Announcing a new operating system as the "Best choice for laptops" is a pretty confident step given the last years of laptop history. I have seen few combinations of laptops and operating systems that worked properly in all situations, but I have seen many cases where mobility was greatly reduced due to bugs in the power management implementation. Especially with new systems the situation is usually a lot less stable than with older operating systems. Did Microsoft manage a surprising turnaround?

I tested Vista's power management thoroughly on my laptop and ran a quick test on my desktop machine. Here is my experience report.

Lenovo ThinkPad T60

Exactly because power management is such a difficult and hardware dependent topic let me state for the record that I'm using an up-to-date Lenovo ThinkPad T60. Some of the described issues may be and probably are at least partly due to Lenovo bugs. Nevertheless it will be interesting to see all the regressions since XP, which ran, slept, and resumed quite well on my machine.

Stand-by: One of the first things I noticed after installing Vista was the extended stand-by mode. No, I'm not talking about the new hybrid sleep mode, but about something that I call coma sleeping mode: hit the stand-by button and your computer sleeps--with a 1:4 chance for good. In some cases the only chance of getting it back to life is pressing the power button for a few seconds or removing the battery pack.

Another feature that I've come to like is the so-called backpack heater mode. It works like this: You're at the office, it's 7pm. You decide to go home and grab some dinner on the way, so you put your computer to sleep. You stuff it in your backpack and get going. Later that night (usually when you get home), you start unpacking your backpack and discover that it's quite warm. What happened? After a certain (random?) amount of time, Windows decided to wake up and hung during the attempt. Not only is this sudden wakeup a great idea when you're biking home and your laptop gets shaken around, it's also nice to discover that your battery is suddenly empty.

No updating of BIOS and drivers or changing of settings seemed to help make suspend mode anything close to usable. Don't get me wrong, though. Some things work, just not stand-by.

Hibernate: Hibernate is very reliable on my machine. It takes ages (maybe one minute) to actually write the entire state to the hard disk, but at least I lose no data. And the first phase of the wake-up, i.e. reading back the state from the disk, is quite fast. The second phase of the wake-up is not as convincing, though. It easily takes another 30 seconds to unlock the screen and often the fingerprint reader doesn't react at the first time.

Ironically, hibernate has become a little faster when I upgraded my RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB--a highly necessary step. There's more to write to the hard drive but the unlocking seems to go a little faster.

Unlock: Not strictly part of power management, it is still closely related because the computer is locked after resume from stand-by or hibernate. For example when you go on your lunch break, do you suspend your computer or do you just lock the screen? Hibernate is pretty much out of question and with a broken stand-by mode there's not much choice left. So you hit Win+L and leave your desk. So far so good.

The annoyance starts when you get back from your break. On Windows XP it was easy: Enter the password and start working. Occasionally, there were a few seconds delay caused by hard disk activity, but in general it was fine. Windows Vista doesn't just lock the screen; it suspends the current user session and displays the "Switch user" screen. With my initial 1 GB of RAM Vista would take up to a minute (!) to recover from a locked screen. The hard disk was going crazy and even the mouse wouldn't respond. Got back from your break? Go take another one.

Who's to blame for this? A new technology called SuperFetch. (You can read some interesting things about SuperFetch in an article called Why Does Vista Use All My Memory?.) I find the following excerpt from a Microsoft feature highlight very ironic:

"In previous versions of Windows, system responsiveness could be uneven. You may have experienced sluggish behaviour after booting your machine, after performing a fast user switch, or even after lunch."

If anything, SuperFetch made this effect worse on Vista! If you have 2 GB of RAM it's a little less severe but I'd take the old XP behavior back any day. This incredible delay is also great for security. I routinely used to lock my computer when I would go away from my desk, just because it's good practice. Since I installed Vista I simply stopped doing that, I just don't want to wait that long when I get back. The "Most secure Windows ever"? You be the judge.

USB and stand-by: When I was still trying to get the stand-by mode running I noticed some interesting behavior with USB devices. Unplugging the mouse after suspending the laptop just woke up the system again. And at least once my mouse didn't work anymore after the system resumed from stand-by. I had to unplug it and plug it again.

