The Horror of Vista

Phil Greenspun relates a horrific tale of software gone awry, which underlines how perfectly awful the Vista out-of-box experience can be for some unfortunate souls. It's not unlike having the transmission fall out just after you drive your brand new car off the lot. Yes, apparently it can be that bad.

No wonder people are sticking with Windows XP, or switching to Macs. Those who switch to Macs, like entrepreneur Mark Cuban, often become fanboys. In some cases, whole families switch to Macs — permanently. A priceless quote:

Adapting to life on a Mac was effortless, and delivered a much easier, better and more intuitive computing experience for everything I needed and wanted to do than any of the Windows-based PCs that littered the previous two decades.

Nowadays, I often wonder why anyone would even consider buying a Windows PC.

Uh-oh

In earlier posts, I had written about the problems some people have experienced with Windows Vista, shortly after it became widely available, more than six months ago. A lot of folks discovered that their hardware became unusable after upgrading to Microsoft's latest and greatest OS. Have things changed much since then? Apparently not. Chris Pirillo writes:

From the beginning, Vista has had issues. In many instances, we’re not talking minor problems. Driver incompatibility, hardware incompatibility, software not running, programs or the computer itself randomly crashing… all just the tip of the iceberg. For many people, the software incompatibility issue was a nightmare. They installed Vista, only to find a very long list of programs that simply would not work.

Still thinking of upgrading to Vista? Think again. Since when has an upgrade allowed you to do less with your computer than before? The Baltimore Sun's David Zeiler sums it up well:

Earlier this year some PC manufacturers, most notably Dell, started offering XP as an option on many of its new PCs, also because of customer demand. That so many people would prefer a six-year-old operating system over Microsoft’s latest and greatest speaks volumes about how badly the folks at Redmond botched Vista.

The 'Wow' continues — as in, wow, six months later, Vista still sucks.