[MVLUG] more vista woes

[Shaun Hadfield]

> 
> And if anybody should know about its problems...
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
> 
This article pretty much proves what I've suspected for quite a long 
time.  All of us in the industry knew it was going to be a nightmare. 
We had the betas, and the RCs, and dealt with the driver issues, and 
program incompatibilities, all before Jan 30, 2007.  I had NO plan as to 
what we were going to do - because there was no plan to be made.  I had 
no anti-virus software  (that I would use at least), anti-spyware only 
worked after clicking the "allow" window, getting the burning software 
installed was a ***** and a half....

We didn't have things straightened out until about March.  Our two early 
adopters (that didn't buy a Dell at least) we're sent out with no 
promises except for a phone call once we finally had everything worked 
out and could set their machines up the *right* way.

You can't tell me that someone in that company wasn't screaming bloody 
murder about the mess they were entering.  Hell, you can't tell me that, 
that person hadn't been screaming for a year to that point.

I can't fix the damn thing.  More than half of the tricks that we used 
to repair a Windows 2000 or XP machine were nullified or eradicated with 
Vista.  And it does nothing for my professional image when the best 
solution I have to most problems is to backup and format.  I try to 
shift blame to Microsoft as much as I can, but you know, that only 
carries you so far.  I'm the expert in this stuff.  As far as my 
customers are concerned, I am Merlin, access to the Windows source code 
and APIs and all (not to mention hardware schematics).  Vista is making 
me look more like the Wizard of Oz.

At least after a year's worth of experimentation I've been able to 
improve the odds.  There's a few things I've learned how to manipulate 
in order to straighten things out.  But it doesn't change the fact that 
the OS has become a black box from hell (yes, *become* - Vista makes XP 
look like an open book).  I'd have to say there was an unprecedented 
amount of cooperation amongst the city's repair shops in Feb. '07 as we 
all called each other trying to find answers.

I only hope that Service Pack 1 can deliver some hope.  Although I've 
heard some promising reports about stability and performance 
improvements, I've yet to see anything speaking to improvements in its 
ability to be repaired.

Short version: Breath not held.

And I also plan to have a healthy stock of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS when it releases.

And I'm about due for another chat with Apple.

And I'm truely dreading June 30.

--Shaun @ MDC
syrrus at epop3.com