Screen blanking: Vista blacks out the screen after the computer has been idly running on battery for a while. Previous versions used to do that too, so nothing special about this. What's really annoying about it on my computer is that every time I touch a key and the screen comes back, the screen brightness drops to some medium default level and I have to turn up the brightness again to see something.

Desktop machine

The other day I installed Vista on a desktop PC that is maybe two years old, just to see how Vista performs on a desktop. So far it looks quite okay, but power management looks similarly broken.

When I send the computer into stand-by or hibernate mode, it seems to work, but as soon as the suspending process is complete, the system wakes up again, without any keyboard or mouse interaction at all.

A little bit of searching the web turned up a lot of other people who have similar problems and one resolution that seems to help for some of them: Uncheck the "Allow this device to wake the computer" box for certain devices (network adapter, keyboard, mouse) in the device manager.

In my case I needed to uncheck the function for both the HID Keyboard Device (a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000) and the HID-compliant mouse (a Logitech MX900 Bluetooth mouse).

Of course, this "fix" effectively ruins the comfort of being able to wake your computer without reaching the power switch under the table. Even installing the latest drivers from Microsoft and Logitech didn't help.

Bottom line

The rule that the latest operating system is the worst in terms of power management stands strong. While Microsoft had some innovative ideas (i.e. the hybrid sleep mode), the current state of power management in Vista is worse than XP in every respect.

I sincerely hope that the first service pack will take care of this, and that hardware manufacturers keep fixing the bugs on their side. It would be a shame if laptop users would have to wait for a second service pack to make the most basic and most required power management features usable.

Until then it's hibernating, waiting, and the occasional cursing at a computer that refuses to wake up from its nap.

For reference, here's a list of links to the other parts of my Vista review:

• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 1: The Good)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 2: The Bad)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 3: The So-so)
• Windows Vista (Part 4: Explorer)

Time to take a deeper look at the single Vista application that holds Windows together and that no one can avoid: Windows Explorer. I've already written a few things about its usability in part 2 of my Vista Review; in this article I'll cover the topic of stability and other misbehavior.

Stability

With Explorer being what 99% of Windows users perceive as "Windows" one would think that Microsoft puts considerable effort into making it stable and eradicate its well known bugs. Fat chance. Vista comes with the most unstable version of Explorer since ... well, since Explorer was invented. Not only did most Explorer bugs from XP safely make it into Vista. In the cozy environment of what seems to have been a poorly coordinated effort to make Explorer more usable they multiplied. Since I've installed Vista I don't think I've had two consecutive work days without Explorer crashing at least once. Let's look at a few occasions where Explorer regularly crashes:

• Opening folders: No kidding, but quite often all it takes to crash Explorer is open a folder, either by navigating to it or by typing a folder name into the Start|Run dialog. It especially (but not exclusively) happens when folders containing video folders are involved. And what's more is that the crashes are not strictly reproducible. The next time you navigate to the same folder it usually works.

• Doing nothing: Yes, Explorer can crash while you work on a Word document, develop in Visual Studio, or do something else that is completely unrelated. You notice it by the crash dialog that suddenly pops up. And before you can shout "Shoot! My Word/Visual Studio/whatever crashed!" you notice that it was "just" Explorer.

• Creating shortcuts: Creating links to programs or directories can either crash Explorer five times in a row, or just work. It's really a gamble, so if you're looking for an adrenaline kick, open a bunch of Explorer Windows, navigate them carefully to the locations you need for work and arrange them on the screen just the way you feel comfortable with. Now, create a few shortcuts on the desktop and pray.

• Creating new folders: The above game also works with creating folders. On several occasions I've seen Explorer hang after I tried to create new folders. At least once it recovered after a few minutes. But let's face it, who wants to wait for that long? So, what does the adept Windows user do? That's right: kill explorer.exe, submit an error report to Microsoft, and try again.

A bug named Methusalem

Many applications have learned to crash "gracefully". You restart them and within a few seconds you can get back to the state you were previously in and continue work. Not so with Explorer. While Windows is nice enough to automatically relaunch it for you, it doesn't let you get away that easily.

