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Business 2.0 Says 'Boycott Vista'
amyandjake writes "Business 2.0 has a story about Vista's delays, the amount of time wasted by Microsoft bringing Vista to market, and the fact that it doesn't seem to have any compelling features for upgrading. The last paragraph of the story says 'Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one. That's the only way we have to let Microsoft know Vista is an overhyped, late, and pointless update to XP — a perfectly fine operating system.'" Relatedly, torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott is at it again with his seemingly never-ending supply of information about Windows Vista. This time, he discusses the things he dislikes about the program, in the article The Dark Side of Windows Vista RC1."
Is the decree of consent over? In Paul Thurrott's article, aside from the refreshing observation Mr. Thurrott is willing to critique as well as fawn, I find it notable he picks one example where MS has been inconsistent and stupid (I agree) with their navigation ergonomics.
From his article, it's pretty clear MS is shipping a DVD maker, and from just one screen it appears to be a video/other type of application. Is this now considered de rigeur intrinsic Operating System? I know the definition of OS has blurred and been trickier to pin down, and I would expect an OS to have the appropriate drivers to allow burning of a DVD (it is after all, a component of the OS, or at least drivers for a DVD burner are).
If I were ROXIO or NERO, I'd be pissed, this looks like a de facto and direct competitor product, and if it's bundled as "part of the OS", it would seem close to the line of leveraging again.
And later in Thurrott's article he mentions the builtin virus checking -- something previously discussed on slashdot -- this also seems like another market niche MS is conveniently incorporating as part of their OS.... (how about making an OS much less susceptible to this in the first place?).
Is MS free to do this now?
As for boycotting Vista, I wish the world would consider, but it won't. And, I'll have to have some Vista machine and exposure to continue to pretend to support friends and family. Everything I've read about Vista bolsters the view there is not much new worth the upgrade, and there's enough annoying to induce a ferocious case of buyer's remorse.
A perfectly fine operating system.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Vista's extreme support for DRM is my concern. I realize that XP also supports DRM in various ways, but Vista has quite a focus on it, and I'm not inclined to support that. That's what made XP my last Windows purchase. I bought an early Mac mini, and I've been nothing less than delighted with the thing. Feels like my linux machines, only prettier and a lot friendlier. Going to buy another Mac soon.
Apple's pushing DRM in a big way too; but Microsoft dominates the market and that's who I think the message needs to go to. In the meantime, buying MP3, staying away from iTunes AAC media, and supporting anyone who posts actual uncompressed, high-quality audio is the way to go. Vote with your wallet. That is the only thing these companies pay attention to. Every time you buy iTunes or any other proprietary DRM'd solution, you're screwing yourself and everyone else. And not in a fun way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
1. If Vista is pointless, what does it matter if it's "overhyped and late"?
2. Would good does it do to send MS a message that XP is perfectly fine? Is any business going to stop developing new versions of sucessful products just because people liked the old version?
Buh...what?
Look, I'm no Microsoft fan, but that just seems crazy. Better for what?
XP was late and overhyped as well. Many argued that NT4SP6, W2K and W98SE would be enough for anyone. There were numerous predictions that companies and consumers wouldn't upgrade and stick with what they have.
But this didn't happen. XP was adopted, just like Vista will be adopted over time. Trying to stop this inevitable progression is really a complete waste of one's political vigor.
So basically, based upon a superficial, second-hand interaction with the system, you're boosting it.
Maybe you're speaking a bit too soon?
If Microsoft subscribed to more of an Apple model (at least the recent history model), releasing steady improvements at regular intervals, people would be saying "ooh, look, shiny! Oh look, now the fugly is dockable!". Instead Microsoft still has the terrible habit of trying to reinvent, but they're often running to stand still (or more likely running towards the wrong goalpost). So many times they've rewritten something, in the process ruining what they had.
Vista, for instance, has been promised as a complete overhaul of everything. Geez, I remember 6 years ago reading FUD about how we had to start getting ready for WinFS (I can't even remember what they called it then) because it was going to change everything. Same for XAML (geez, is that even around anymore?) and so on. So for half a decade+ Microsoft has been running on fumes.
"... as long as you have a user smart enough to avoid the majority or viruses and spyware XP doesn't crash very often."
Couldn't have said it better myself.
If I didn't have absolutely NOTHING to do, I wouldn't be here.
So exactly what ARE the new features of Vista that are compelling? All I'm reading is that you don't like OSX. The question was not about OS X, it was about Vista.
Just what do you mean by "it's widely credited with being worse than Windows 98?" Show us three credible references where Win98 is shown to be better than XP for any common activity today. Win98 was a nightmare, XP more or less works. Believe me, I'm as much of a Microsoft basher as the next guy, but Dude, don't get all foaming-at-the-mouth on us.
I guess I'm just going to have to keep saying it until it stops:
When it is released and available for purchase, have someone review it like any other product, make one post, and be done with it. We don't need to hear about or debate every single time a developer in the Windows group sneezes or a random blogger decides to write their personal conclusions on a product that isn't even released
Owen Thomas's article is horrid, but if you had yet to read Thurrott's article go read it. He actually makes points, not just observations and tells you to boycott. He puts the blame squarely where it should go. On microsoft's head.
