Vista's UI is a 'step back,' analyst says

**Anilrgowda** · 28-Feb-2007, 10:25 PM

Vista's user interface suffers from more "friction" than its predecessor XP, a French analyst says, and is actually a step back for Microsoft in its pursuit of Apple's Mac OS X.

In a reprise of research published last year, French analyst Andreas Pfeiffer oversaw testing of what he calls "User Interface Friction", the fluidity and/or reactivity of an operating system to commands.
He likens UIF to the reaction - fast or not - when stepping on a car's accelerator. "We realised that there are many things you don't easily capture when you do normal benchmarking, such as elements in the user interface that slow down the user," Pfeiffer explains.
Among the tests run last year - when Pfeiffer matched up Windows XP against Mac OS X - and this year, when he added Vista, were benchmarks that quantified menu latency, common desktop chores, and precise mouse positioning.
"Menu latency is the time it takes an operating system to display a menu," says Pfeiffer. "In Windows, it is not immediate. That is not a speed or performance issue, but a design choice."
The new UIF data put Windows Vista, and its Aero graphical interface, behind Windows XP, which had showed improvement over earlier Microsoft operating systems. Menu latency, Pfeiffer said, remains a major problem in Vista, which scored 20% slower than XP. "Windows XP was a major step forward from Windows 98, but Vista is back to where 98 was," Pfeiffer says.
Microsoft declined to comment on Pfeiffer's Vista user interface research.
In the common desktop task benchmark, which gauged how long it took users to open a folder, delete files, and so on, Vista running Aero was 14% slower than XP. The final benchmark of mouse precision, a test crucial to design professionals and photographers, but also of interest to general users who get frustrated trying to nail submenu commands at the first click, also put Vista on the bottom. Pfeiffer's Vista "mouse precision coefficient" was 30% higher than XP's. A higher coefficient means users found it harder to precisely place the mouse.
"These things are very measurable," Pfeiffer says. "In Vista, a folder fades in, as if it appears out of nothing. It looks great, but after 10 times you realise that you are losing time waiting for that."
Switching to the Basic or Classic interfaces, used primarily by low-powered systems and corporations that want interface consistency, respectively, improves Vista scores, but at a sacrifice of one of the OS's most compelling features. Dropping down to Classic gives Vista a menu latency score similar to XP's, but on desktop operations, it still lags behind the older operating system.
In every benchmark, Windows scored significantly poorer than Mac OS X, which is far more "fluid" than Microsoft's OSes, according to Pfeiffer.
"But this isn't a Windows versus Mac thing," Pfeiffer says. "We wanted to see if Vista improved on some of the weak spots of previous releases. Usually, developers iron out user interface issues over time to increase [user] productivity."
Not this time, he says. "Vista is a step back."

Source:My Broadband :: Hardware & Software : Vista's UI is a 'step back,' analyst says

28-Feb-2007, 10:25 PM	#1 (permalink)
Anilrgowda Administrator Posts: 18,715 Join Date: Jan 2006 Rep Power: 10 IM:	Vista's UI is a 'step back,' analyst says Vista's user interface suffers from more "friction" than its predecessor XP, a French analyst says, and is actually a step back for Microsoft in its pursuit of Apple's Mac OS X. In a reprise of research published last year, French analyst Andreas Pfeiffer oversaw testing of what he calls "User Interface Friction", the fluidity and/or reactivity of an operating system to commands. He likens UIF to the reaction - fast or not - when stepping on a car's accelerator. "We realised that there are many things you don't easily capture when you do normal benchmarking, such as elements in the user interface that slow down the user," Pfeiffer explains. Among the tests run last year - when Pfeiffer matched up Windows XP against Mac OS X - and this year, when he added Vista, were benchmarks that quantified menu latency, common desktop chores, and precise mouse positioning. "Menu latency is the time it takes an operating system to display a menu," says Pfeiffer. "In Windows, it is not immediate. That is not a speed or performance issue, but a design choice." The new UIF data put Windows Vista, and its Aero graphical interface, behind Windows XP, which had showed improvement over earlier Microsoft operating systems. Menu latency, Pfeiffer said, remains a major problem in Vista, which scored 20% slower than XP. "Windows XP was a major step forward from Windows 98, but Vista is back to where 98 was," Pfeiffer says. Microsoft declined to comment on Pfeiffer's Vista user interface research. In the common desktop task benchmark, which gauged how long it took users to open a folder, delete files, and so on, Vista running Aero was 14% slower than XP. The final benchmark of mouse precision, a test crucial to design professionals and photographers, but also of interest to general users who get frustrated trying to nail submenu commands at the first click, also put Vista on the bottom. Pfeiffer's Vista "mouse precision coefficient" was 30% higher than XP's. A higher coefficient means users found it harder to precisely place the mouse. "These things are very measurable," Pfeiffer says. "In Vista, a folder fades in, as if it appears out of nothing. It looks great, but after 10 times you realise that you are losing time waiting for that." Switching to the Basic or Classic interfaces, used primarily by low-powered systems and corporations that want interface consistency, respectively, improves Vista scores, but at a sacrifice of one of the OS's most compelling features. Dropping down to Classic gives Vista a menu latency score similar to XP's, but on desktop operations, it still lags behind the older operating system. In every benchmark, Windows scored significantly poorer than Mac OS X, which is far more "fluid" than Microsoft's OSes, according to Pfeiffer. "But this isn't a Windows versus Mac thing," Pfeiffer says. "We wanted to see if Vista improved on some of the weak spots of previous releases. Usually, developers iron out user interface issues over time to increase [user] productivity." Not this time, he says. "Vista is a step back." Source:My Broadband :: Hardware & Software : Vista's UI is a 'step back,' analyst says

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