Vista and the WAF

Posted on: 05-29-2006 by: nicwise

The Wife Acceptance Factor is an important thing with any new technology, so I put Leonie infront of Vista last night, and the results are interesting, to say the least.

first impressions mean a hell of a lot to me and i am pretty unforgiving when it comes to computer software. if it’s hard to use or looks like it will take a while to learn (with no payoff), then i’m not interested.

here’s what i thought of vista in the five minutes i looked at it.

Read more on her blog.

The same question came up on the .NET list, too. Here’s my response:

I have it on a Pentium 4 EE 3.2 (64 bit), 1GB, GF 6600GT PCIe (media center)

It’s fast, pretty, and utterly utterly CONFUSING. After quite a bit of hunting, I still can not consistently find things, or move around the UI. I think it’s going to be a total nightmare from a corporate desktop point of view – 10′s of 1000′s of users to upgrade AND train…. Ouch.

Oh, and the security dialogs? Wow, I never thought I could train myself to click on a button so accuratly, without thinking, in such a short amount of time.

The wife acceptance factor is a solid ZERO. Actually, for MS, it’s negative – she wants a MacBook now, WITH MacOS (we were replacing her laptop shortly anyway)

The UI is looking more and more consistent, which is a good thing. The RAM usage is scary – nothing loaded, clean boot at 720meg used. I’m not sure if it moves stuff out, or counts it differently, but that’s a LOT of RAM.

Keep in mind that I don’t use Client OS’s ANYWHERE. I use 2003 Server on my laptop (as I develop server software), and on my server at home, and I basically skipped XP (I think I used it for about 8 months, between RTM and B2 of 2003 server). I’m not the average user