or why I can’t run Vista full-time on my tablet…

I have been trying to run Windows Vista full-time on my tablet PC for the past two weeks (i.e., a Toshiba R15 model) and have had much success.  However, there are many “annoyances” that are stopping me from using Vista in production, and I am afraid that many of these so-called “annoyances” wil remain in the final product:

1.  There appears no way to remove the “Favorite Links” section from an explorer view and also have the Folders list stay open persistently.  I have seen screenshots of the “Folders” list stay open, but apparently there is no option to set this as the default.  (basically I like the old folder view from XP/2000 - especially dealing with about 20 network drives, all of which must be readily accessible).

2.  How can one decrease the DPI setting?  I am stuck using a laptop at 1024×768 resolution.  Windows XP will allow you to decrease the DPI (thereby making everything smaller).  However, Vista only allows you to increase the DPI.

3.  When Vista is run with Glass mode, you are allowed options to tint the window titlebars to get different colors.  However, when one cannot run Glass mode (at least without hacking), you are stuck with essentially the “light grey” titlebars and no way of tinting them short of going to Windows Classic Style.  Why remove the color options for Aero Basic?

4.  The Remote Desktop client has become somewhat more unmanageable and has added many steps to the process of connecting to a remote machine.  Why make me type in credentials before the connection?

5.  (this is from a different computer running Vista)  Many times, settings made in the Personalization Control Panel area are not maintained between user sessions (such as transparency, tinting, and even the screen saver).

6.  Finally, a peculiar bug - I can never seem to have my tablet remember whether a network is public or private.  Thus, I get asked at every boot about the characteristics of the network (i.e., private vs public).

I also found the more positive aspects to be:

1.  NAP (Network Access Protection) rocks.  I set up a test Longhorn Server to run the NAP tests.  Everything worked well.  All I need to do is to find the API for the health agents and come up with a good home-brewed health agent for the office.

2.  The network speed is much better than XP.

3.  Performance-wise, Vista is much faster on the R15 than the default version of XP provided by Toshiba (which includes many software packages I neither want nor use).

4.  Battery life is on par with XP (since I am not running glass).

5.  Tablet functionality is much better (and faster).

Things I still want to try:

1.  Bitlocker - this is a bit more complicated since I don’t have a TPM chip in the Toshiba.  I tried this once with the January or February CTP build and hit difficulties due to the fact that Vista didn’t recognize by USB key.

2.  Media Center - I don’t have the hardware on the tablet, but I will try this on a different machine.

3.  IPV6 connectivity - This is also something I want to try experimenting with.

Things I reconfigured from the start:

1.  UAC off.  UAC was better in this build, but is still way to busy.  I don’t want to have to wait the 10~15 seconds it takes to go to secure mode to accept/reject the elevation request and then the 10+/- seconds to get out of secure mode.  If it was faster, it would be OK.

2.  Sidebar off.  On a 1024×768 screen, there is no room for it.  In fact, even on a 1280×1024 screen, I also have no room for it.

As you can see, my biggest problems are with the UI.  I want it to be functional for all environments.  I would say that right now, it is ideal for home environments.  It is, however, somewhat lacking when in a business/corporate environment.

Tags: Vista,