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29 Reasons to Not Get Vista
29 January 2007 Reason #29: Buyer's Remorse.30 January 2007 is a Tuesday. A Tuesday is a good day to do anything except get a Microsoft product. And if you somehow fall into the trap the odds are better than you'd ever imagine you'll be in tears with buyer's remorse by the end of the week. For everything you've read in this series is true. The warnings are not sensationalistic - if anything they're toned down to not shock you more. Get Vista and you get screwed. And you've no hope of getting your money back. 28 January 2007 Reason #28: All of the above.So far you've seen twenty seven good and concise reasons to not get Vista. But there are countless more to be found at this very website. The proprietors have been in the business of teaching Windows systems programming for over ten years, amassing credits at IBM, British Aerospace, Volvo, LM Ericsson, Lloyds, GE Marconi, SAAB Defence Systems - and of course Microsoft. They know what they're talking about. 27 January 2007 Reason #27: There are far better uses for $400.'I can get a whole PC for $400. From my experience with the Vista betas, they're slow and sluggish and cause too many problems. I'll pass - and will use XP till the cows come home, then switch to something better - Mac or Linux. Even at $150 I won't buy Vista', wrote one blogger online. He's not exactly alone. Eyad Nasser gives a good rundown on the pros and cons from a user perspective. 'I have been monitoring Vista and investigating all of its aspects ever since the early days of Longhorn and I must say I am anything but pleased', writes Nasser. 26 January 2007 Reason #26: It's not Unix.All operating systems in wide use today are Unix. The Internet was built by and for Unix. Over 70% of the web servers on the Internet run Unix (and they're basically impenetrable as opposed to Microsoft's offerings in the field). More and more corporations are moving to Unix and the number's going up all the time: more and more corporations surveyed say they will (finally) make the leap in the near future. More and more the name of the game is 'Unix'. 25 January 2007 Reason #25: It's proprietary.Windows is proprietary in the sense only Microsoft have access to the code. Which might sound like the most reasonable thing in the world as after all they wrote it. But it's not. Proprietary or 'closed' source code is a major reason you suffer today running Windows. 24 January 2007 Reason #24: Vista Content Protection.Dr Peter Gutmann has studied the Vista content protection system in detail - the primary reason Vista has been delayed so many years. He calls it 'the longest suicide note in history'. Vista content protection is going to tear away at your rights and your comfort and leave you at a disadvantage like no system ever before. Dr Gutmann's paper 'A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection' is a bit technical but it's possible to read and absorb. And if you care about your rights you owe it to yourself. 23 January 2007 Reason #23: National Security.No matter what country you live in, count on your government being aware of the dangers in using Microsoft products and plotting an 'escape route' away from them. Everywhere - from the United States to the Far East - governments are taking a serious scary look at what it means for their national security to be using Microsoft products. 22 January 2007 Reason #22: They eat you alive.90% of all Windows computers are infected with an average of 30 (thirty) 'bad programs'. Think about it. Chances are nine out of ten that you have thirty pieces of 'shiteware' on your Windows computer and don't even know it. And good luck trying to find those programs - you can't. For while there are programs to help you ferret them out, at most they will find about 60% of them. 21 January 2007 Reason #21: It's called 'spyware'.It started - so everyone thought - as a means for independent entrepreneurs to better finance their software projects online. Why not make two versions of the same product, one free and one licensed? But who helps finance the free product? Easy: the ad companies. You see they can put 'banner ads' in your application and they pay you for it. If your user wants a version without the banner ads then all that's needed is a registration fee and the ads disappear. Seems a yummy deal. 20 January 2007 Reason #20: We don't want you to.The quality of Microsoft software engineering has long been called into question. Seriously: even McDonalds do a good job at what they set out to do but Microsoft, the kings of mediocre software, can't even do that right. But poor quality turned into something dangerous in the new millennium. Already in May 2000 people everywhere saw the results of relying on such slipshod technology. The ILOVEYOU worm, unleashed by accident into the wild from a technical institute in the Philippines, caused worldwide damage in excess of $5.5 billion. 