Wow. The first thing I’ve heard about Vista that’s actually made me stop and reconsider my decision to stay the hell away from it… but is it enough?
quicksilver.
So are you saying this feature is worth the $200-$300 to upgrade from Windows XP? I have yet to see a compelling argument that will get me to cough up the money to upgrade to Vista.
About the only thing that is going to get me to upgrade is when I see “For Windows Vista Only” on software.
Sheesh, here I thought I was happy with Lanuchy, which helps me launch apps in less than a second. Lanuchy is great for replacing the start menu, but it does nothing else (and doesnt intend to). It is so quick so usually I dont even see the launchy window before I entered F (for Firefox) and pressing Enter.
But now I want Quicksilver, it is very innovative and I havent seen anything like it. Good jobs by those guy(s)!?
Is it just me or is Windows becoming more of a console? The only reason I keep using it, is that I want to play games 
I don’t quite get the hullabaloo. I’ve been using ctrl+esc+r and typing merrily away for everything I do for years, even to get to executables. For extremely long paths I will usually eventually just make a batch file that launches the extremely long path in whatever manner I want it to be launched. Just put the batch file somewhere in my path (usually c:\bat) and I’m back in business. I use my mouse so infrequently at work that I have a left-handed mouse setup so that I can keep a pen and notepad by my right hand to take notes while I work.
I suppose this vista feature saves me trouble of making hundreds of little batch files, if it works right. But now I see that several people above have mentioned Launchy, which I think I’ll take a look at.
well, hell of a feature!
i have a linux-box with wmii window manager running (some 500 kB + 1.5 GB linux and useful apps = roughly 1.5 GB; not 6 GB only for an OS. this is insane!) and it has (almost) the same feature. plus auto completion by hitting tab (try this - i would not bet that it works in your feature). i do not use my mouse anymore, except for surfing in the inet. furhter, no start menu at all. clear useability.
btw, the “typing feature” is known since the first days of modern computers and it has long been pointed out that typing is in most cases faster and more efficiently than pointing with a mouse and scrolling through a hell of menus.
so, if thats the best feature vista has, i’m not impressed.
with regards AS
Not sure why people think this is the only feature in vista, he jsut happend to blog about this, stop making stupid deducations about upgrading or whatever from one article.
If you want a compelling reason, here it is, everything Vista will be obsolete, no new games will run on it because they move to DX10, no new hardware will run on it because it’s so easy for manufacturers to use the unified driver model…etc…etc
Vista is not about search or the stupid glass interface, it’s about all those things they chnaged “under the hood” which will pretty much force us all to upgrade as usual with Windows, wheter we like to or not.
And, in case you don’t know, the Vista search feature will be released for XP as well, there is a beta right now at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/desktopsearch/default.mspx
Searches exactly the same way and uses the same search syntax.
@brad
You obviously havent tested Vista, there is no programs menu like the one in XP, thats the whole point.
As for you others, my good, we know that there are other search enabled programs, what of it ? What is you beef ? You think someone has patent on search ? A bar where you type ? Get real.
And no, this is not the first time there is search in windows, like pointed out a million times youc an isnatll other stuff, or ms desktop search on xp, so what was “stolen” here ? Man, get a life.
I’ll take the Microsoft version over shareware anyday. Good article.
Good tip Jeff! I’ll have to try it out and see if I like it better than SlickRun. Took me long enough to get into the habit of using SlickRun, so using something else will be a challenge.
Everybody else mentioned it’s just a copy of Quicksilver/Spotlight and their derivatives. But I’d like to point out that I’ve been doing a lot of this stuff for years on plain-old Windows. It’s amazing to me how few people know the power of the Run box, accessed quickly with the key combo Win-R.
Even back in Windows 95 days I could do:
Win-R notepad (bring up notepad)
Win-R C: (open up explorer on the C: drive)
With Win 98 and everything after, it became a lot more powerful, because they added auto completion. Now you can do things like:
Win-R My [down arrow] (Open up My Documents)
It’s still not as powerful as the Quicksilver-like features described above; but I’m amazed that more people aren’t using these shortcuts.
Ouch! I guess I’ve never seen so much crap thrown towards Jeff in a simgle blogpost. Another one! Jeff! Duck!
Guys, you should know Jeff doesn’t lick MS boots, but he’s a windows oriented developer, what did you expect? Reviews about the new osx 2.3.2.1.2.3.4.5.7?
