey
Vista isn’t as horrible as many people have made it out to be, but there’s no doubt it shouldn’t have shipped like it did. The file-copying response times are just awful. I even remember someone saying how they downloaded a gig and then moved it within Vista, and the download was quicker than the move operation. How did it get past QA? Why can’t programmers get file/move/copy operations right?
Yikes, almighty.
Vista’s just well thought. Vista’s just nice. And Vista slowly gets more featured and reliable. Wooowww! That’s an OS.
I agree with Michael, the single thing that makes me mad is the slooooowwww file copy. That calculating time remaining dialog sucks. Even when copying/moving across the same hard drive.
I did even apply the patch that was written about here that was supposed to fix that issue. It seemed to get better after that, but is back to it’s old slow copying. I really hope they fix it in SP1.
File preview does work in Vista Premium. Works for me.
File copying is not slow for me either after applying patches:
KB941659, KB938194, KB938979 (these fix that issue and many other issues)
Great! I didn’t know about the file renaming with extensions turned on or the grouping options in File Explorer - will definitely be using these now!
Thanks!
Whoa the speech recognition works amazingly well! I should try that sometime.
I’m sure you’ll love the new Photo Gallery. I use it all the time, but it is available for XP as well.
Really? I think it should go after the dot if you press the right arrow.
Some people confuse it with being a resource hog because it uses more of your computers memory for the SuperFetch. This makes the programs you use the most start faster because they are preloaded into memory. So if it seems like Vista is using a lot of your RAM it’s probably for that reason. If you’ve got the RAM the operating system might as well use it, right?
Yup, that’s it.
Everyone will have their different view on that, but I actually like Windows Photo Gallery better than Picasa. It is more straightforward, and much more responsive. Not to mention the nice built-in tagging system that is integrated into the operating system.
There are supposed to be several fixes in Vista SP1 that address the issue, and I’m sure they will have it fixed by then.
Is there any little program for XP that does this “renaming whitout highlight extension” trick?
Check back tomorrow with our CyberNotes article.
XP has file grouping but it’s a little deep > View, Arrange icons by, Show in Groups.
I use it every day!