Vista = bad view

The reviews keep coming in on the new flagship Microsoft OS, Vista, and they are far from glowing. The link in the title refers to an article by Andy Rathbone author or innumerable computer books titled (fill in the blank) for Dummies.

His evaluation of Vista is pretty clear in the following quote:

For more than a year, I poked and prodded my way through hundreds of Windows Vista menus and dialog boxes. But after I finished writing “Windows Vista For Dummies” and “Upgrading and Fixing PCs For Dummies,” I turned off my Vista PC. On the rare occasion I fire it up to double-check a few settings, Vista constantly reminds me why I’ve never installed it on my main PC. Let me count just a few of the ways:

Myself, I kinda lost interest in Vista when it sneered at the amount of memory I had installed and refused to even give me a glimpse. When I move on from XP, it will more likely be to Linux or a BSD flavor than what appears to be an OS that redefines the whole meaning of "bloated."

Mr. Rathbone explains a lot of the problem with the following:

Lack of drivers. Vista still lacks drivers for lots of hardware, perhaps because of a lack of Vista enthusiasm among vendors. To be fair, Windows XP also suffered a dearth of drivers after its release. But you could usually download a Windows 2000 driver that worked just as well in XP. Vista lacks that safety net, leaving loads of equipment bound for the landfills as Vista owners replace equipment that worked fine with Windows XP.

Forced software upgrades. During the tech boom, people felt obligated to upgrade their software with each new version. Nobody wanted to be left behind on the tech curve. Today, people realize they can crop a photo just as easily with last year’s version of Paint Shop Pro as the latest version. Unfortunately, Vista sucker punches its owners into buying Vista versions of their software because hundreds of Windows XP software packages won’t run under Vista.

Joe Lee, over at the Democrat (Where Tate County Meets the World) adds his observations, such as:

If you are considering getting the Vista computer operating system, DON'T. At least don't get it for a year or two. Nothing works correctly with it. Nothing, that is, except Bill Gates' own stuff and a few vendors he apparently made deals with.

He even suggests a reasonable explanation for the mess,

The problem is that Gates is so paranoid about someone figuring out the blue smoke and mirrors upon which his fortune is built, that he will not share enough program information with other software operators to allow them to do their jobs.

In my experience the majority of the problems people, me at least, have with Windows has always been getting around the various "security for Bill's wallet" features of Windows to do normal stuff like clear out a virus infestation or do a re-install. I guess you don't get to be the richest guy on the planet by accident.

  But it could all be good news for Apple and the Mac since as Joe points out:

Mac has been at a disadvantage all these years because so many more programs would run on PC. Vista has eradicated that advantage for at least a year or so. Outside of the limited Microsoft monopoly stable, we have not found a single program we use that works properly on Vista.