Windows Vista: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
With all the media attention on Vista and it’s virtues and flaws, I’ve found that there there are a lot of details that seem to have been neglected, or under emphasized.
The majority of the Media attention seems to be on two major things: The annoying built in security “allow or deny”, and how some products from competing companies won’t work with windows off the bat.
However the media seems to forget some basic facts that lead to one of these flaws, and seem to ignore a lot of the more important, more sinister flaws that some of my well-researched friends have pointed out to me.
Yes, it’s true that IPods didn’t work for Windows, and that most other MP3 players did quickly, and that most games for this “platform for gamers” don’t run well on it, nor do many pieces of enterprise software.
This isn’t a problem with Windows Vista. It’s just a temporary, near inevitable, set of circumstances that is a temporary problem with using Windows Vista. Yes, it seems like the same thing, but there is a subtle difference.
When an OS first comes out, software manufacturers have to learn the new OS environment, figure it out, and then customize any software they want to run on that version of windows. This takes some time. It’s not that windows doesn’t work with the software, but that windows is a new OS with much of it’s old code removed, and replaced by (hopefully) better code, and because of this the OS behaves in different ways. The problem isn’t that Vista can’t use the software yet, but that the software hasn’t yet been updated to use the services provided by the new OS.
And if there is a company in competition with Microsoft that wants to make them look bad, and they see that the public thinks a problem is Microsoft’s fault… who else would be more inclined to delay drivers and other software updates necessary for interacting with Windows Vista?
I have yet to read the full license in Vista, but I have a network of friends who, like me, tend to do a fair amount of research when the urge to find out about a subject looms upon them. One of these, Tobi, tells me that the Vista license leaves you open to having to buy two copies of the windows license for a two processor machine. The policy also states that even if you buy the software out of the box (rather than OEM), that even if you uninstall your copy of Vista from one computer, you can’t install it on another. While this might not sound so bad for people who won’t ever want to do so, this includes anyone who upgrades their computers over time, instead of just trashing them and buying a new one complete with OS. Once your processor, and motherboard (and maybe a few other components) are changed out, Micro$oft counts it as a completely new computer. At least as my friend Tobi informs me.