He found a feature worth telling to us, guys who don’t have vista betas
As much as I hate paying hundreds of dollars for an OS I don’t need (and shouldn’t need, except for that damns compatibility issues MS creates on purpose) I will get someday a PC with vista included, and it’s nice to know ms is not going only downhill.
I also love my keyboard, but I will probably miss the mouse-clicking start menu. You don’t know what you had till you lose it, right?
Oh my goodness. Who would have thought that revealing a well-done feature in Vista would cause so many negative comments about Windows in general?
I have been running Vista exclusively at work (and Vista and OS X at home) for about 2 months now. When I go back to XP or Server 2k3, it feels like going back into the dark ages. But when people ask me what’s better, or why they should switch, it’s incredibly hard to point to individual features that are compelling. It’s a whole experience that is better. It feels cleaner, and I feel like I’m more in control of everything.
Yes, it has its faults. But I say fewer faults than XP.
There are so many little minor things that make me happy every day:
- Far fewer reboots
- Much faster startup time (like 10 seconds from poweroff to login)
- Windows button, type, launch
- Windows key + number for QuickLaunch shortcut (awesomeness)
- Sidebar and gadgets (writing them is fun, too)
- Much, much better plug-n-play support
- Big remote desktop improvements
- Hibernate actually works
- Switching between wireless networks, wired, and differen domains works seamlessly
These are all pretty minor things. But when you put them all together, it’s just a better OS. Using XP every day (especially coming from a Mac OS background) was frustrating quite a bit of the time. I am so much less frustrated now, using Vista.
Perhaps the most important thing though, is that I feel like I get more work done in less time. Why that’s the case is hard to explain–perhaps over time it will become more readily apparent.
If you don’t want to upgrade, don’t upgrade. But Jeff pointing out a nice feature (even if it exists in 3rd party things) is not a reason to start bashing the OS wholesale.
P.S. Keep in mind that Apple stole many, many features from indie shareware/freeware developers over the years also (Panic comes to mind).
Mind you, having any typing at all in Linux is claimed to be its major problem. If you’d been doing this from a Linux command line, you could have typed st-TAB and the menu would pop up all the programs beginning with st*. Or using Fluxbox on Linux, I customize my desktop menu so it only shows what I use, and can summon it with a single keypress.
It never ceases to amaze me how features that have been standard in Unix for decades are derided as crocks, then stolen into Windows, where they’re suddenly praised.
I am going to try one of the free tools that provides the functionality that you describe.
However, I don’t see the start menu as being a problem. I mean, do people really have their start menu arranged as in the screen-shot in your April 24, 2005 article? Of course everyone would have difficulty with a menu of 65 items, but if you look at the way the start menu is done when you first install windows, you’ll see that things are in categories (i.e. Games, Accessories).
If you put items into, say, 8 categories, then everything will be in easily used menus of no more then 10 items.
As an example…
a href="http://derbysite.com/TempImages/StartMenu.PNG"http://derbysite.com/TempImages/StartMenu.PNG/a
@Penguin Pete
When and where did Linux have this feature ?? Command line has always been in windows in one form another, if we are going to talk about things stolen (like two people could never get the same idea about something, so tired of this crap) look at the major desktop for Linux and tell me where that inspiration comes from ?
I haven’t completely given up on pointing as a control metaphor. But until the computer interface we see in the film “Minority Report” becomes reality, it will probably continue to suck.
We point at things in real life all the time. I think the problem we see with computer interfaces is that the mouse-and-pointer are a horrible metaphor for the physical pointing we are so accustomed to. But if we could use both hands, multiple fingers, and maybe even some gestures, I think things would be a lot different.
Even if I have no intention of upgrading anytime soon, it’s always worthwhile to read blog posts like this because the comments will invariably point to a number of other solutions to the same problem. So it’s a win anyway.
KingOfDerby, yes, 99% of software installs itself into the root, in a folder named for the software or the company that made it. Virtually nothing will put itself into a category folder, and I’ve seen dozens of folks’ computers with incredibly badly laid-out start menus from the junk they’ve installed.
Sure, you can categorize them yourself - I do - but it’s an egregious failure that software refuses to.
It’s amazing to see how many people talk crap - and look what you can do with this or that. Or the mac or linux. Geeez folks do you have really nothing better to do than pounce on anything Windows even if it is something useful? Let’s face it it’s been a long time since any operating system has done anything truly innovative and not taken a feature that some third party hasn’t previously implemented.
Think what you will this is a useful feature and many people agree with Jeff including myself. Revolutionary? No, but you know the things that make life easier often aren’t revolutionary…
killer app? you mean spotlight which came out like 2 years ago?
step away from vista