I need a reality check…
Just how bad is Vista? Its bad enough that there is a groundswell of people clamoring for Micro$oft to continue selling and supporting it. (link via Insty)
[Try to be objective Sinner…]
XP is an awful product. It crashes, it has security holes that entire armies could march through, its ridiculously slow and bloated. An objective person would be happy to be rid of such a pig. Yet XP is now considered the “Gold Standard” of stable and friendly operating systems. Why?
Because Vista blows so hard it makes XP look good!
Recently I have even heard IT folks say that they wouldn’t install any XP version prior to SP1 because it would be just begging to be hacked. One even told me that they wouldn’t install pre-SP1 even long enough to get the SP2 download. Gold Standard indeed.
Anyone working with Micro$oft products 5 years ago remembers vividly the debacle of the XP rollout. I stuck with Windows 2000 for at least 2 years after XP (SP2), which is just as insane as sticking with XP today. In fact I can remember waxing poetic about the salad days of Win2K and its stability… [Wile E. Coyote head shake]
XP has been forced into marketplace dominance by dirty tricks and strongarm tactics (Bill Gates: “I didn’t get rich writing a lot of checks!”). Basically, if you bought a computer in the last 5/6 years, congratulations on your purchase of Windows XP! Oh, you are planning on running Linux on this machine? Congratulations on your purchase of Windows XP!
These same tactics are being deployed on behalf of Vista.
If we, the computer using public, continue to follow Micro$oft’s transparent profit-driven upgrade “policy”, we will be having this same discussion in a few years with people begging Micro$oft to continue selling and supporting Vista.
Let that sink in a bit… “Begging Micro$oft to continue selling and supporting VISTA” …
GOOD GOD!
Now is the time for us to stand up and proclaim “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”
Today’s best non-Micro$oft option is Macintosh. I love my Mac and I would recommend anyone that is in the market for a new computer go with teh Mac instead of the evil empire. There is no qualifying statement there (unusual for me). Everyone that is in the market for a new system should at least consider a Mac. You may reject it on cost grounds, but at least have a look and consider it.
I would love to be able to say Linux could step up and be the solution, but it’s not there yet and frankly may never be. Linux is bewildering to the n00b and that’s the way most Linux backers like it. “I would demand my money back” is a pretty good line, but not helpful if the platform is to have any part taking down the mightily Micro$oft machine. One distribution of Linux is getting close to being ready for prime time (IMHO) and that is LinSpire (and its free sibling FreeSpire). In fact, Sears is selling a “plenty of computer for most users” system with LinSpire installed for $199 ($299 less $100 rebate). Add a nice 19″ widescreen monitor for a complete system under $350 ($450 for me since I never get rebates [spit]).
I’m running a system at home on FreeSpire and it is just grand. I bought a new Quad-Core system as my main desktop (yes it is Vista [spit]) and installed FreeSpire on the 5 year old clunker for use as a server. Setup was easy and quick and the old system runs noticeably faster then with XP. The CNR service (Click-N-Run) is just fantastic. I have yet to reboot it in about 3 months and it happily chugs along hosting my printers (the printers that Vista does NOT support), slow media (for backups) and my SVN repository.
I have been meaning to write up a review of my FreeSpire experience, I will do so soon. FreeSpire is really close to being a viable alternative for Micro$oft refugees, I hope they will continue working toward that goal.
Great post! The fact that Microsoft is ditching XP for such a monstrosity speaks volumes. But XP is monstrous in its own way. The company doesn’t seem to be at all about quality. The only reason people are supporting XP is that it’s all they know. Or at least, it’s all they comfortably know. If Linux were shipped, as a standard, on nearly all new computers, we’d be singing a different song. I’ve never tried a Mac, but would love to someday. They’re supposed to be excellent for media creation. You’ve got me curious about Linspire now too. It seems like Ubuntu is pretty comfortable to those I’ve coaxed away from Windows.
It is lacking, though, in support for programs written for Windows. Which is good and bad.
Comment by Chell — April 15, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
Read some of today’s modern sins and confess your own, anonymously at http://iconfessmyself.blogspot.com
Comment by anon — April 15, 2008 @ 1:10 pm
Chell, LinSpire is based on the Ubuntu core.
Best distro IMHO.
Comment by Sinner — April 15, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Sinner,
Windows has always run better for me when encapsulated in a VM - I find WinXP to be significantly more stable, largely, I suspect, because the VM presents old, stable “hardware” devices, which use the least-buggy windows drivers.
WinXP also runs faster on a VM hosted by Linux - everything but games!
Linux does a better job of caching disk, paging, and the IP stack is about 10x faster than WinXP’s stack. Windows in a VM benefits from all these.
Seems counter-intuitive, but I’ve years of benchmarking that shows that MS products blow, and are steadily getting worse with each generation.
Large
Comment by Largenfirm — April 19, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
I use Ubuntu, but prefer OpenSuSE.
Of course, I’ve been using UNIX and its derivatives for 30 years. Started on Version 6 in 1979, running on a PDP-11 with 36K of core.
Bit of a shock for one of the young programmers I’ve been working with when this came up at lunch on Thursday - he’s only 29!
“I’ve got code older than you!”
Snort! He’d never seen paper tape, nor 8″ floppies, and punch cards were the stuff of legends.
n00b. Srsly.
Large
Comment by Largenfirm — April 19, 2008 @ 11:50 pm
Well a quote from The Moose does seem apropos: “The first time microsoft releases a product that doesn’t suck, it’ll be a vacuum cleaner”
Comment by cathyf — April 21, 2008 @ 8:47 am