Vista Login Screen: Amazing for One Person, Ho-Hum for Two

[Jason Dunn]

Some of the changes in Windows Vista are visual in nature - a new look, a new feel. One of those changes is the new login screen. Here are two pictures of how that looks on two different laptops.

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/vista-login-single.jpg

The single-user laptop login looks fantastic: the login icon is nice and big, even on a high-resolution screen. I think Microsoft picked an excellent size.

http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/vista-login-multiple.jpg

The laptop with two user profiles looks...not nearly as cool. The icons look about the same size as they are on XP, and on high-resolution screens, that's just too small. The horizontal layout is a nod toward the widescreen monitor trend, but the icons should be about twice that size. I wonder if that's something that eventually we'll be able to hack and change?

[Tim Williamson]

Heh, I wonder why they don't fix some of these things before release...do they just slip through the cracks, or did no testers notice that?

[idawgik]

If you have a password set up on the account, when you click on the smaller icon with multiple users, it brings it up as the single large icon with a spot to enter your password in.

So really, those small icons are just to select the account, and the large icon one is for actually logging in.

[Jon Westfall]

For all the work Redmond put into Vista's new look, one wonders why these are tiny... Maybe it's actually a feature in disguise ;)

[Jason Dunn]

If you have a password set up on the account, when you click on the smaller icon with multiple users, it brings it up as the single large icon with a spot to enter your password in.

Ahhh...very interesting! You're right, I don't have passwords on these accounts, so I didn't see that. I still thing it would be nicer if they were bigger. ;-)

[rlobrecht]

Do corporate types, i.e. machines joined to a domain, get a pretty login screen, too. Or are they stuck with something like the old XP Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to login screen?

[leslietroyer]

Do corporate types, i.e. machines joined to a domain, get a pretty login screen, too. Or are they stuck with something like the old XP Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to login screen?

Yes/No/sortof - It's been a while since I've booted Vista -- so would have to go back and check for sure.

I believe on bootup it displays a logon box that allows you to enter userid&password (but may be the person who last shutdown the system + the new user box). It is the pretty box with pictures (no ctl-alt-del).

In addition you now get back user switching (windows L). Which is something I really missed when switching to domain logons at home. With the screen locked - you get the option of loging back on or "switch user". Taking the switch user path, brings up the logon boxes, and it shows all the users with active sessions on the box, plus one for new logons.

On my system with a 20" normal lcd monitor running at 1600x1200 - the boxes are about 1"x1.5" -- not exactly small, but not as large as the single box Jason showed above.

For me the logon system is 100% improvement. 90% of the time the workstation is locked - I click switch user and pick the icon i've chosen for myself. When I leave the computer, I just do a windows-L and leave. Logon time from a locked system are much much faster than new logons, where it must apply the domain security profiles, and application checks.


Les

[ctmagnus]

Here's something interesting: If you have a single user account with no password, the size of the user icon is much closer to that of the icons when there are two users, than the icon with one user and a password.

[Bob12]

Only one of my computers is password protected. The other two never show a user icon when booting. All three are single user PCs.