Vista: unloved and unwanted
September 10th 2008 11:17
Google software engineer Ben Goodger introduces Chrome. (Photo: AP)
Is Windows Vista the most undesirable software offering ever?
I was speaking to a friend today, a businessman who was standing in his office impatiently watching a technician load a Vista services pack onto his new notebook. The notebook was new because his old one had died and gone to notebook heaven, taking Windows XP with it. The services pack was needed because Vista had been locking up, necessitating a reboot each time, a known Vista problem.
My friend tried hard to find a new notebook with XP on it. Until a few months ago, buyers had an option - XP or the much-hyped new operating system - and it has been widely reported that XP remained the OS of consumer choice (see here).
In the sort of decision we have come to associate with Microsoft, the company then removed the option. RIP XP. You will now use Vista or you return to a typewriter and an abacus.
"Hang on, " I said to my friend, "I have a copy of XP. It is a 2002 version, but it's a legal one." "Thanks, but no good," he said. "The computers you buy today will only run Vista. There are no XP drivers. It will not run XP."
It will not run XP. You have no choice. Big Vista is catching you.
It is a long time since I heard anything nice said about Microsoft. Vista users, when they are not rebooting, are struggling to learn the myriad changes to the way XP operated. Microsoft does the same thing with software upgrades - new versions of Word and Excel change many keyboard short cuts, among other things. It is infuriating.
Microsoft was already a brand on the nose when it introduced the "is this a legitimate copy of Windows" check. This ploy - holding consumers to ransom for the offences of software pirates - turned the stink into a stench. The check was introduced to people's computers as a Microsoft "update". It is possible to monitor and chose what updates you do and don't allow on your computer, but of course the vast majority of people don't bother.
The arrogance of sneaking this "update" onto our computers was exceeded some time later when Microsoft decided to replace the "This is not a legitimate copy of Windows" warning on non-compliant machines with the far more drastic action of locking those computers so that Windows would no longer operate.
This caused such a furore that Microsoft relented and reversed the decision, perhaps partly due to another furore over the fact that the check wasn't working properly. In yet another Microsoft software malfunction, many people with legal copies of Windows were being accused by their own computers of having illegal copies. I was one of them.
Meanwhile, Google has released Chrome, a web browser which was downloaded by an astonishing 1 per cent of all internet users on the planet on the first day of its release last week. Apart from a hiccough with the Chrome user's agreement, one section of which appeared to give Google the right to record everything the user did in Chrome (the offending section was subsequently revised), Google seems to do little wrong.
Compare the popularity of Google Earth and Gmail and other free and innovative offerings with anything Microsoft has had to offer lately. Innovation seems thin on the ground, and while there is no shortage of free offerings, they are all fixes to things like Vista.
It is thought that Google's long-term plans are to add word processing, spreadsheet and other capabilities to Chrome. Fold in Gmail and you have a web browser which is in effect a complete operating system.
RIP Microsoft.
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