More Vista notes

My last blog on Vista was judged "TG’s usual anti Vista rant and a couple of wild links to disappointed mugs" by one of our colleagues. So I decided to look a little deeper at the links about Vista that I provided. Holy cow, it’s worse than I thought.

Prelude

I started writing this the day after my last Vista blog. It was only supposed to be a couple links but (you know me) I blew it up into a lot more. I’ll apologize in advance here if it’s a little disjointed, I just want to get this out of my drafts bin and move on to material that may be more interesting.

We continue now with our regularly scheduled program…

I don’t have a personal beef with Vista. What confounds me is when something like Vista is so bad according to so many people, while others continue to defend it so strongly. I’d maintain that like many tools, the people who support Vista really aren’t using it much as an "operating system" but more simply to run whatever applications happen to be available. In other words, if you don’t ask for your XP-capable applications to run in Vista, then you won’t be one of the millions complaining about how Vista can’t run common non-Microsoft applications. If you don’t use anything but stock hardware that you bought with the box then you probably won’t complain about lack of off-the shelf hardware that actually works properly.

Anyway – Let’s take a look at the links I provided in my last blog on this topic about Vista and see what we find.

OK, Google search for "vista hell": 4.7 Million hits – they pretty much all say the same thing.

A search for "vista worst" yields 2.6 Million hits, including the following interesting tidbits:

• CNET rates Microsoft Vista – “Worst Tech Product of 2007".
• A Computerworld (ITWorld, IDG) article for "Ten fixes for Vista’s worst features."
• Here is another article from Computerworld (syndicated to other websites called "How to fix Windows Vista’s worst shortcomings"
• Acer (#4 worldwide computer manufacturer) calls Vista inadequate. That article and this one discuss legal actions about artificial price hikes and disingenuine compatibility claims.
• Probably related: This is about a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft for many things related to Vista. Here are more details on that – a very interesting read. In short, Microsoft allowed unqualified hardware to be marked as "certified", which caused a lot of people to buy hardware with Vista when people knew it wasn’t going to work. This is a follow-up to that, it’s a real courtroom drama…
• Intel had to lean on Microsoft to modify DirectX in Vista to allow it to work with standard hardware. (Just look at the URL for that link)
• Another article describes how Microsoft knew Vista wasn’t ready but went ahead with it anyway.
• This article describes how and why a Texas state senator is trying to ban Vista from use in state agencies – the legislation including the rider (special note) passed 26-5. (The pro/con Vista commentary following the article is typical and amusing.)

To be fair, I confess a couple of those above might be related to the same lawsuits … so many, can’t tell.

Here’s another gem from Networkworld with the results of survey where out of over 1100 respondants, 84 percent said they were not going to move to Windows 7, in part due to the disaster with Vista.

All I wanted to do here was provide this quote…

That came from the Microsoft website. They originally had it on the Windows 7 home page, but then removed it.

As an aside, as I was looking for it I found the same text on this page where someone apparently stole the Microsoft text and used it for their own product. That page itself is merely the Google saved image since the site owner seems to have taken down that text.

Here is similar text from another Microsoft PDF page…. (If that doesn’t work for you, try this HTML version.)

Anyway, the point from the above is that Microsoft acknowledges how horrible Vista has been, they’ve heard it since the initial release, and they’ve issued a replacement. So I wish people would stop trying to defend the platform as though the developer or the user community have ever really liked it.

And that’s about all I have to say about that

Doing my best Forest Gump there… Actually I am sincerely looking forward to Windows 7, or whatever the next truly best platform is. Heck XP is getting old and it’s just time for something new. But Vista was a disaster and everyone is hoping Microsoft doesn’t repeat it. I’m looking forward to something better than XP, but I’m not too anxious either. I’m glad I skipped Vista and I can wait a while longer for Windows 7.

For any of my colleagues who want to put DBMS products on Vista until Windows 7 is ready, or because they don’t want to tell their clients to use Windows Server 2008, I’ll remind you that Vista is defined as a workstation platform, even the Ultimate edition. Microsoft doesn’t use the term Server in association with Vista. If you have problems running server software over a workstation, don’t put all the blame on the software authors or the platform, only some of the blame. First, blame yourself for forcing the system to do what the authors say it shouldn’t be doing. And the next time one of your clients does something that you told them not to, try not to be so quick to say “I told ya so”.