April 23, 2007
Causes for optimism: Vista failure watch
Windows Vista is failing. Pretty rapidly, from all accounts. I'll save time by posting a single news story that discusses two remarkable events that have happened in the past week:
1) Dell reintroduces XP on new PCs.
2) Microsoft offers XP "Starter Edition" and Office 2007 to the third-world for $3.
Basically, they're so desperate to get people to use their software that they're willing to drop the price 99.5%. If people actually wanted to use it, they might not be that desperate.
I think sometime in the past few years we reached the point where new versions of an OS will no longer be sold as independent products. OSS has been operating this way for years. Wiping your drive to install a new version is a damn silly way to run an operating system. People are basically satisfied with XP, and a lot of the "features" offered by Vista actually curtail users' ability to use their systems in the ways they want to use them.
I can't for the life of me think of a reason to drop $300 on software that takes things away from me.
"Failure" is a funny word to use for something that has a guaranteed certainty of being on everyone's desktop in 3-4 years.
Posted by: rich at April 23, 2007 06:20 PMcrap. just bought a new computer w/ vista. i didn't know anything about it. does this mean my computer sucks? if so, imma be pissed!
Posted by: daniel at April 24, 2007 11:19 AM