In the best of cases, after Explorer crashes, it slightly rearranges maybe four or five of your desktop icons and shortcuts (in a more or less consistent manner, so the cleanup becomes a habit after a few days). In the worst of cases Windows completely shuffles your desktop icons by rearranging them alphabetically or in some other seemingly random way.

There are some tools out there that can save and restore the location information of the Windows desktop icons (like Ultramon, which I have installed anyway), but even those don't seem to be able to correctly restore the order of the previously mentioned "slight rearrangement". After a few weeks even the toughest of the tough give up and accept that Vista has broken their will and ability to control the location of their desktop icons. A truly sad moment.

By the way, the desktop icons not only get "slighly rearranged" on such "rare" occasions like Explorer crashing, but also on such uncommon tasks like connecting or disconnecting a second monitor or projector, something that I do at least twice a day.

Remember when Windows 95 did the same thing after a system crash and we all thought "I'm sure Microsoft will fix that for the next Windows version"? Let's count: NT4, 98, Me, 2000, XP. That's over ten years of computer history. A strong candidate for the longest-lived software bug.

Leaks

A few years ago Microsoft added features to Explorer that allowed it to display file-specific attributes like author information or the length or format of media files. With the introduction of that mildly useful feature the problems started: Files were suddenly impossible to rename, move, or delete and USB storage devices became impossible to eject. The user was presented with messages like "File still in use" and "Please close all applications and try again". Of course, closing all applications didn't help because the only application that could have freed the files was Explorer--and Explorer had simply leaked the handles on those files.

The solutions to those problems reached from restarting Windows (entry-level) over killing and restarting explorer.exe (intermediate) to using the great Process Explorer from Sysinternals to selectively close the offending handles (advanced).

Vista has improved the situation a little bit, but, from my experience especially with MPEG files involved, handles are still leaked, making it impossible to eject USB hard disks and delete files.

Everyone who knows how file systems work and how file system inconsistencies come about inevitably aches when (s)he sees someone yank out a USB key without properly ejecting it first. But those people are not to blame. For one thing, Windows doesn't explain why people should eject the device first before unplugging it and what can happen if they don't.

For another, even people who know that they should eventually get discouraged by the fact that two out of three times, Windows complains that the device is still in use and therefore cannot be ejected. To be fair, Windows is not always at fault here, there are plenty of applications and Explorer extensions (like the otherwise awesome TortoiseSVN) that leak handles. But it is up to Microsoft to do something here. When disconnecting a USB key becomes a one-minute hunt for open handles the temptation to just yank it out becomes very big. And when's the last time you actually encountered file system inconsistencies on a USB device after just unplugging it? Never? Same here.

My suggestion: Take a practical approach like disabling write caching at least for USB keys altogether and get rid of the corresponding eject function. A lot less confusion and much better usability.

While we're back on the topic of usability, in Vista the bubble that popped up in the lower right corner under XP saying that the device can now be removed was replaced by this great dialog:

That's a clear step back that makes ejecting devices even more annoying because now you need yet another click to close the dialog box. It doesn't even automatically close when you physically unplug the USB key, something that would have been really easy to add.

Working efficiently

There are two other really annoying things about Vista Explorer. One of them is about as old as the icon shuffling habit I talked about before and just as annoying.

Assign keyboard shotcuts to certain programs using the properties of a shortcut is one of my favorite features. I prefer keyboard shortcuts to lengthy program searching in the start menu or even the quick launch bar. Unfortunately, Windows Explorer has had a bug since Windows 95 that makes this feature almost unusable. Once in a while (maybe in 10 to 20% of the cases), the launching of the program has an inexplicable delay of 5-10 seconds between the time when the user pressed the key combination and Explorer actually launches the program. During that time the CPU usage stays low but Explorer doesn't react anymore (that obviously includes the desktop and the task bar with its start menu) and all your left with is a quick break.

I use this feature to be able to work more efficiently but that bug reliably kills that goal. Over the years I have used different programs to overcome this problem. The best one I've found is the free AutoHotkey.

