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Loading ...The reason Apple and Mac OS X are so famous is only because Microsoft exists.
… don’t skip past that first sentence… it really sums up the rest of this review and explains to you, at so many levels. Let me say it another way:
People like Apple products and Mac OS X, because Microsoft set a bar, so low, that anything behaving even remotely intelligent seemed “amazing”.
Today I am going to review Vista, all of it, by reviewing one single program that it ships… Windows Fuckup… woops, I mean Windows FuckingstupidretardedFUCKERSHIT…. WOOPSIE… I mean Windows Backup.
Do you remember Windows Backup Utility from… Windows 95 to XP?
It was a straight forward and technically oriented backup util. You select the dirs you want, tell it where to put the resulting file, and hit Backup… pretty much what backup programs had been doing since 1994.
True to form, Microsoft removed that from Vista and replaced it with the Backup & Restore Center:
When I originally set out to create an automated backup, I thought that the B&R Center was a simplified front end to the Backup Utility… at least that is what I expected. I soon found out that not only is it not a front end, you can no longer control your backup contents like you used to with the Backup Utility. You cannot specify directories you want backed up, you cannot specify specific file extensions you want backed up, you cannot even specify directories to ignore while backing up your files.
What you do get to “choose” (I put that in quotes, because you don’t really get to choose) is the type of file you want to back up, but:
- You never get to see what filter Backup uses to establish if a file is of that certain type or not (e.g. You have no clue what Vista Backup considers a “Document”)
- You don’t get to specify directories to use or directories to ignore… that’s right, it searches your entire goddamn computer for those file “types”
- You have no control over where it searches for those file types (e.g. Want to backup “Video” but ignore your TV Show folder over under C:\MyShit? Too bad)
So when you are setting up your backup and you come across the configuration screen (there is just 1):
and you think “Hey cool, those check boxes map directly to the special folders in Vista”:
you would be wrong… so goddamn wrong. Those check boxes on the Backup screen, that almost match the special folder names 1:1, those are file TYPES you are selecting… and as I mentioned above, you have no access (even in the help docs) to a clarification of the rules being used to determine if a specific file falls into that category or not.
… oh… and forget being able to edit or change those settings… it’s a black box of bullshit.
So the first time I ran Backup, I noticed it was taking a really long time to run, and I only have a few MB worth of files in my Documents folder… so I flipped back to the status screen and saw this:
… ummm…. if I only had “Documents” checked, why is Vista Backup backing up A) my Program Files directory and B) some random QuickTime install file?
That’s when I decided to start digging… I let the “backup” continue and started to dig. It was only after reading the help and re-running it a few times to confirm the behavior that I realized when you select a type, the pig-raping Vista Backup runs out to every single folder on your computer and searches for files it think fall into that category.
I know what you might be thinking… “But hey, it’s super-safe that way… DICKHEAD!” and that is true… backing up every single file on your computer, especially when 95% of it can be reinstalled is very safe… but in reality creating a 1.5GB backup for 2MB worth of files is just fucking stupid.
One basic (super-basic) change I would have made to this bat-shit-eating design for the Backup & Restore Center is to filter out protected operating system directories. I’m not aware of a single piece of software that saves under C:\Program Files… to boot, you need Admin rights to write to the folder in Vista anyway, so the chance of a user using that directory or a subdir in it as some sort of working area is horse shit.
Another super-basic change is that I would have added a button next to each “Type” that explains EXACTLY what types are being considered for backup (file extensions). Optionally it would be nice to be able to adjust that list… but I think I’m pushing my luck.
Anyway, after the backup ran, the result was a 100s of MB of files (even though I had 2 or 3mb in Documents) and the contents looked a little something like this:
and Yes… that is most of the contents of my Program Files directory… fantastic, just what I needed. Maybe Version 2.0 can backup everything under C:\Windows\Temp? Then I KNOW I’m safe…
And this brings me to my “review” of Vista as a whole…
I have been writing about Vista for at least a year now, with every post being something critical about the OS, how much it sucks or something it does wrong, but I had never run it exclusively as my primary OS… until now.
