 |
|
|
Strange New Vista
Why Microsoft’s new OS is likely to be a flop
© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
4/28/07
http://www.mytown.ca
The first thing to know about Windows Vista is that it’s very pretty. The colors
and icons are the epitome of corporate good taste, faultless in their artistic
decorum. The OS features an attractive suite of desktop wallpapers, one of which
I’m actually using (a 15 second night exposure of Aurora Borealis over a
Norwegian Fjord). It is eye candy.
But that’s the best thing you can say for it. It has that bit where it takes all
your programs that are on screen or minimized and turns them 45 degrees along an
imaginary perpendicular axis – it provokes oohs and aahs, but the reality is
that it’s perfectly useless. The screens, tilted away like that, are harder to
read than the little two inch screens that appear when you put the mouse over
the menu along the bottom bar of minimalized programs, and don’t do anything if
you click them except return you to the front program or the desktop.
Vista is also extraordinarily slow. I’ve got an antique 450 MHz at home, and it
loads Corel Draw faster than my dual core screamer does. Same with Photoshop,
Word, or any other program of any complexity.
Mind you, the week before, when I detailed the problems I had just getting the
new computer and getting it running, I noted that when I loaded Linux Ubuntu 64
in, it was “blindingly fast” and that when I had to format and install an XP
OEM, the install only took nine minutes, instead of the usual 45. So it’s not
the computer.
The fact is that even with a 5600 MHz clock speed, dual core processors, two
gigs of RAM and a fast SATA drive, Vista turns a machine into a 486.
In my own case, there was a reason for that. I went to Home Premium Vista
because I was told that unlike XP Pro, it could fully use the dual core
technology, and of course, it would be a 64 bit operating system.
Turns out that Hewlett Packard scammed me on that. The operating system on my
computer is a 32 bit version of Vista, and no, it can’t use the dual core the
way it should. They didn’t CLAIM their version of the OS was otherwise: they
just withheld that information and let the consumer sucker himself. It’s the
sort of predatory crap I’ve learned to expect from both Hewlett Packard and
Microsoft.
How did I find this out? I bought a new scanner from Canon, since Hewlett
Packard refused to provide drivers on its version of Vista to support my
perfectly functional six year old Hewlett Packard scanner. The new Canon came
with XP drivers, and while it ran under Vista, the function for scanning
negatives and slides didn’t work. I made a quick visit to their website and
found Vista drivers. I downloaded the drivers for Vista 64, and was told “This
is not a 64-bit version of Vista”. I said “huh?” and went to System in Control
Panel. Sure enough, the bastards had foisted a 32 bit version of Windows off on
me. I quickly went through all the ads and the materials that accompanied the
computer. None mentioned it, one way or the other. At most, they said Windows
Vista was designed to take advantage of the new technology, without mentioning
that this version of Windows wasn’t going to do that, and an expensive upgrade
would be needed in order to do so.
So I shelled out $180 for a scanner because the new version of Windows, which is
essentially identical to the old version except for some really useless bells
and whistles, won’t support the scanner. Despite it being a Vista tailored for
HP, on an HP machine, and an HP scanner. It takes the Canon scanner software to
tell me I got scammed.
Vista has a lot of annoyances aside from being slow. Programs – especially
non-Microsoft programs – don’t run very well. They tend to stall, and lock up.
Granted, I expected that. Some programs wouldn’t run at all, most notably my
version of Agent newsreader. Again, I expected that.
When I boot, I get an advisory telling me that some of my start up programs have
been blocked, and to click here for details. Clicking doesn’t provide details,
and while it’s still fairly easy to find a list of programs in the startup
directory, it doesn’t tell you which ones are blocked, or why. My bit torrents
program is one of them, though. There were rumors that such programs wouldn’t
run on Windows, and in fact they do, but Windows is pissy about it.
Windows has yet to come up with a simple way of transferring files to a CD or
DVD that isn’t a time-consuming and irritating kludge.
Vista is supposed to have the ability to take a flash drive or memory card and
treat it as RAM. You need an access time of less than one millisecond. You also
have to answer the troll’s three questions, it seems, since some flashes work
(half-assedly) while others with identical specs do not. And you really need
extra RAM in order to get Vista moving. There’s something about watching Vista
boot that reminds me of a C5A taking off.
And, as always, there’s the problem that when you have a Microsoft OS, it is
Microsoft, and not you, that controls your computer. “For your own good,” of
course, except that Microsoft’s notion of such “good” seems to center more
around keeping control than around giving you options.
Early reports from the computer community are giving Vista a big thumbs down.
It’s telling that there are reports of copies of Window XP Pro OEM disks selling
for $150 on Ebay. Yes, that’s more than they originally retailed for ($129).
People are looking at Vista, and not liking it, and looking to backtrack.
Several large computer companies, pressured into selling all-Vista lines, are
now backing away and offering computers with XP as an option – at a premium
price, of course.
I have an XP OEM at hand, and also an upgrade copy of XP64, something I didn’t
even know existed until just the other day. I have a gap in my work coming up,
and I intend to nuke my system, get rid of Vista, and reinstall XP Pro. That
will allow me to set up partitions so I can try out other alternatives,
including this XP 64, and revisit Ubuntu. There’s a program (described as NOT an
emulator, although I’m not sure what else it could be) that runs Windows
programs under Ubuntu. The program is called WIND, and the word I get is that
while it is complicated and difficult to install, it runs Windows programs
beautifully, including all the ones that I use most frequently: Corel Draw 12
(but not X3), Word Perfect, Adobe Suite, Photo Impact and the Dreamweaver Suite.
Other programs that I use, such as Mozilla and GIMP, already run quite happily
in Linux’ native mode. (One of the chief sponsors of the WIND project, not
surprisingly, is Corel).
I regard Vista as an annoying failure. It works, but only barely, and reflects
the Microsoft philosophy that it is better to control a captive market than to
serve a free one. So I’ll try out Ubuntu/WIND, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll at
least go back to XP, which for all its flaws did work reasonably well.