The last issue I want to mention is the way that the Vista Explorer handles network devices. Due to the omnipresence of Explorer components in many other areas (e.g. the open and save dialog boxes) not only Explorer windows are affected but all other applications that use the common dialogs. Here's what the File|Open dialog looks like in Notepad:

The dangerous part is the navigation pane on the left side. When I captured the above screenshot it took almost eight seconds for the dialog to come up. And why? Because I have some slow network devices mapped. Note, however, that the 'Computer' entry you can see wasn't even expanded by default. Yet, the network drives were apparently accessed, which blocked the entire application for several seconds. Luckily, the navigation pane can be disabled, which seems to alleviate the problem a little bit. But every so often the delay will still occur forcing the user to stare at a frozen screen and think about the consequences of his actions (in this instance, the action of installing Vista on his machine).

Bottom line

The more you work with Vista the clearer and shorter the bottom line gets: The Vista Explorer just sucks. There is not enough eye-candy in the world to make up for the stability and usability issues. If Microsoft wants to draw more and more novice users to the computer, they finally need to make the primary interface stable. That means: Provide a decent and efficient way of managing files (remember Norton Commander?), disconnect the desktop and start menu from the file manager, and make sure that each one of them is stable. The Explorer is beyond help or fixing and needs to be dumped.

It hurts to say because Vista has a number of nice features, but the Explorer is a reason by itself not to switch to Vista yet.

For reference, here's a list of links to the other parts of my Vista review:

• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 1: The Good)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 2: The Bad)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 3: The So-so)
• Windows Vista (Part 5: Power management)

In the third part of my Vista review series I want to present two major changes that I find neither great nor bad. They're just different from XP and the positive changes pretty much make up for the negative changes. You'll have to build your own opinion for these, but I hope it can give you an overview of what to expect.

File copying

Have you ever tried to copy a directory that contained a Visual Studio project that was still open on Windows XP? If so, you probably know what I'm talking about. As soon as Explorer hits the first locked .ncb file (and only then, which is usually half-way through the process!), it aborts with a simple error message and no way to retry or skip.

Well, that's finally fixed. If the Vista file copying algorithm encounters such a file, it offers you to skip it, leaving the rest of the process unaffected:

I wouldn't want to miss that feature anymore. In a similar manner, the dialog that is shown when a copy process is about to overwrite a file was improved:

You can see that there is a lot more information than in the old dialog, including a preview and the number of remaining conflicts. The option to keep both files is also a long overdue improvement that other operating systems have had for a while. However, after a while I found the dialog to be a little annoying. The XP ways of saying "Yes to all" and "No to all" were just easier to select than the check box at the bottom, especially with Vista hiding the underlined mnemonics until you press the Alt key.

The copy progress dialog mostly went through optical changes (nothing like a 3D animation to make file copying more entertaining ...) and they've changed the way that Windows estimates the time remaining. It doesn't seem to display completely absurd guesses like "2,194,984 minutes left" anymore, but I did get the impression, on several occasions when copying files from or to a slow medium, that Windows spends a lot of time just guessing the time, when it could already be copying the files.

Task switching

Microsoft not only implemented a fancy new 3D way of flipping through the currently open windows, they've also modified the good old Alt+Tab way. The icons were replaced by thumbnails of the application in question and it is now possible to navigate within the window list by using keyboard and mouse. That's quite an improvement as it's often a lot faster than the old bidirectional navigation with Alt+Tab and Shift+Alt+Tab.

There's one problem I have with this view: It's not easy to spot the window you want to switch to among the thumbnails. At least for me, when I look for a window, I do so by application. I think "I want Opera" or "I want the MSN chat window". I don't think "I want the rectangular white window", cause most of them look very much alike in the thumbnail format due to their scaling. So, I turn to the icon in the lower right, which, more often than not, is not very clearly discernible from its background.

What I would really want to be able to work efficiently with many windows is a list of application icons together with their window title, all visible at once. And if there have to be thumbnails, they should be to scale and represent the position of the window. Cause that's how I picture the windows in my head and recognize them.

