From poor marketing to missing components, here are my reasons why Vista will forever fail.
by John C. Dvorak
While the public’s attention seems to be swinging toward Windows 7 (the next iteration of the OS)—a topic I’ll address in the weeks ahead—the fact of the matter is that Vista remains. And it seems that the OS now has two distinct groups of users. One group happily uses Vista, with few concerns or complaints. In fact, many of them are baffled by all the grumbling. The other group is the fist-shaking Vista bashers who condemn each and every flaw the OS exhibits.
The latter group is by far the most vocal and easily drowns out the former group. Its complaints stem from the anti-Microsoft backlash, which reflects dissatisfaction with the company’s history, business practices, tactics, and bogus announcements. Much of the disgruntlement, however, can be attributed Vista itself—and the poor marketing job done by Microsoft.
I mention the bogus announcements above because, at some point, you do get a little tired of Microsoft making exaggerated promises and then never coming close to delivering the goods. In the case of Vista, it has to do with the three “pillars” that were announced early on. The OS really delivered on only one of the pillars, and that pillar was nothing but Windows dressing: Aero, the resource hog and performance sapper.
With the “pillars” in mind, I decided to take a look at the 11 reasons why Vista remains on shaky ground:
1) Market confusion. From the beginning, everyone moaned about the fact that there were simply too many versions of the OS for sale. Who needs all the variations? It’s stupid—plain and simple. What you want is the one best version, not a slew of namby-pamby ones. This happened because the folks at Microsoft know only how to merchandise and, seemingly, not how to market.
2) Code size. I’ve got two words for you: TOO BIG. Enough said.
3) Missing components. Yes, WinFS, the promised file system and a core pillar of Vista, isn’t there. The promises regarding the development of this file system go back to 1991. And Microsoft cannot make it a reality? Why?
4) Laptop battery-life drain. This was supposed to be fixed with special code and hybrid hard disks (HHD). Still, users have to resort to expensive silicon drives.
5) HHD fiasco. I’m still irked about being told by the HD industry that the benefits of the new generation of hard drives will “make people flock to Vista.” That was over two years ago, and suddenly there’s silence about the whole thing. One of these days, someone will tell me what really happened. My guess: It never worked correctly, and no one could make it work.
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For the same setup you need addons 1, 2, and 5. Then go to customize and move everything (i.e. navigation and SU toolbar) to the top.
Here are a few tweaks and extensions to help gaining more space for viewing websites in Firefox:
1. Smaller Icons
Do you really need icons in their biggest size? Right-click on those navigation buttons, click ‘Customize’ and check ‘Use Small Icons’ at the bottom. Smaller Icons. Space gained.
2. TinyMenu
Install this addon from here. It shrinks the entire menu bar to a small rectangular box or image. It doesn’t work in Mac, though.
3. Hide Menu Bar
This hides the Menu bar completely. You end up gaining a good amount of screen space. To access the menus just hold down the ALT key. Download here.
4. Hide Tab Bar
This addon hides the tab bar. You can toggle the tab bar display via selected keyboard shortcut. Extremely useful if you work with lot of tabs. Download it here.
5. Vertigo
We already mentioned Vertigo in ‘Firefox Addons to Manage a Tab Jam‘. Vertigo will gain you additional only if you have a 20″ or bigger widescreen monitor. Basically it makes the tab bar vertical. Checkit out below.
6. FullerScreen
The standard Full Screen mode in Firefox (press F11) could be better - even when you’re in full screen mode, most of the buttons and the tab bar are still there. Get the ‘real’ full screen experience with FullerScreen - download IT here. Upon operation, you can view the site in your entire screen - the tab bar and other buttons are auto-hidden.
7. MiniFirefox
Claims to hide all the toolbars and keep only 3 basic navigation buttons visible. Download here. Hoever, the extension didn’t hide a few elements like it said when I tried it (for instance - it didn’t hide the StumbleUpon toolbar in my Firefox window)
8. Firefox UI Tweaker
This brilliant extension for Firefox lets you do a myriad of little things. Some things it’s capable of include :
- Combine a few buttons on the toolbar
- Auto-hide the search bar
- Remove a few icons in Full Screen Mode
More listed in this addon page from where you can download it.
9. Little Fox
If you have too many things on your Firefox then this addon is for you. It revamps the Firefox theme and makes the elements smaller. Download it from here, install it, activate the Little Fox theme, restart and see the amount of screen space gained. It makes everything on your Firefox smaller. May not be pleasing to the eyes, but definitely does its job well.
10. Toolbar Tweaks
In MUO, we’ve already discussed merging buttons on your Firefox toolbar. Check out the article here. I’m sure you can implement this easily and eliminate unwanted buttons that clutter the toolbar area.
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