Letters@windowsitpro.com

More Vista Annoyances
I read Michael Otey’s Top 10 column, “Windows Vista Annoyances” (January 2008, InstantDoc ID 97490), and I agree with most of his annoyances. I thought I’d offer my own list of the top 10 reasons I’m not running Vista as my primary OS.

1. Windows Mail doesn’t let me resize all columns.
2. Vista won’t let me drag a new toolbar off the taskbar to the desktop. (I like to set up My Computer and My Network Places as an autohide toolbar on the right edge of the screen, like a sidebar.)
3. Disk Defragmenter forces me to defragment all drives, unless I use the command line; there’s no GUI option for selecting individual drives.
4. When I choose to autohide the taskbar, Vista won’t let me drag a shortcut to the taskbar without dragging it over the Start button area.
5. Vista requires more clicks for changing the time and for updating the time with a time server.
6. On the Vista taskbar and desktop, I can’t right-click the network icon to access Properties, Repair, or Status options.
7. The functionality for watching newsgroup messages through Windows Mail doesn’t work correctly. (Microsoft knows about the problem and won’t fix it.)
8. When I view files in Windows Explorer’s details view, an entire line has focus. Setting focus in the folder is difficult, especially using the Single-click to open an item option. I end up opening a file when all I want to do is set focus.
9. In Windows Explorer, I see no folder-size status information in the status line—only the number of files.
10. The sidebar has no autohide option.

—Gary Keramidas

Command- Prompt Castaway
Lazy administrators have overlooked command-line tools for ages. Curt Spanburgh’s article, “Castaway on Command- Prompt Island” (January 2008, InstantDoc ID 97507), shows how the command line can save you a lot of work and time if you have a basic understanding of the tools—and an open mind to look further than the GUI.

—Rob Sanders

Who Are You?
I’m just now getting around to reading Karen Forster’s IT Pro Perspective piece, “Microsoft Asks: Who Are You?” (December 2007, InstantDoc ID 97478).

Microsoft abandoned a lot of people with Exchange Server 2007. PowerShell is great if you’re managing dozens of like servers, but I don’t have many Exchange servers, and I don’t want to be a UNIX administrator. I’m a child of Windows. I love the GUI. I hate that I’ll have to perform certain command-line tasks because they aren’t exposed in the Exchange Management Console (EMC). When Microsoft did its Exchange 2007 Technology Adoption Program (TAP), the company seemingly forgot to involve small to mid-sized business (SMB) Exchange administrators, because people like me don’t want to deal with the command line.

I know SP1 exposes more in the GUI, but until it’s all exposed (or at least 98 percent of it), I won’t be satisfied. Is my visual nature part of my personal life? Maybe not in the true spirit of your article, but I would have been happy to give feedback about these changes to the Exchange 2007 team, had I been given the opportunity.

Your article gives me hope that Microsoft has recognized the error of its ways. In my case, the situation has caused me to pause an Exchange 2003–to– Exchange 2007 transition until I can get a better grasp of what isn’t exposed in the GUI and what we’re going to have to do from the command line.

—Trey Cook

Many readers have responded to this column, and all of them think Microsoft’s Who Are You? efforts are a bad idea. So, it’s good to get your hopeful perspective. By the way, you certainly aren’t alone in your concern about Exchange and PowerShell. Check out the blog entry I wrote on exactly that topic: www .windowsitpro.com/Article/ ArticleID/95646/An_Exchange_ Users_Lament.html. You’ll find that a lot of people responded with similar concerns. Thank you for taking time to write.

—Karen Forster

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