RunawayJim.org

So a guy from CNet decided that he knows best and that Microsoft should just abandon Vista and move on.  His reasoning behind it is all the “inexcusable issues” and “features taken from Mac OS X and Linux”.  I wonder if he realizes that many of the features of MacOS X were taken from Unix and Linux windowing systems.  Borrowing concepts and ideas and making them into something your own has long been the way of software and operating systems.

As I posted a while back, I have been using Windows Vista since January.  I reported some issues, but they were in no way the fault of Microsoft or Vista.  The problems I reported were the fault of incompatible memory and HP’s driver for their fingerprint reader (which added a lot of time to system startup).  After the memory was removed and those drivers were removed, I had no issues.  Many of the issues I’ve seen reported were due to driver problems and incompatible hardware and software.  Microsoft did almost everything they could to make sure people were ready for an upgrade to Vista.  They released the Vista Upgrade Advisor that searched your computer’s hardware and software to determine how compatible your computer would be with Vista and inform you of any software to remove prior to upgrading to Vista.  If the customers ignored that and just went for it on an older computer with older software, they might’ve been in for a surprise.  I can’t blame Microsoft for that.

Much of his reasoning sounds to me like personal issues with Microsoft.  It sounds like he just plain doesn’t like Windows and prefers MacOS X.  That’s fine, but offering suggestions to Microsoft when you generally don’t like their products and can’t give concrete reasons why is just silly.  He speaks of the increased cost of Ultimate and how you need it to burn DVD’s.  He’s wrong on that part because Home Premium will do DVD’s.  He ignores the general extra expense of buying an Apple computer, which “just works”.  That could be in part because you can’t run MacOS X on just any hardware.  It has to be hardware from Apple, which doesn’t allow for competition and allows Apple to charge a premium for the same hardware found in just about any computer.  The cost of buying a laptop that comes with Vista Ultimate is still generally less expensive than buying a similarly spec’d Apple laptop.  Apple doesn’t have to worry about drivers.  Microsoft does their best to include what’s known to them in the operating system, but because of the way of hardware, they can’t possibly include it all unless they lock down what their operating system will run on.  That would end competition and be just plain stupid on their part.  As I have said many times, I would love to have a computer with OS X, and I have a computer that could run it, except it wasn’t built by Apple, so I can’t.

He suggests that the UAC is flawed.  The problem he’s having is not Microsoft’s fault, but the fault of software developers who have gotten used to allowing their software to access (read and write to) the system directories rather than stay only within the user profiles.  It’s for this reason that the UAC pops up when running certain pieces of software all the time.  It’s the software developers that need to take a lesson from this and write software the same way they would for a Linux/Unix environment when you can’t access the system directories.

Then there’s this (and I had to quote it because it’s just so ridiculous):

Much talk has been given to Service Pack 1 and how this update should address many of the issues users have with Vista, but I simply don’t agree. Will SP1 eliminate the ridiculous Microsoft licensing schemes? Will SP1 drop the price on the higher-end versions? Will SP1 eliminate the need for users to buy a new computer just to use the faulty OS?

SP1 will do nothing but fix the holes and issues we currently know about and create even more. As we all know from the days of Windows ME and even XP, Microsoft is not the best company at finding and addressing security issues, and chances are, Vista will be no different.

Of course SP1 will not lower the price or eliminate the hardware requirements.  OS X has hardware requirements as well.  I have OS X 10.3 on an old G3 iMac at 433 MHz.  It runs, but most of the pieces of software won’t upgrade (like iTunes, that “just works”, for example) and take forever to load.  The same is true of every version of Windows.  There comes a time when you just need to suck it up, bite the bullet, and buy modern hardware.  If you have legacy applications, run a legacy operating system.  It’s just that.  You can’t expect a company like Microsoft to continue to allow legacy applications running on legacy hardware on their new state-of-the-art operating system.  That’s just ridiculous.  Service Pack 1 may not make Vista 100% perfect, but is OS X or Linux without flaws?  It’s laughable to think that any piece of software is flawless.  What SP1 will do is fix the current known issues.  The fact that some guy, who more likely than not uses MacOS X and Linux predominately, is saying (as if it’s fact) that SP1 will do nothing for Vista is just silly.  He has no idea what it will fix or not fix and won’t know until it’s released.

He uses excuses like the fact that many companies and businesses are slow to adopt Vista as a reason to abandon it.  Name one version of Windows that businesses were quick to switch to.  It doesn’t exist.  Businesses need to have their software tested thoroughly to be sure that they can meet their needs on any major operating system upgrade.  Of course they’re slow to adopt it.  With Vista being that much different, it’ll be slower than most, but the difference is, Vista fixes many of the problems that sat in the other versions and just got passed on from version to version.  It took 5 years to release because it was built from the ground up rather than simply patching holes and adding features to an already bloated system.

You may think I’m just being a “Microsoftie” here, but that’s not the case.  I’ve used all 3 of the operating systems mentioned and they all have their pros and cons.  I use Windows primarily because I work in a Windows environment and have to support it.  It makes my life easier.  Of all the versions of Windows I have used (everything since Windows 3.1 for Workgroups), Vista is definitely my favorite.  You will also find a lot of comments to the blog post linked above that mirror my thoughts and a lot of comments on the following Slashdot discussion doing the same.  The reason for that is because this article is just flamebait.

Microsoft Should Abandon Vista? (Slashdot)