Last week I built a new desktop machine, and ironically enough (sidenote: someone actually told me something was ironical the other day… brain-bonus!) the only OS I had a full unused license for was Windows Vista, so I installed that and activated it on the machine. Using Vista for the first day seemed fine… I didn’t know why everyone was so up in arms about it… everything seemed to work, my programs installed, it was snappy on my new machine… It wasn’t until Day 2 and beyond that I started to realize where all the complaints were coming from.
It is hard to review Vista on a point-by-point basis, so I won’t. I will simply say that the reason everyone bitches about it is because the entire operating system is designed exactly like this Backup & Restore Center I outlined above. More specifically, there is very little rhyme or reason to the design decisions in this OS and the stupidity and inconsistency is rampant:
- Menus are all hidden by default, but suddenly spring up when the Alt key is hit… and the functionality IN the menu is not duplicated anywhere on the interface… it is simply hidden from view for no reason.
- The “Power” button on the Start menu means ‘Hibernate’ now… apparently.
- Control Panel was not just reorganized, it seems the number of items in it now is double what it was.
- Network panel was redesigned into what seems like 10 different screens
- There is something screwy with the network stack. I’ve had IE and Firefox stop loading pages that I can hit with other tools. Name resolution has dorked out in a few different programs where I had to use the IP address until I rebooted and other quirky things like that.
- Sidebar seems to be totally useless as a real productivity enhancer
- Dreamscape in Windows Vista Ultimate has 1 background available and not even the ones demoed 2 years ago when it was originally shown off (like the blowing grass one). As far as I can tell, all it does is play a MPG as the background of your desktop.
- Focus-stealing is STILL an issue. Remember typing an email in XP and then an IE Download/Saving box or Security dialog would steal your focus and you would hit Space too fast before you saw what it was, and it would disappear? Yea that still happens. (NOTE: Mac solved this by not allowing focus to be stolen across application boundaries, instead you get a task bar notice… which is much nicer)
Other programs are designed so simply to a point of almost being unusable, where as an Apple approach (or even Ubuntu/GNOME approach more so now) is to design things with simple defaults and a simple interface, but allow for additional adjustments… Microsoft, in an attempt that I can only guess is to copy that effort, has simply cut software off at the knees and only allow the crippled operation to be used… with no configuration or adjustments available.There are some things I like in Vista… those I can list:
- Aero Glass looks nice
- When you edit a file name, only the NAME portion is selected and not the extension like in Windows XP (NOTE: GNOME had this default behavior for a while now)
- Instant-search in the Start menu is really nice. It could be completely ruined with bad focus control, but surprisingly, they didn’t ruin it.
- Caching is crazy-aggressive (e.g. with normal usage it’s really easy to peg 2.0+ GB of RAM used), so load times are better.
- More System Folders for specific stuff so you don’t have to keep everything under “My Documents” like you did in XP. (e.g. Videos, Documents, Contacts, Music, Pictures, etc.)
Overall I’d say if you set your expectations really low, and consider Vista a mostly obnoxious replacement to XP with some nice touches, you will be happy with it. If you expect Vista to justify the 6 year dev cycle and be an awesome replacement to XP that has anything in common with OS X, you will be sorely disappointed from Day 1.
This is sort of like someone telling you: “You will LOVE this used car, as long as you like the smell of gas and don’t need to get anywhere reliably… otherwise it’s the wrong car for you”. Which is of course a big bonus, considering the price of Vista.
For any pro-Vista folks out there… consider that Microsoft has already announced Vienna, the next version of Windows, is going to RTM in Q209… so instead of Vista SP2, Microsoft is just going to shit-can it and release their next OS, which I am guessing, is the version Vista was suppose to be in the first place.
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February 15th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Dear Riyad,
I am so happy to hear that Vista file backup is working out so well for you. We do always aim to please.
Steve Ballmer
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I agree completely to you, I waste 5 dvd in garbage.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Renato,
Did you end up going back to XP or are you sticking with Vista and just muscling through it?
April 3rd, 2008 at 6:24 am
Couldn’t agree more with your ranting and raving.
Why MS would replace a rock solid TCP/IP stack with one that sucks (unless you buy a router or NIC that is Vista compatible) is beyond comprehension? When did it become a requirement that network devices such as a router or NIC be compatible with an operating system?
The Ed Botts of the world would answer back with “just upgrade your equipment. I did. But ignore the fact that I am ‘prolific book author’ with loads of cash and that I can write of my purchases as expenses.”