By the way: This is the exact reason why I don't consider the Exposé feature of Mac OS X very useful. But from what I've seen it seems that Apple's implementation is very well done from a technical perspective.

Another thing that would help a lot is decent support for virtual desktops. There is no built-in support for that (although I heard the API does make it a little easier to develop such tools than in XP). Last time I tried one tool that promises to do just that (Vista Virtual Desktop Manager), it was extemely unstable and slow and the author doesn't seem very keen on accepting help or improving the situation himself. Too bad.

The 3D view sometimes does make it easier to find a window, and the live preview (if you're watching a video, you can follow the live picture in the 3D view) sure looks cool, but the first time you use it, it can take a few seconds to open. Even though successive attempts are a lot faster, I've noticed that it scares me off and I rarely use the feature during work.

Bottom line

All in all, both file copying and task switching have improved for Vista. But they're still a long way from being perfect. Compared to other systems (that aren't perfect either), it seems that it would be possible to pick the best features and integrate them into a consistent and efficient interface. I just can't get rid of the impression that the Windows marketing people keep picking eye candy over usability in some cases.

This article pretty much concludes the user interface chapter. In the next articles, I'll go into more details on topics like stability, power management, and other more system related topics.

For reference, here's a list of links to the other parts of my Vista review:

• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 1: The Good)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 2: The Bad)
• Windows Vista (Part 4: Explorer)
• Windows Vista (Part 5: Power management)

Time for a first look at the not so nice aspects of Windows Vista. And believe me, there are many of those. I'll start off with parts of the user interface I really don't like and couldn't get used to even after a few weeks.

The bad

Window look: I've always liked nice 3D effects and transparency. Heck, they are appealing to the eye and just like we say in German: "Das Auge isst mit." (If you don't know German, it means something like "The eye also eats.") So, I'm fine with eye-candy under one condition: It can't reduce efficiency. That means good performance and good usability. Cause 3D alone never made for good usability.

In terms of performance Vista doesn't do very bad (or at least not because of the graphics) and usability is mostly unaffected by the new Aero interface, but there's one seriously annoying point: the title bars of the windows. It's almost impossible to distinguish the active window from the inactive ones because the title bars are transparent and whatever is behind it (desktop background, other windows, etc.) shines through. So you can't rely on the color of the title bar anymore. See for yourself:

The only reliable indicator for the active window is the red close button at the top right corner. That's hard to get used to.

Explorer: While Explorer usability has improved quite a bit in general, one thing that was really stupid to remove is the text in the title bar. Okay, it's right below but it's not as quick to pick up while you glance over the different windows, and the option to display the whole path was horribly crippled. According to the UI help enabling it doesn't actually have any effect until you switch to classic mode, which hides the tree bar on the left side. (I'd like to see the usability study that made the connection between these two elements.) In reality the full path still doesn't actually show in the window's title bar, it only becomes visible in the Alt+Tab window selector, a change that is independent of classic mode.

Hiding the tree bar has one advantage, namely that there is a reduced delay when opening Explorer windows (on my system it takes 2-3s sometimes, just because the system is waiting for the tree to be generated). However, you almost completely lose the ability to access the context menu of the folder being displayed. On XP you could right-click the icon in the upper left window corner, but that doesn't work anymore because ... it's not there. Even the big fat folder icon in the lower left corner is useless because rightclicking it either gives you the context menu of the current selection or a generic view menu when no selection is active.

Since we're on the topic of usability: There is still no shortcut for creating a new subfolder in the current folder! This simplest of features has been missing since--yes--Windows 95. Even in Notepad you can press Ctrl+N to open a new window. Why doesn't this work in Explorer? (In the meantime I found a great open source tool called AutoHotkey. It can do quite a bit more than the name indicates and adding the shortcut to Explorer is a piece of cake with it.)

Another weak point of Explorer are the different views. The variably-sized icons are fun to look at but quite useless in practice, except maybe for photo folders. It's very questionable whether any user needs the 'Tiles' view or a 'Small icons' view (horizontally sorted) next to the 'List' view (vertically sorted). What's worse is that, in contrast to previous versions, even if you tell Explorer to use the same view for all folders, it still sometimes overrides the user's choice.