19 January 2007 Reason #19: Third party vendors.Third party vendors - aka independent software vendors: the people who make software for your platform. The titles you will buy after purchasing your OS. If Microsoft are bad at writing secure software, these people are even worse. Symantec's Greg Ahmad has seen a marked rise in the use of insecure and flawed ActiveX controls for Windows. And when he says marked he really means it. 18 January 2007 Reason #18: It's not cool.Only losers run Windows today. Anyone who knows anything runs something else. Without exception. And it's not just the 'cool factor': using something better than Windows shows you're smart - and if you're trying to attract the opposite sex, smart is on your side. You might be a Linux geek and have a really cool system set up - and let's face it: Linux is cool. You might be running Ubuntu or Kubuntu or you might be a real system DIY geek and have Gentoo. Anything like that. It's an eye catcher. 17 January 2007 Reason #17: The New York Times say so.Meet Rick Wesson and Adam Waters. Rick's CEO and Adam's COO of the data gathering company Support Intelligence. They are part of the fight against the increasingly hopeless situation on the Internet with over 900 million catastrophic - and now criminal - Windows computers. Rick and Adam were interviewed in the New York Times recently. 'We're losing this war badly', says Rick Wesson. 16 January 2007 Reason #16: Scary Movie 4.Anyone who is made to fully understand what's going on inside their Windows computer comes walking away terrified. No exception. Mafia gang wars - inside your own house! Aggressive warrior code from one gang fighting it out with another for supremacy - and 'ownership' of your computer. A common reaction is turning pale and yelping 'that's going on inside my house?' But every Windows user has seen a scary movie sooner or later. It's all too commonplace by now. What are not commonplace are the scary movies narrated by the PC technicians themselves - the Windows repair warriors who are supposed to have seen everything. Their stories are the real shocker. Here's the fourth of many. 15 January 2007 Reason #15: Scary Movie 3.Anyone who is made to fully understand what's going on inside their Windows computer comes walking away terrified. No exception. Mafia gang wars - inside your own house! Aggressive warrior code from one gang fighting it out with another for supremacy - and 'ownership' of your computer. A common reaction is turning pale and yelping 'that's going on inside my house?' But every Windows user has seen a scary movie sooner or later. It's all too commonplace by now. What are not commonplace are the scary movies narrated by the PC technicians themselves - the Windows repair warriors who are supposed to have seen everything. Their stories are the real shocker. Here's the third of many. 14 January 2007 Reason #14: Scary Movie 2.Anyone who is made to fully understand what's going on inside their Windows computer comes walking away terrified. No exception. Mafia gang wars - inside your own house! Aggressive warrior code from one gang fighting it out with another for supremacy - and 'ownership' of your computer. A common reaction is turning pale and yelping 'that's going on inside my house?' But every Windows user has seen a scary movie sooner or later. It's all too commonplace by now. What are not commonplace are the scary movies narrated by the PC technicians themselves - the Windows repair warriors who are supposed to have seen everything. Their stories are the real shocker. Here's the second of many. 13 January 2007 Reason #13: Scary Movie 1.Anyone who is made to fully understand what's going on inside their Windows computer comes walking away terrified. No exception. Mafia gang wars - inside your own house! Aggressive warrior code from one gang fighting it out with another for supremacy - and 'ownership' of your computer. A common reaction is turning pale and yelping 'that's going on inside my house?' But every Windows user has seen a scary movie sooner or later. It's all too commonplace by now. What are not commonplace are the scary movies narrated by the PC technicians themselves - the Windows repair warriors who are supposed to have seen everything. Their stories are the real shocker. Here's the first of many. 12 January 2007 Reason #12: It's a spam machine.Spam - 'unsolicited commercial email' - is the bane of the Internet. It's an annoyance, it's a continual pest, and everyone gets it, right? Right. But what you probably don't realise is that if you're running Windows you're sending it. 90% of all spam today comes from infected Windows computers - not computers in general but just Windows computers. Other computers don't send out spam at all - only Windows. How does this happen? 11 January 2007 Reason #11: It's a 'standalone' system.As Eric Raymond so eloquently pointed out in his study of comparative operating systems, Windows per se isn't really an operating system at all - it was originally called a 'disk operating system' instead. Because all it did was operate disks, not users, processes, or anything else. This of course stands in stark contrast to what were originally called 'operating systems' but today are often referred to as 'server operating systems' to differentiate the quality products from the rubbish. 