Vista was doomed when MS decided to come with more than two versions (say Standard and Enterprise).
I agree with your take of Windows Backup. It’s a disaster. I’ve noticed lately that it appears to be performing a full backup each week. I know, I’m not altering my mp3 and image files each week, so why would it be backing up all my mp3s and images?
July 18th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Wow, I was just looking for a simple review on the Vista backup utility and got all this wonderful wisdom - from a 2 year old that can’t control his mouth. I used to curse like a sailor (I was one) but then I grew up.
Thanks for nothing - I may revisit your site when you grow up drama queen.
July 18th, 2008 at 6:53 am
mbg,
I think it’s a good policy to genuinely ignore good information if you don’t like the representation of it.
For example, don’t read a book if the cover of the book is ugly; don’t pay attention to helpful tips if the person giving them to you is ugly; and most *definitely*, ignore detailed software reviews if some of the language offends your sensitive nature.
Oh wait, and don’t forget to scour the web insulting random people, that’s important too.
Keep up the good work!
August 13th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I guess Microsoft thought it would be better this way for novice users, but they definitely should have left the option to choose specific folders for advanced users..
Anyway I found this nice little solution:
http://www.petri.co.il/installing_windows_xp_ntbackup_on_windows_vista.htm
August 13th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Btw, if anyone needs the files please let me know and I can post them somewhere (like rapidshare)
August 13th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Finally (last post in these 24 hours): The backup from XP (which I just installed on my Vista) backs the files up into one file with the extension “.bkf” … proprietary no?
The Vista backup is not one file but multiple files, sure it does a horrible job grouping things in each file but at least each file is in a .zip format which is easily opened by a multitude of programs.
Having it in the .zip format allows compression, which makes my 21 GB backup a smaller 19GB. The XP backup doesn’t do that.
Finally I like having my backup external drive in FAT32 because it lets most OSes (Apple, Linux, old Windows) write to the drive. The problem is that FAT32 has a file size limit of about 4GB. Using the Vista backup sidesteps this issue since it breaks the backup into smaller .zip files.
So in the end, I think the User Interface on this new Vista Backup is terrible, and the fact that they took away the option to choose individual folders is ludicrous. However there were some improvements made. I thought I would be using the XP backup on Vista but given this file size limit and my reluctance to convert my external to NTFS, I’ll stick w/ the Vista Backup method.
August 14th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Usama,
I appreciate the followup. My experience with Vista backup was so poor I didn’t given it a chance to see that it does the following things you mentioned above.
I completely agree with you that both of these changes (.zip and splitting) are huge wins over the original backup application.
In my particular case (about 1GB of person files and 100GB of reinstallable system files) backing everything up would be a painful process and it’s just easier for me to manually copy this stuff off to a NAS unfortunately.
August 14th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Hey, thanks. I like Vista but it would be egregious for someone to say “it’s a leap forward” or something like that, and as you stated this application is a perfect example of their schizophrenic progress. By the way I thought this blog post was hilarious. When I first started a backup last night I thought I should look up reviews and yours was the 2nd hit on Google, and deservedly so.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:40 am
“When you edit a file name, only the NAME portion is selected and not the extension like in Windows XP (NOTE: GNOME had this default behavior for a while now)”
Actually… in XP… if you go into the Control Panel / Folder Options, you can check “Hide extensions for known file types”. This way, only the file name is displayed without the extension and when you edit the filename, you don’t have to worry about the extension. So that’s one less “plus” for Vista.
I’m not sure why more items in Control Panel in Vista is a bad thing. On one hand, you’re talking about a lack of control… and on the other, you’re saying you have too many choices.
Totally agree with respect to networking in Vista (especially wireless networking). It went from super easy in XP to equally super NOT easy in Vista. Bits and pieces are spread all around and, in general, in no logical format.
“Usama Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
I guess Microsoft thought it would be better this way for novice users, but they definitely should have left the option to choose specific folders for advanced users..”
Unfortunately, the versions of Vista that are most geared towards professionals… Vista Business and Ultimate… also have severely limited control over backups. It’s fine if they want to give fewer choices to novices on their lower-end versions, but they should give more flexibility on their professional versions. After all, you pay significantly more for those versions and the only additional backup option is to do a complete PC backup.
Mind you Apple has taken a similar approach with TimeMachine in Leopard. They have severely throttled back the bandwidth that TimeMachine will use either over ethernet or wireless when backing up to a TimeCapsule. I understand the reason as TimeCapsule was designed to support multiple machines and if you have several machines doing backups at the same time using the full bandwidth, your system will come to a crawl. But… if I only have one machine (or five for that matter), I should have the OPTION to use as much of my available bandwidth as I wish. An initial backup to a TimeCapsule of a basic Leopard install can take as long as 24 hours in many cases (if you don’t have any failures) via wireless or up to six or seven hours when connected via ethernet. You can manually drag files to the TimeCapsule and they will transfer at full speed… so it is not a configuration issue but rather, TimeMachine is specifically designed to work this way.
August 27th, 2008 at 7:00 am
Thanks for the info Joe, that’s very upsetting as I was thinking of upgrading to Ultimate.
I also wanted to add my experience w/ the WinXP NT Backup I have from Windows XP and then installed onto Vista.
In short I DO NOT recommend it. There are a couple of major problems:
1) Sure you can choose exactly which files you wish to back up but as I said the backups are in a proprietary format.
2)If that isn’t enough to cause concern, I also wanted to let you know that the backup utility does something to the “Users” folder which forces it to be hidden. Even if I went through My Computer and selected “see hidden folders” and then right-clicked and tried to unhide the folder, it would not unhide as the option wasn’t even available to me or the actual Administrator (I have administrator privileges but I thought I’d try logging in as Administrator). I had to unhide it by running the command prompt as an administrator and breaking out old DOS syntax. It was a problem for some applications like the Indexing software, because now I couldn’t get access to the “Users” folder and not tell it to index say my private documents that I don’t want coming up on searches.
By the way to activate the administrator account, in the command prompt type: net user administrator /active:yes
And you’ll see the administrator account whenever you start up Windows. If you want to deactivate it again it’s the same command except you replace “yes” with “no” I got this excellent piece of knowledge from, http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/enable-the-hidden-administrator-account-on-windows-vista/
August 27th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Usama,
Excellent followup, thanks for the heads up on falling back to Windows XP backup.
So all this research finally begs the issue… does anyone know of a good (free or cheap)/robust backup solution that works well on Vista?
My NAS has the concept of scheduled rsync’s, and I know a few friends that are now using online backup solutions that have client-side utils running to keep all files in sync and revisioned, but assuming I’m not someone that necessarily wants my files all backed up to a 3rd party and just want a good backup solution… thoughts?
August 27th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I’ll suggest two programs here with the warning that I haven’t tried either, YET. I plan to in the next few weeks and I can type up a short summary here. School’s starting soon so it might be a little longer.
One is Cobian, version 8 is open-source. http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
The other is SyncBack Freeware, http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html
I believe Cobian allows for differential and incremental backups. If anyone wants to join me feel free.
And I just want to say that although I too want an easy to use and powerful backup utility built into my OS (especially one like Windows for which you have to pay so much), I’m also a bit wary of this because it’s exactly what I don’t like about OS X. Sure it’s nice that OS X comes w/ all this wonderful software like iPhoto and iMovie and now TimeMachine.. what I don’t like is that when it’s done well (like it is to some degree in OS X) it destroys any need for a 3rd party software. Basically because Windows is terrible at things we have great 3rd party software. Yes I know that just because OS X is good at managing backups doesn’t mean a 3rd party can’t write software that’s better but if something free works well enough for you, why bother paying for more? the vast majority wouldn’t. Anyway that’s just a common complaint and so on the one hand I hope Windows 7 does a better job w/ their backup utility (though I’m not holding my breath) but at the same time I hope a 3rd party can create better software using the tools in Vista or Windows 7.
August 27th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Usama,
Excellent writeup, if you do get a chance to evaluate the software in a little more depth and come out with a favorite that you like and want to do an article for the site (with full credits to you of course), let me know. We’d love the contribution (none of us are real backup gurus and don’t know a whole lot about the space).
August 27th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Again, I’d love to since I was planning on trying on of these out. I start my second year of med school next week so it might actually not be ready till Thanksgiving or Christmas break.