Friday, April 11, 2008

More Windows criticism

It's funny to keep reading more and more people complaining about Microsoft's Windows tactics. This time was again at ComputerWorld:

Windows is 'collapsing.' Gartner analysts warn

They make some interesting observations about adoption of Vista and how little people perceive as being a better operating system. I don't have that much exposure with Vista. At work the deskside people that deal with computer setups told me that Vista just doesn't work very well in an enterprise environment.

I'm not sure I really believe in that, as there are lots of different editions of it, but there are two things that I've learned from it:

1) This person is paid to do this analysis and make a decision on whether to do a complete company flipover to Vista. One of the things that Microsoft claims Vista is much better at is security. Apparently the security improvements that it provides are not that important to offset the cost of flipover.

2) From what I've used Vista, on my future brother in law's computer when I was taking the computer to Brazil, it's really not much different. Yes, you can search on the "start" menu (that doesn't have "start" any more), but this doesn't really impress me. What made me unimpressed is their new organization of expandable folder on the "all programs" list. They wanted to reduce the amount of real-state the the menu took, but apparently just made navigation through it way slower. You can't just hover over menu items and see the sub-menu showing up. You now have to click on it to expand it. Way slower.

3) Talking about screen real-state, having the dashboard items on the background makes it not very useful at all. It just makes background more confusing.

All the rest seems hidden under the trunk for me. So, no I'm not getting Vista any time soon. Maybe I'll wait for Windows 7.

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