[2007-06-18, Update:] When I saw the following I was torn between praying for the Vista Explorer QA guy to be fired and just going to bed and crying myself to sleep:

Yes, column headers that make no sense whatsoever. And, by the way, the headers are also there in other views where it doesn't make any sense, notably in the different icon views. [End of update.]

It almost feels like the Explorer developers never actually use their own program in productive day-to-day work. Rumor has it they're a bunch of disgruntled Windows users secretly trying to convert people to Mac OS X and Linux.

File open dialog: The new file open and save dialogs are not bad, their usage is streamlined with the rest of Windows and Explorer. Slight problem, however: They sometimes take up to a few seconds to come up after selecting the Open or Save menu entry. During that time the application looks like it hangs for no visible reason.

HyperTerminal and Telnet: Telnet is a powerful program that I use on a regular basis. HyperTerminal is somewhat of a pain but it can be useful at times when you try to talk to a serial device. But ... where did they go in Vista? Luckily, the Windows help explains:

HyperTerminal is no longer part of Windows. However, you can use Telnet. It's a simple, text-based program that you can use to connect to another computer over the Internet.

Hmm, ok. Don't know how to talk to my COM port now but at least I can use Telnet to talk to my mail server, can't I?

C:\>telnet
'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Right. Well, someone at Microsoft either decided that the telnet.exe in the system32 directory was too confusing for the average user or that it just takes up too much space. After all, saving 75 kB on a system that uses several GB after a blank installation does make quite a difference.

In case you're still wondering how you can get it back: Either install it manually or just copy it over from an old XP you have lying around.

Mouse responsiveness: Windows XP was pretty good in that it was almost always possible to at least move the mouse to test whether the system was still responding. Maybe it's the new 3D look or just the way my graphics adapter driver (ATI Mobility Radeon X1400) handles it, but quite often during heavy I/O (usually caused by excessive swapping) the mouse just freezes for a few seconds.

Accessing shares: Vista has the very annoying habit of always prepending the current domain name when logging onto foreign computers. What this means is that, if the target computer is not in the same domain, you always have to manually specify the computer name. At first it sounds as if this could be worked around by a few extra key strokes, but thanks to that nifty little "feature" I couldn't get WebDAV to work at all! When I try to log on to a WebDAV folder as user 'martin' on 'myhost.net', it always tries to log on as 'myhost.net\\martin'. Obviously that will fail and there seems no way to prevent that.

It's hard to imaging that they could have broken WebDAV support even more than it already was in Windows XP (I had to open a folder through Office first to get it added to the Windows network links), but in this case they've actually done it.

[2007-07-04, Update:] There is a workaround using the command line, which I'm describing in Getting WebDAV to work in Windows Vista.

Bottom line

The items above are certainly things that will make me think twice before I switch to Windows Vista on another machine or advise anyone else to do so. Some of these are why Vista is considered by many to have worse usability than XP.

In the next part I'll be listing a few items that have changed since the last version of Windows and that are very much subject to personal preference.

For reference, here's a list of links to the other parts of my Vista review:

• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 1: The Good)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 3: The So-so)
• Windows Vista (Part 4: Explorer)
• Windows Vista (Part 5: Power management)

Let me start off by defending myself to avoid any "I told you so" comments from the start. ;-) I know the rule of thumb that you're not supposed to install an operating system before the first service pack (or however all the other OSs sugarcoat the same concept) was released. I also know that it's risky to do that on anything else than a test machine. But let's face it. Using a system on a day-to-day basis is the only true way to get an objective impression. Reading about it and using it for 10 minutes on a test system with no software installed just won't do it.

So, I went ahead and installed the system on my laptop, a Lenovo T60. What I'm covering in the first three articles should be mostly hardware independent as I'm focusing on the user interface and the general feeling. But for the record, I did use all the latest drivers and upgrade the BIOS.

The good

File search: If you've been working with Windows for a long time, you might remember that the last version to have an easy-to-use file search was Windows ... uuh ... never mind! It seems that as our hard drives grow to astronomic sizes Microsoft finally decided to help users finding again what they lost two weeks after the installation of XP.