I fear the idea of Windows Mail, a system that makes Outlook Express seem advanced? Sadly the only thing I'm hearing that will cause users to upgrade to vista is DirectX 10 and of course graphics, and I don't see anyone saying they won't support XP in games just yet.
Boycott Vista. Keep your old Windows XP PC around. Don't buy a new one.
That's the key that I think a lot of the other comments are missing. As individuals, we're not nearly as important to the absorbtion rate of Vista as Dell, HP, Gateway and all the other PC manufactures are. People "in the know" about Vista don't seem to be terribly excited about it, at least not as much as previous versions of Windows. Those not in the know will be presented with the opportunity to pay a couple hundred dollars for an upgrade, at minimum, to get no more functionality then thay have, and likely find out that the experience will suck unless they also purchace new hardware. That doesn't seem exciting to me either.
But from the day Vista is released, every small to large scale PC manufacturer will be preinstalling it instead of XP. Just about every new machine purchased will be a Vista purchase. The number of copies of Windows bought off the shelf pales in comparison to pre-installed distribution. So what if we don't go out and buy a retail upgrade?
And that's where the magic of Microsoft kicks in. Even when delivering a half-baked, late-delivered operating system, they'll still be successful. There's little to no chance that someone like Dell will be convinced to not deal with Vista. Bigger operating systems need bigger hardware means more sales means more markups. An individual boycot is not only unlikely, it's completely ineffective.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Let's assume Vista hits the streets in February 2007. After how many months will Dell, etc be required to drop XP and only ship Vista? (My guess 3 - 6 months.) At that point:
About 200 million pcs are sold annually. And 96% (?) of those will have Vista.
Microsoft is not worried about the 1-2 year upgrade holdouts.
I want the latest AND the greatest. And whether people like it or not, when Vista comes out, it will be both.
Vista has nothing to do with 'latest and greatest'. It's the last gasp of the two massive but crumbling monopolies, Microsoft and the entertainment industry, to try and lock down everything you see and hear so they can charge you for it. The future doesn't have these monopolies, content creation is becoming more and more decentralized and their business model is dying and they are well aware of this.
I for one will absolutely be boycotting Vista.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
It must be me, but having 3 flavours of linux running, a Mac G4 and 3 PC's with windows XP, XP-x64 and 2003 I don't understand all the flaming back and forth. I love the Linux for getting me on the internet worry free and letting me experiment with all kinds of stuff, I dig the Mac for feeding my Ipod and driving my KORG WS and I just cherisch my Windows flavours for getting my Canos EOS connected and playing my games, doing my SQL 2005 and putting my ASP based forum up nice and secure. I have dedictated a disc for Vista (RC1 at the moment) and I don't realy see the reason for all the big fuss. Everybody is shouting about monopolies and in the same sentence is pushing there own fav OS. Realy, it CAN work, I have all those PC's working in harmony and I wouldn't want to part with any of them. Whenever I get comments to ditch this or that it reminds me of all those fundamentalists trying to force their religion onto the world. Believe me, they all work, they all are manageble, they all have their down and up sides. You just need to know what you are doing... And that is what REAL system administration is all about. Everything else is just an inabbility to deal with it.
Supporting MS products doesn't mean you have to like them.
You know, I've seen this list dozens of times, and the majority is still complete marketing BS.
First of all, the UI changes, IE7, simple network changes, start menu, explorer changes, new dialogs, USB caching, search, WPF, backup utils, audio changes, and speech recognition are next to useless, and are certainly not worth paying for. Some of thing are even a further step backwards over the old W2k way.
The kernel scheduling, file operations, superfetch, DX10, driver changes, and driver API improvements should just have been there already. They are not worth paying for. They are definitely not worth a new OS. These things fix things that Microsoft should have been fixing in service packs.
This leaves the new TCP/IP stack, desktop compositing, and DPI independence (part of the composition engine anyway), and some new security model improvements. Considering how broken people have been saying UAC is, this *really* is leaving the network stack and the composition engine.
As far as the speed recognition FUD, yeah, it might work. It's much more likely that it just doesn't work well enough to be useful. You can't use it while on the phone, or having a conversation. You won't use it in a busy office. It's just a gimmick.
If you want to hype improvements, they *REALLY* need to be both useful and novel. Many of the things on that list we've had for years on other platforms. Many are only niche useful, or not useful at all. Most of the rest of fixes for poorly implemented MS functionality.
XP is a perfectly fine operating system. I haven't had any of my boxes crash...
Statements like this really do suggest the negative effect that Microsoft has had on computing. Users now are "perfectly" satisfied if their OS doesn't routinely crash. What should be a basic assumption has become a lauded feat.
My linux and mac installs don't crash either. Nor do they have a spyware virus problem (or even need for software to prevent such). But that's just what they do to not suck. From usable CLI to functional least-rights users to better software (no Quicksilver, Textmate or iLife for PC) and on ad infinitum, they also do a tons of things that MS just can't offer.
If you're happy with the "accomplishment" of not crashing, good for you. I've experienced more and I've come to expect more.
~p
I, for one, don't care if Hollywood movies stop being made. It's not as if they're capable of making anything good with those billion-doller budgets anyway!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz