The new laptop came with Vista, so once again I’m using Vista… Have I mentioned I despise Vista? There’s just so much of it to hate I’m not sure where to start…
Again, for those who might be unaware, I’m an old fart at this point and actually remember when the computer we all take for granted took its first few baby steps around the home. This gives me a fairly good perspective on the whole thing and Vista is not going in the right direction…
An Operating System (OS) exists to do one thing: Provide a compatibility layer between the user’s hardware and the user’s software. This means if I buy a computer I expect there to be a bit of software on it that will allow me to run the software I desire to run.
Vista does fill this requirement – mostly. Where it fails is that it attempts to do 1.1 million other things and does them all poorly or for evil purposes.
I need vista to basically glue all of my hardware together – make the hard drive usable, read the keyboard and mouse, operate the video card drivers and maybe even the sound card so that I can run the software I desire to run. That’s it. Simple right?
What I don’t need Vista to do is include a bunch of applications I’ll never use, lock me into certain applications like web browser or media player, or play net-nanny for me by making sure I use my data according to Microsoft’s rules (DRM).
Microsoft even decided to ‘lock out’ the hobbyist which has made them the number one OS in the world by requiring a $4-500 certificate to write drivers for Vista.
Basically every decision in Vista was driven by questions such as “if we force users to use our DRM Hollywood will give us more money”, “if we force users to use our browser we can control the web and make more money”, “if we make 7 versions of the OS and make the cheap one all but useless for the same cost as XP, we’ll make more money”, and my personal favorite “let’s charge all of the developers out there to write things for our OS, that will make us more money”.
But, even though Vista is the devil, I’m having to run it… All of the hardware is this laptop isn’t supported by XP and Microsoft won’t add support to XP – forcing me to use this bloatware OS. While I have the technical acumen to eventually get XP to run on this machine, I wonder if the time investment is worth it.
Maybe I’ll just see if I can ‘fix’ Vista by surgically removing the tumors and maybe applying a bit of liposuction to the bloat…