Just when you thought it was safe to convert to Windows Vista, Microsoft changes its mind, again. This soap opera is getting to be a little old.
In early October, Microsoft admitted that it didn't discontinue XP in June after all, and would continue selling via system builders through January 2009. This is accomplished via "downgrade" rights: Dell, for example, will sell you a system with Windows XP Professional installed, but it also includes the latest version of Vista.
Meanwhile, you can still buy boxed XP at Amazon, among other places. The June deadline in itself was an extension, and there's some suggestion that, for corporate customers at least, Microsoft may extend the extension of the extension.
Looking a little further down the line, Microsoft may make Vista irrelevant with the release of Windows 7, which could come as early as 2010. Does anyone seriously expect MIS departments to invest in conversion costs and new hardware, a Vista requirement, in the middle of a recession?
As I wrote a while back, Vista is slower and less compatible than XP, but it does cost more. There are some security improvements, but that doesn't matter to the corporate crowd, which deals with security institutionally. Home users should care, but all most notice the more annoying pop-up warnings and that it doesn't always work with their favorite peripherals.
I'm starting to feel sorry for Microsoft. If it were a person, we'd stage an intervention. At every turn, it seems the world's biggest software company shoots itself in the foot. Does anyone even remember the whole point of Vista? Vista incorporated soup-to-nuts digital rights management, including hardware requirements.
Alarmed by Apple's success with iTunes and the iPod, Microsoft decided to try to move in the home entertainment market. Vista would do everything, play your music, tune your TV, record high-def movies - you name it. Vista also would stream this big digital goulash into any room of the house via media extenders.
How many people do you know who use xVista as a home entertainment center? It all sort of worked, but Vista was so late in arriving, the cable and satellite industries built their own proprietary entertainment computers, aka set-top boxes, complete with hard drives, peripherals, networking and - boy that must hurt - usually some version of Linux as the operating system. Apple still rules the roost in music. Meanwhile, Microsoft's critics argue that DRM lies at the root of Vista's inefficiencies and instability when filling its traditional roles.
Then there's the lawsuit. Microsoft blew the deadline for getting Vista into the hands of system builders in time for Christmas 2006, while at the same announcing it would be available January 2007. Rather than sacrifice holiday sales, Microsoft began touting PCs as "ready for Vista." So you'd buy now and upgrade for free in the New Year.
Well, some PCs were ready and some only ran the most feeble version of the software, and along came the lawyers. Adding insult to injury, discovery motions in the case turned up memos from Microsoft indicating the company lowballed hardware requirements to help Intel sell more product and that its own executives were confused by the hardware it needed to run.
Next came the service pack fiasco. Corporate buyers like to wait for the first service pack release of a new operating system, the service pack being the final cleanup of bugs. Not to worry, said Microsoft, Vista was so great that it wouldn't need a major service pack update. Oops, Vista was so sufficiently problematic that Microsoft was eventually forced to release a service pack in February 2008 to fix the problem. More ice please: The new SP slowed down Vista; the concurrent release for XP sped it up. Corporate buyers have stayed away in droves.
Even more bad awaits. Microsoft, arguing against expansion of the class-action lawsuit, says it doesn't know who was misled by its ad campaign - clearly, a lot of hardware did work fine with Vista. No problem say the opposing lawyers, just use Windows update to automatically notify all owners of Vista that they may be eligible for damages.
I don't know what to say anymore about Vista. Its growing pains aren't necessarily any worse than earlier Microsoft releases, and I go all the way back to MS-DOS days. All have broken legacy hardware and software, and have typically run slower than their predecessors. You can look at this one of two ways: Has it always been this bad, and was Microsoft able to stomp dissenters? Or has the Internet, in full flower when Vista arrived, merely given everyone a megaphone to complain about it?
Still, if you're happy with your PC, it may just pay to wait for Windows 7. That or interview the Mac guy.
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