In Vista, searching just seems to work. You can use one of the many little edit boxes with the magnifying glass logo (e.g. in the start menu, in Explorer, etc.) and just type away. Most likely the search brings up the right files, documents, and even e-mails.

The search is not perfect, but it's very fast and it gets the job done for most uses. If you need to find that specific .dll you know must be somewhere below the C:\Program Files\ directory, you still need to go the few extra steps because they are not indexed by default. But that's okay.

Start menu: Much has been written about the Vista start menu. It may not be perfect but I still think it's a good compromise between not confusing XP users and efficiency.

The fact that you can now hit the Windows button on your keyboard and start typing the name of your favorite program alone makes it a lot more efficient than the one we knew and hated since Windows 95. Entries (except for the pinned ones) are now sorted by default, so the hardly intuitive Sort by name context menu entry has disappeared. It's also easier to navigate in big menus (I've seen XP start menus with more than 100 top level groups!) because the navigation happens within the actual menu area instead of popping up in all sorts of directions all over the screen. (Also great if you hated the start menu covering your video window while you were looking for a program. ;-)

Snipping tool: Users of OneNote already know and love this feature. It's like your Print screen key on speed: You can select a screen region, which is then copied to the clipboard and inserted into your document. The new Snipper tool does pretty much the same thing. But in addition to just copying the content, you can edit it (with highlighting tools, etc.) and then copy or save it. That's great for making presentations, blogging, or just collecting little pieces of information.

ListView navigation: This is a detail, but I still find it worth mentioning it. To jump to a certain entry in a list or tree, you could always just type the first few letters of the corresponding entry and the selection would jump there. Unless your entry happened to contain a space. In that case, hitting space would "confirm" your selection and further typing was pointless or would even move you to another entry. In Vista, this was fixed, so if you want to jump to the "Windows NT" entry and not the "Windows" entry, you can just type "Windows N" and you're at the right one. Small improvement but useful.

Network connectivity: It's a little hard to explain why and how it works, mainly because I haven't quite figured it out myself, but wherever I go, I (almost) always have network access. If you type your WEP/WPA key once, that's it, Windows will reuse it whenever appropriate, and it seems fairly smart and quick about choosing the best available network.

On XP I remember having to use the horrible IBM Connections tool, a program based on a great idea and designed for people who roam a lot, but, unfortunately, designed by people who hate stable software, intuitive user interfaces, and computer users in general. I was afraid I would have to use it again but to my surprise and big relief that wasn't the case.

Occasionally there are still network outages, but it's hard to tell whether it's really Vista's fault or just due to the usual wireless quirks. I've had to reboot at least once because Vista just refused to connect while my other PC on the same network had no problem at all. Still, a big improvement over Windows XP.

Explorer navigation: Remember what happened when you opened C:\Windows\system32 in XP's Explorer? Right, coffee break. It was impossible to work until Explorer had opened every single one of the many files to display the correct icon. Trying to navigate by typing the first letters would send the selection zigzagging through the entire folder, mostly at random and with a few seconds' delay.

The Vista Explorer does a much better job. It's far more responsive, so it seems the developers have finally put the focus on navigation and not on displaying the icons at all cost. (Don't worry, the icons are still there but they are loaded in the background.)

Unfortunately, there is not much else positive to write about the "new" Explorer. Maybe the new address bar that allows for pretty quick navigation within the parent folder structure. But I'm afraid the rest of it mostly goes into the "Bad" section and will have to wait till later.

Bottom line

The things I've listed above are by far not all the improvements that Vista's user interface introduced, but they're the ones that caught my attention in the first few weeks. I'll discuss later on whether they can make up for all the things that have become worse. And, what's a user interface without the rest of the system? So, there will be at least one article dedicated to kernel-related issues.

For reference, here's a list of links to the other parts of my Vista review:

• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 2: The Bad)
• Windows Vista: User interface (Part 3: The So-so)
• Windows Vista (Part 4: Explorer)
• Windows Vista (Part 5: Power management)