Brightrev

My intent in starting this site was to create original content and not merely add to the Blogosphere's endless supply of hot air.  Sometimes I just can't help myself, like when I read quotes like the ones in this USA Today article on why Vista isn't being adopted by businesses.  The point of the article is entirely correct.  Right or wrong, businesses don't want anything to do with Windows Vista.  However, one quote in particular really rubs me the wrong way.

John Dvorak makes a living saying things that rile people up, and his latest missive details 11 reasons why Windows Vista hasn't done well in the market.  Dvorak makes some good points in his Vista's 11 Pillars of Failure, but he also says a lot of things I either disagree with, are non-issues or no longer important, so I'll talk about his points one by one in my response.

Blogger Jeremy Toeman had problems with his Sony Vaio Vista laptop that were so bad that he actually gave up and bought a MacBook.  Ed Bott read about the problems and fixed them.  In short, Ed did a clean Vista install, tracked down missing drivers and disabled some startup items that were causing problems.  In the end, the system was actually stable and fast, which was an enormous change from the way it was shipped from the factory.

The lesson here is not that Vista can be fixed.  The lesson is that Microsoft would be insane to continue allowing PC makers to install crap software, cruddy utilities and junk security suites on Windows PCs.  Vista is a fine operating system, but my experience with it has only been on clean installs.  Most people get Vista in the state that this Sony was in, where the manufacturer loads so much junk on the PC that Vista does in fact appear to suck.  This is why Walt Mossberg panned his Vaio, which lead to a lot of other "Vista sucks" posts in the blogosphere.  Microsoft continues to allow this practice at their own peril.

Popular Mechanics recently gathered a group of consumers to rate and test Macs versus PCs.  In some ways, the results weren't surprising.  Leopard is faster than Vista and the testers expressed a mild preference for the Macs over the PCs.  However, I like both operating systems and there is more to the test than just the results, which I discuss in my article.