As I mentioned the other day, I am the proud owner of a new laptop. It has been a long time in the making, but finally I can finally do some writing wherever I want, and not have to type it up later. So far it has been working out really nicely. What I haven’t mentioned before is that the laptop is running Windows Vista. Now, I’m not one to be an early adopter for anything made by Microsoft, but it came with the laptop. That said, I really like Vista so far, except for a few gotchas.
First of all, though, the new look and feel are great. There are some new desktop backgrounds that come with the operating system that are just gorgeous. Also, if you have the proper graphics card and such (I do), you can run a version of Vista that includes Windows Aero which has such features as translucent windows and Window Flip 3D. See the pictures below.
Pretty cool, huh? Unfortunately, there is a problem. Some applications disable Windows Aero. For example, if you use applications such as QuickTime or iTunes, Windows automatically disables Windows Aero, which means no more translucent windows and no more Flip 3D. The bad thing is that Windows will disable Aero, in my experience, even if you don’t know you are running one of these programs. The program could be one of those that are executed on start-up without your knowledge (I discovered MSConfig yesterday, which helps with this) and completely disable the bells and whistles features that make Vista so visually appealing. Now, I’m pretty sure I can work around this, but I’m not so sure the average user will be able to.
********************UPDATE****************************
According to the author of the blog I cited in this article, Apple in particular has updated iTunes and QuickTime to play nicely with Vista, so Aero is not disabled. Here is his post on this subject.
The Struggling Writer 