Hello Thomas thank you for telling us about your observation of Windows Vista. It gives me a better idea what I need for upgrading my system in my computer. It also gives me a better idea how to visualize the program as a totally blind user. Please keep giving us updates on your observation of Windows Vista as you use the program Thanks again. your friend, Blind Fury ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2007 2:53 AM Subject: [Audyssey] Windows Vista In Review
> Windows Vista In Review > > by Thomas Ward > > Hello gamers, friends, and fellow developers, > As many of you are no doubt aware over the weekend I took my desktop PC > apart, did some hardware upgrades, and ended the weekend with a from > scratch install of Windows Vista Home Premium. In this email article I > have decided to take a very independent review of the operating system > neither condemning or praising Vista, and let the facts I present speak > for themselves. > All of us have no doubt already heard absolute horror stories about > Vista. Same is true there are some articles out there stating Vista is > the greatest os since sliced bread. I think both views are biased, and > are not looking at both angles of this issue. Therefore, I am going to > attempt to take a neutral roll here, and just state what I both liked > and disliked about my Vista experience so far. > > Installation > > I've been installing operating systems alone or aided by a sighted > reader for on 15 years, and the Vista Home Premium install was extremely > simple and strait forward compared to earlier installations of Windows. > In this regard I found Vista's installation scored high points with me > as far as ease of installation for a new user. > Basically, I began my install by placing the Vista dvd in my dvd drive, > and rebooted the system which landed me in the Vista setup wizard. The > first screen had several options such as keyboard type, language for the > install, and other general stuff which for me was fine since it was all > ready setup for a standard American PC user. > One other button available here was a utility that would scan your > system for Vista compatibility. I find this nice as it will trouble > shoot hardware and software issues you may have if you proceed with the > install. As I had already tested this with Microsoft's Vista Adviser > tool earlier I knew I would pass this check, and skipped it. However, as > a technical adviser for many home users I like knowing Vista has the > ability to check this stuff out before totally blowing an install not > aware of what to expect. > On the next major screen I was prompted for my registration name and my > company. Again a no brainer here. > On the following screen I was prompted for the installation product key > which my wife read to me off the back of the product case. Once entered > it was time to move on. > As I recall the following screen asked me how I would like to do on > line product activation. I checked run automatically the first time I > logged on to the Internet. No big deal here. > Following that screen we get an option to select our installation type. > My version gave two options upgrade or custom. Upgrade will update your > Windows 2000 or XP system to Vista not overwriting your data, settings, > etc like a usual upgrade would do. Custom allows the power user to clean > the hard drive all operating system files, data, etc and do a from > scratch install. I chose the custom advanced installation since I am > just that kind of guy. > For those running an upgrade the custom screens I will see next don't > apply. In short they involved selecting a drive partition, adding and > deleting partitions, formatting and allocating space, etc... > Once I finished with the custom screens the Vista install began > extracting the operating system to the cleared hard drive. This took > around 45 minutes give or take a few. > Following the copy Portion of the install Vista configured my hardware, > did a bunch of internal setups, and took us to the post install faze. > After everything is configured the post installation faze had three or > four screens that are very easy to answer. Basically, Vista asked for my > primary user name, password, colors, background, and end user preferences. > After I supplied all that Vista restarted one more time and install was > complete. It came up with the new Vista desktop theme, and the new > welcome center. > > Vista Accessibility > > Many of us have no doubt have heard about Vista's new graphical > environment. Yes, that is true Vista's user interface has completely > changed, and visually is totally a different experience for us. However, > it was not he accessibility nightmare I thought it was going to be upon > starting this upgrade/install. > Before installing Vista I downloaded the new Window Eyes 6.1 beta for > Vista at > http://www.gwmicro.com/beta > and burned it to a cd for handy installation. > Since the Window Eyes beta was lacking a self-voicing install for some > reason I had my wife read me the install screens, and then I rebooted > Vista. > Since I am already a pretty big fan of Window Eyes anyway I had no > issues here jumping in and exploring the new Vista environment. I would > classify the default graphical user environment more confusing than > inaccessible. It was very accessible just confusing. > One of the first areas I'd like to explore is the totally new start menu > under Vista. This is one area that has been under going changes the past > two versions of Windows and has really changed under Vista. > When you click the Win Vista start menu the blind user is immediately > confronted with a triple pained Window which is categorized in three ways. > First, on your left most pained is your commonly used applications. > This is a list view of all the programs you have recently used. At the > bottom of this left pain is a button which opens your programs menu. > The programs menu opens up more or less in a traditional tree view. > Although, I noticed right and left arrow keys no longer open and close > the branches like they did on XP and earlier versions. Instead you run a > risk of having the screen reader jump to another pain. > One final item on this left pain is the new Vista search bar. This > feature is pretty slick. It has search completion which means Vista > tries to guess at what you are searching for and as you narrow down the > list options Vista will change the possible items it is looking for > allowing you to interactively search for something in real time. > Second, we have a center pain. This center pain is a tree view which > once use to be My Documents, my computer, my network places, etc under > XP. From this tree view you can use Explorer to browse your hard drive, > documents, music, videos, disk drives, etc. It all depends on what > branch of the tree you happen to be exploring at the time. > Third, we reach the right and final pain of this Window. This right pain > contains several buttons such as shutdown, logout, help, etc.. > The only thing I complained about this third pain is there is no option > for run as I thought there should be. Instead someone at Microsoft has > decided to move run to accessories of all places. Can you believe that > one? > I didn't find navigating the new start menu system particularly hard, > but I did at first spend lots of time getting lost. I have found this > start menu is very easy to get lost in when browsing around. Especially, > for the first few