I have a really fucked Vista computer. Perhaps I’m not alone. But let’s not talk about why it’s fucked today, let’s go back in time – way back – a few years ago when ”vista” was just pretty view out the car window for the average consumer. Alas, that pretty view has now been replaced by a bloated landscape of hyper secure controls and incompatible drivers. It was supposed to be so pretty, so fresh, so reliable and so secure. Instead Vista has continued the Windows computing tradition – punish the consumer with complexity.
Why has Vista failed to live up to the marketing hype?
- Drivers - incompatible driver problems beset consumers to this day. You think your Vista computer is fucked? What about the poor webcam – discontinued before it’s Vista driver was developed. Forever befudding the eBay purchaser with dashed hopes of a cheap upgrade.
- Hog – not the motorcycle kind, the memory and processor kind. Vista’s one true “vista” – the pretty Aero interface – requires all kinds of fancy video card, memory and processor power. Great for hardware consumption, terrible for upgrade paths. Consumers confused – upgrade? Buy new? Stand pat on XP (many did)? Go Mac (some did – and the rise of multi-PC-lingual households continues).
- Netbooks – ah, the netbook, in Pythonian glory XP’s “not dead yet” – living on for another year (at least) because Vista can’t run on netbooks. And what are those pesky little netbooks anyway? I guess “slow, underpowered, tiny keyboard notebook wannabee” hasn’t the same marketing flare. Linux tried (and oh it tried) to crack the mighty Microsoft monopoly only to run into hords of XP-based netbooks rebirthed from the sludge of Seattle by a Saruman-esque product manager deep in Microsoft.
I’m stuck with Vista to this day – at least on some of my computers (the newer ones… the older ones run quite fine fuck you very much on Windows XP).
For those enamored with “7″ – the number, the Star Trek character or the sins – get ready. Microsoft is aiming to redefine that beloved numeral as well… sometime this year (or perhaps next?). By the way, from my early beta testing on Windows 7 I would sum it up this way: “Windows Vista Service Pack”.
