Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Windows Vista's Subtle Gems
Posted by Chris Gohlke in "Digital Home Software" @ 02:00 PM
Most on-line posts about Vista usually end up with a pretty negative focus resulting in statements about reverting back to XP. I’ve been using Vista for a couple of months and since Service Pack 1 resolved my stability issues, I’ve been quite pleased and have no desire to go back. As I’m still using XP at work, the constant back and forth between OS’s has made me notice some of the subtle tweaks the Vista team made to everyday tasks that never seem to get mentioned. So this thread is dedicated to sharing all the less than obvious changes to Vista.
I'll start off with the process for copying files. For this example, let’s say I have a directory with 50 files, “foo01.doc” through “foo50.doc”. In XP, if I copied “foo20.doc”, it would be automatically called “Copy of foo20.doc”. I’ve never liked this because in a sorted list, I would prefer the copy to be next to the original. Vista makes a small change by instead naming the copy “foo20 Copy.doc”. Much better in my opinion. Often when I copy a document, I’m doing so just to use it as a template for something similar, so right after making the copy, I usually rename it to something appropriate for the new document. In XP, if I went to rename the above file, the entire “Copy of foo20.doc” would be highlighted and I would have to made sure to retype the extension. Under Vista , when I choose to rename the same file only the “foo20 Copy” is highlighted by default, but I still have the option of changing the extension if I like. Much smoother.
What are some of the other little things you’ve discovered in Vista that you really like?