times. > Fortunately, Microsoft has offered a classic start menu system for us. > If you go to the task bar, do alt+enter, control+tab, to the appearance > page you can set the start menus to classic. Once set things should > return to a state we are use to, and might ease you in to Vista. Though, > there will still be some changes such as My Computer is called Computer > and My Documents is simply called Documents. > Windows Vista has certainly become more web-centric out of the box, and > if you aren't a good Internet Explorer user now you kind of need to be > to get around some of the areas of the os at least until you turn off > things here and there. One of these areas is the control panel. When you > press enter on the control panel option it opens up in a Internet > Explorer style window, and is itself a web page. If you are a web page > fan you might like this new feature. You can use all your exiting I.E. > commands to navigate around the panel to add and remove programs, > configure security settings, sounds, etc.. If you hate it there is a > button called classic view which allows you to have the typical control > panel with the rows of icons we all remember from earlier versions of > Windows. > While this feature has been around in XP Vista has built upon this > concept some with the web page background. If you are a huge Internet > fand you can literally add google,yahoo, etc as your desktop and do web > searches read web mail, etc directly from your desktop. Not something I > need or want, but is kind of cool all the same. > As for the highly publicized Windows Arrow experience I neither found it > especially useful, or desirable to keep activated. My family thought it > looked nice, and with the better icon animation, desktop background > colors, etc Vista is visually more appealing. That however has nothing > to do with accessibility. I chose to disable Windows Arrow as it took up > nearly the double the processing power and memory to keep it running. > Bottom line from an accessibility standpoint Vista steams all and all > accessible with Window eyes, and even with NVDA which I played around > with earlier. Although, Window Eyes clearly had the better access here > with Vista out of the box and using default settings. > If you wish to customize things Vista can be made even more accessible > by enabling the classic start menus, Explorer browsing for files, > classic control panel, etc... > > Vista Security > > One of the new areas Vista has both been praised for and slammed for is > the new levels of security in Vista. Over all I think the security in > place is for the better, but it might not fit the general public. > One of the areas is better management of ownership, read, write, and > execute access of every file and program on Vista. Operating systems > like Linux have always had better management of this, and those users > will be familiar with what Vista is doing now. > If Joe write a file called notes.txt as Joe, and Bill logs on he won't > be able to view or modify Joe's notes unless Joe sets the file > management properties to give Bill read, write, execute access on that > file, or adds it to the Vista's everyone group. > For most home versions of Windows software file management and security > was very basic, and as not as strict or as secure as what Vista now > offers here. > Many of Vista's detractors have named Vista the paranoid operating > system. In many respects this is true, but I can kind of see where the > paranoia comes from. Especially, when it comes to installations and > approving running untrusted unsigned software for the first time. > For example, with Vista's security enabled if you place a software cd in > the drive, and try to load it Vista will intercept the installation, and > then ask you to allow the setup to run. For me doing a full from scratch > installation this was very tedious. However, I appreciate the fact were > this a virus or other less desired program running for the first time > I'd like to know about it, and tell Windows to never run it again. > As far as the DRM, (digital rights management,) goes I haven't had a > chance to put this to the test. I'm very interested in testing it, and > finding out exactly what my limitations are and how much it effects > system performance over all. > > System Proformence > > One of the things that has been widely discussed is Vista's system > performance. Truly it is an os for a state of the art computer. I > personally would not recommend less than 2 GHZ processor, and 1 GB of > ram, to have reasonable performance out of Vista. I know the MS > recommended is 800 MHZ and 512 MB, but from what I have seen it would be > too slow to run with adaptive tech. > My test system was a Pentium IV 2.4 GHZ processor and 1 GB of ram, and > the system took a massive system performance hit after taking on Vista. > It's hard to make specific comparitions, but I just noticed things are > much much slower than before even with Arrow, and the other graphical > stuff turned off.With it on the system was very slow compared to XP. > Bottom line if you are running something in the 800 MHZ to 2.0 ?GHZ > range stick with XP. Vista will make your system run like a hobbled > horse. It will run, but your over all system performance will drop > significantly. To the point it is very noticeable. > > Early Conclusions > > I think Windows Vista is a rather nicely designed operating system as > far as graphics, accessibility, and multimedia is concerned. The new > security is also an added bonus is this may turn out making Windows more > secure, and this remains to be seen as Vista becomes more widely tested > in the public sector. From my own early testing it seams fairly stable > having less crashes than usual for a first Microsoft release. It also > seamed to have a smooth setup and deployment. > On the down side Vista is an extremely resource intensive operating > system with most of those extra resources being used on stuff the > average blind user doesn't need or want. Vista is not likely to run very > well on systems more than a couple of years old. Even with the cutting > edge systems you still may end up getting a larger hard drive, ram, or > video upgrade just to run Vista. All of it adding up to extra cost. > When it comes down to XP verses Vista there isn't much in Vista that you > can't get with XP already. XP SP2 is fairly stable, reliable, less > resource intensive, and many of the Vista toys like I.E. 7, .NET > Framework 3, direct, etc are being back ported to XP. With the end > result the differences for a blind user is very small. Especially, once > we remove all the graphical goodies that make Vista visually appealing > to our sighted counterparts. > Am I sorry I upgraded? No, I felt I got a very good operating system for > the money, but the upgrade or switch to Vista could have come a little > later on. I generally enjoy testing new things, and I like to run with > the bleeding edge software. However, I can not in truth say that > everyone should make the switch, or make it soon. Vista is just to knew > with too little gain to be cost effective for allot of people not buying > a totally new computer. > > > _______________________________________________ > Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org > To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can > visit > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make > any subscription changes via the web. _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
