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Shut Up About Vista, Already

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Ralf Maximus:
Found this HappyJoyJoy article about Vista on CyberNet, culminating with the suggestion that we should all quit whining about it.

http://cybernetnews.com/2007/11/27/vista-sucks/



You know my opinion of Vista by now, and I'm sure you have one too.  Whether you love Vista or think it's the new WindowsME doesn't matter; everyone has their own expectations and experiences, which is as it should be.  In other words, you are perfectly correct to love or loathe Vista in whatever fashion suits you.

I hold this article up, however, as a piece of propaganda.  Here's the core bit:



Got that?  Because people complained about XP when it came out, that invalidates the complaints about Vista now.  That's a little like getting mugged at the airport, and when it happens again people just roll their eyes and say, "there he goes getting mugged at the airport again; quit whining about it."

Ignoring the fact that even their examples are flawed (Vista's been out for 13+ months; business adoption rates for Vista are tanking; most Bird Flu victims are Vista users) the conclusion is jaw-dropping, especially for a technology web site.  Generally speaking, if customers are complaining, there's something wrong.

Finally, the two linked articles at the end are choice reads also.  One's a link to a happy Vista-using magazine editor who debunks the myth that Vista has slow bootup/shutdown times.  His methodology? He tweaks the test machines to remove functionality, in one case unplugging a USB drive.  See, because the drive had a FAT partition on it, it slowed down the boot.  What?  WHAT? Isn't that kind of normal to have multiple partitions on a drive?  Isn't that a FEATURE?  Good god, what would Vista do if there was a Linux partition on that drive?  Explode?

Oh, and here's another Knowledge Knugget: your browser boots faster if you uninstall the plug-ins.

See?  It's not Vista causing the problem... it's all this crap you people keep installing on it!  Vista'd be just fine if you'd leave it alone.  Leave poor Vista alone, you animals!  *sob*

By stripping down his machine so it boots in 90 seconds he proved anyone bashing Vista is an idiot.  And Vista users: you can even make money by selling those useless USB drives on eBay!

Look... I know Vista's not one of the signs of the Apocalypse.  Microsoft will get its act together and fix things and by this time next year workstations will be faster so we won't notice what a bloated sweaty pig Vista is, and eventually all the teeth gnashing will die down.

Just as it did with XP. 

But dammit, *I* will be the one to decide when I am satisfied, and I reserve the right to cast disdain on products that do not meet my expectations.  Ignoring the problem, drinking the Kool Aid, and giggling over how pretty Vista is will not make things better.

mouser:
I have to admit to having a kind of opposite view of the cybernet defense of vista.

My view is, i don't like vista -- but i hate to see people piling on too much and i don't think it's fair to keep beating a dead horse or jump on the bandwagon..  So i find some real comfort in the cybernet news people standing up for it.  Call me strange but i think it's sweet.

justice:
It will be too easy to reply with another I don't like vista reply, even if it's perfectly correct it will not spawn an interesting discussion. So let me just comment that because of 7 years of the OS (5 years since xp and 2 years of compatibility) not really changing people now have come to expect that whatever they have lying around or bought will work with 'Windows'. Same goes for software really, any app out there was compatible.

However this is not the case anymore but computers are now even more of a commodity then 7 years ago. These two combined results in massive problems for people adapting vista. An uphill struggle really. Microsoft has a fantastic reputation with regards to backwards compatibility, but in this different environment decisions taken in the past are now imperfect for todays hardware / software. So in my opinion they've had the choice between being fast but breaking everything, becoming a slow and bloated compatible  system or creating a new market so the two oses don't compete.

justice:
Wonder what would happen if they'd made two editions: Vista Fast and Vista Compatible. Or installed Vista Fast & an optional compatibility pack. I can see how this requires an insane amount of work seperating all the compatibility code though.

I also disagree about XP being small and fast though. A modern pc shouldn't take much longer to boot up a 5 year old OS than my TV does.

MrCrispy:
People have lower standards nowdays. We expect less from our fellow members in society, our teachers, our government and are willing to accept more and more mediocrity, infringement of our rights, and are not supposed to judge others or have any expectations beyond the minimal because its not politically correct, is discriminatory, whatever.

Why should we expect anything different from our software. I see this trend across all facets of human endeavour - technology in areas such as cars, computing, consumer gadgets, political discourse, philosophy, morals and ethics in society. More and more it seems we are willing to settle for less.

Ok, I'm feeling extremely cynical, had a crappy week at work, can't sleep and am browsing geek msg boards at 2am so I'm not exactly contributing to the betterment of the human race and am probably not making too much sense.

But I truly do believe that a lot of great ideas, by the time they come to fruition, are a pale shadow of what their visionaries intended. Call it pandering to the lowest common denominator,  dumbed down, getting distorted by marketing and management, its all the same.

True excellence is rare and even more rarely recognized and appreciated by the masses and mass media. Its easier to survive by not standing out and taking a risk, whether you are a software corporation trying to appease a customer base of billions of corporate clients who abhor change (like Microsoft has to do with each Windows release) or trying to go through airport security.

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