Technologizer has an interesting article about why Windows Vista failed, and it provides 16 reasons why this is the case. A few of those reasons reveal a certain lack of understanding, but a more pressing issue is that while listing these reasons individually is interesting, Vista's failure in the marketplace can be explained in a much more compact fashion.
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Member since:2006-03-10
You seem to argue against yourself here. First you seem to agree that GDI-based windowing is jerky and unpleasant, then later you say that the new GUI (the DWM) sucks too. If this is so, what's to be gained by having Classic as a theme for the DWM? You get freedom from jerkiness at the expense of a disjointed and inconsistent interface -- won't that inconsistency just be even worse against the backdrop of Classic?
For my part, I do detest aspects of GDI (massively delayed redraws are my pet peeve), but I only ever stuck with Classic in XP so I could disable the "Themes" service and squeeze out another piddling drop of performance. I don't know enough about it, but I assume that if you have the hardware for it, a compositing desktop/WM would actually be better for performance than if the CPU has to do everything.
Member since:2007-11-29
In the current Windows incarnations, Classic sucks for both reasons: because of jerky GDI handling AND because of being totally inconsistent.
In my opinion, the new DWM should be consistent, lightweight and hardware-accelerated, and then get a Classic theme, so that you can enjoy the old looks in their old consistency, but without redraw errors and so on.
Maybe now it's a bit clearer.
Actually, the Aero skin looks a bit more consistent than the now-Classic-theme, maybe because it's so over-the-top and full of glossy stuff, so that you simply don't notice all the inconsistencies anymore. But it gets reveiled by switching to Classic.
Member since:
2007-11-29
There's one big problem with Aero, whether regarded as a theme or a window manager:
The "Windows Classic" skin is still using the old technique!
So everyone who doesn't want to have all that transparent / color gradient / glossy stuff is forced to use the old window manager, "with all its GDI jerkiness". Why, god why?
Why can't they include a "Windows Classic" THEME that runs on top of the new stuff, instead of having two window managers included in ONE operating system?
Also, the new GUI is completely broken. There are checkboxes which behave like radio buttons, there are buttons with different heights, there are context menus with beveled borders and some with flat borders, there are buttons that keep being raised, even when you click on them...
So, in the end, the only thing left that might be enjoyed by some users, is the translucency...