Vista Beta 2: Huh?
I installed Vista Beta 2 on my wife’s computer last night. What a mistake.
First off, Vista really needs some sort of administrative mode or something that says “I hereby authorize myself to do frikkin’ everything, so stop bugging me”. I must have typed in my credentials 100 times last night, just doing the usual basic configuring of a new system.
I want Firefox as my default browser. Every time I run Firefox, it asks me if I want it to be the default browser. I say yes, I do. Next time I run Firefox, it asks me the same question. How did Microsoft manage to miss that in testing?
iTunes has the same problem, but it gives me an error when I tell it to become my default music player.
Not only that, but the “Default Programs” tool that you can use to choose what program to use as the default lists neither Firefox nor iTunes, and offers no way to add them. I guess I’m stuck with Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer.
c:\Program Files\iTunes>taskkill /im itunes.exe /f
SUCCESS: The process “iTunes.exe” with PID 2428 has been terminated.
c:\Program Files\iTunes>taskkill /im itunes.exe /f
SUCCESS: The process “iTunes.exe” with PID 2428 has been terminated.
c:\Program Files\iTunes>taskkill /im itunes.exe /f
SUCCESS: The process “iTunes.exe” with PID 2428 has been terminated.
c:\Program Files\iTunes>taskkill /im itunes.exe /f
SUCCESS: The process “iTunes.exe” with PID 2428 has been terminated.
That was always one of my peeves with Windows XP – that there were processes that you just couldn’t kill. Looks like nothing’s changed there. I was really hoping some kernel work would help with this, but nope.
I’m not seeing much in Vista that’s worth upgrading for, and I’m finding lots of reasons to stick with XP. And I’m an early adopter. Microsoft had better be listening to the beta feedback or they’re going to ship an OS that’ll give people some real motivation to look for an alternative.
May 26th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
Crikey Steve! Buy a Mac… and one of those inTel jobbies… 8)
May 26th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Woops, where has my typing gone… I meant “not one of those intel jobbies”. 9)
May 27th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I have a Mac.. and it’s not perfect either. But Vista is brand new stuff so of course I hold it up to a pretty high standard. It really bugs me that I still can’t depend on being able to kill a process.
I like the idea that the OS prompts me when it needs a privilege elevation.. but just to see a list of processes that are running? That seems like overkill. People are gonig to get so used to coughing up their credentials that the malware can just ask for it and the user will blindly type it in.
June 11th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
I’m having exactly the same problems with iTunes too, although someone on a neowin forum says they have got it working perfectly, but I don’t believe them tbh. I tried all the compatibility modes etc, and nothing. In fact, now I can’t even import an album…
June 19th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Steve — Agreed. So far, Vista’s one of the worst pieces of software MS has released since MS Bob.