Responding to a Reader's Comment on Vista Problems
Relating to my ongoing series on Vista myths and my attempts to shatter them, I received this morning an interesting email from a reader. In that email, the reader suggested a number of reasons that in the words of the reader "make Vista feel more and more like Windows ME". The reader writes:
- no telnet capabilities. would have been nice to know that they were doing away with this. yes, I can download it and install it, but this is another thing that I need to account for.
- "mailto:" feature. Our company uses Lotus notes. There is a bug in Vista that will not allow you to bring up Lotus notes when you hit a "mailto:" link in a webpage. Registry hacking is needed to resolve this. Open case with Lotus and Microsoft for over 6 months without a resolution in sight.
- Hibernation on be default. Loading Vista on a laptop will automatically enable hibernation. Modifying hibernation option is a #@$@#$.
- UAL - what a piece of crap. Yes, UAL maybe the best thing since slice bread, but somebody forgot to tell the software vendors how to account for this new feature (Even Microsoft). When I have to turn the UAL off for users to map network drives, this kind of defeats the purpose of having this new feature. Having more options on controlling UAL would be nice too.
- Antivirus support. It blew my mind that when I installed Vista around May/June of last year, my antivirus company indicated that they only had a beta version of the corporate client and plus the beta would not update definitions from my local servers. Since that time they did release a version that works on Vista.
- Defender. Give me a break. Allows me to uninstall this software. Unless somebody has come out with a tool that removes the software, there is no way to get rid of it. We already have corporate software that does the same thing as defender.
So many of these assumptions are prevalent with administrators today, but yet so many of these are completely incorrect. Click past the fold to read my response...
- Telnet is available in Vista: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1736
- There is a reg hack that easily resolves this, and it's a problem that was not limited to Vista. It was experienced back in Windows 2000 as well, and isn't Microsoft's fault but IBM's fault for how they developed Lotus Notes. I used to work for Raytheon who uses Lotus Notes and we had the same problem. That reg hack can easily be implemented using Group Policy Preferences: http://redmondmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=2498
- Modifying the hibernation option can similarly be easily fixed using Group Policy, or through a direct on-the-box configuration: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=1788
- UAC itself is actually a very smart idea - but I'll agree that that holds true only on paper. Its implementation with Vista wasn't the best architecture. However, in saying that, I recommend that it be completely turned off: http://nexus.realtimepublishers.com/RTWA.htm (the February issue tells you how). What is not well known is that Microsoft also understands the problem with UAC and actually themselves recommends disabling it. They recommend replacing it with a product from BeyondTrust called Privilege Manager: http://beyondtrust.com/products/PrivilegeManager.aspx
- Who is your anti-virus vendor?
- Defender is an optional piece of software that admittedly isn't the best solution for anti-Spyware. Disable it and/or turn off its prompts and don't look back. However, IE7 in Vista only natively includes a significant added feature in IE Protected Mode. This feature alone can significantly reduce the incidence of Spyware infection: http://redmondmag.com/columns/print.asp?EditorialsID=1820.
Care to comment towards my responses? Let's keep this conversation going!
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Comments
MS made an update back in April and ever since that update, all of our Vista machines operating Lotus Notes Client 7.02 are having performance issues with Lotus Notes. It takes forever for email to come up and I have switched them over to the Lotus Notes Web client to access their email. Still, the users are very unhappy and they want their Lotus Notes client back operating like it is suppose to work. IBM has been notified, still nothing, I am sure others are experiencing the same issues that I am.
What solution do you have regarding this.
Thank you,
Repps Galusha
Director of IT
rgalusha@wsihq.com
Posted by: Repps Galusha | May 10, 2008 1:13 PM
To be honest, none. I haven't heard of this problem or its relation to Lotus Notes. What has been the response of IBM to the problem?
Posted by: Greg Shields | May 10, 2008 1:36 PM