10 January 2007 Reason #10: The Registry.'You can run but you can't hide': everybody's heard the expression. But when it comes to the Registry it's more like 'you can run and you can hide too - easily'. The Registry is the single most important reason trojans can survive on your computer. And other 'bad' stuff too. You downloaded a shareware program but didn't like it? Too bad - the software probably went and hid something in your Registry. And odds are you'll never find it. If you try downloading the same program again it will probably be for nought. The software remembers where it hid that secret data last time around. 9 January 2007 Reason #9: ActiveX.ActiveX is one of those Microsoft non-standard technologies that not only is clumsy and insecure - it's also a kludge to have around. And it's a direct attempt by Bill Gates to corrupt the openness of the Internet. ActiveX is actually an abortion. It's based on and is a subset of something called 'OLE2'. OLE2 in turn is, unsurprisingly, the 2nd version of something called 'OLE'. 8 January 2007 Reason #8: The MS Office Lock-In.Face it: you live in an Internetted age. There's nothing saying anyone else is using the same computer, the same operating system, the same document formats you do. And yet all too many (one would still be too many) are still using things like the MS Office suite. Those are proprietary formats - and Microsoft love it when you use them. For it means you won't be able to move your documents to another platform. You'll be forced to stay on Windows. 7 January 2007 Reason #7: Product Activation.He's bought his way to a virtual knighthood in London, a doctors hat in Stockholm, and the cover of Time. But he's still the same old snot he's always been, born with a diamond studded platinum spoon stuck in at least one orifice. He's the same person who reputedly stole $40,000 in CPU time from the Harvard computer centre and then turned around and accused his fellow hobbyists of stealing their software. 6 January 2007 Reason #6: It's Annoying.Face it: even though you're the one hurt by Microsoft's hopeless security situation, you will pay for Microsoft's troubles. They surely won't. Instead of gutting what amounts to a nonexistent fundament in Windows and giving you something better they keep selling you the same pig in a poke time after time. 5 January 2007 Reason #5: It's Ugly.There's but one way about it: Windows is ugly and Vista's only uglier. If you see what advancements in UI cool Apple and others have come up with and then look again at that lacklustre Windows interface that hasn't changed in ten years... It's been that long, you see. That's the Windows 95 interface. It was supposed to be released in 1994 instead of 1995, but Microsoft have a penchant for getting a bit behind from time to time. 4 January 2007 Reason #4: It's Dangerous.Microsoft Windows is the most dangerous software product ever made. It's crippled battleships at sea. It's almost killed diplomats in automobiles powered by it. And it's singularly responsible for all the woes and miseries of the Internet today. Without Microsoft you wouldn't have spam to speak of - you couldn't have it. The age old technique of hitting open relays is more and more gone: today you have to infect someone's Windows computer to have a chance. 3 January 2007 Reason #3: It's User-Hostile.A long time ago (but not so long in Bill Gates' haunted memory) Bill Gates decided to steal the Macintosh interface and design and make them his own. There's been a lot of talk about this over the years, and the general consensus seems to be that Bill and Steve Jobs both 'stole' from Xerox PARC. But there's one important distinction: Steve Jobs had permission to enter Xerox PARC, but Bill Gates went behind Steve Jobs' back. If Steve Jobs copied, then Bill Gates stole: he used Mac prototypes he'd been given by Jobs to build Multiplan - but he and his fellow crooks spent more time working on their coming Windows instead. 2 January 2007 Reason #2: It's a Bug Farm.Nobody makes operating systems this big anymore, especially Microsoft. Take any given programming challenge and watch Microsoft botch it worse than anyone else. And any time a new OS is released - especially this one that's been under wraps for five years now and still hasn't been tested - you're going to run into a lot of bugs. Things are worse with Microsoft products because Bill Gates never said he was trying to produce the best software ever - no, Bill Gates has everything but quality on his agenda. He has to worry about the security he'll never have, he has to worry about dodgy agreements with the MPAA and the RIAA, he has to develop all this crazy digital destruction technology that's coming hidden in Vista, and so forth. When is he going to have time to worry about quality? When are they going to test for bugs? New Years Day Reason #1: It's Too Expensive.If you want anything like what Apple users have, you're going to have to pay $400 for Microsoft's 'ultimate' edition of Vista. Otherwise your new OS will look exactly like Windows 98 from nine years ago. And even if you stick with the el cheapo versions, it's still going to be too expensive. And that's not counting the hardware either. For Microsoft's colossally clumsy interface won't work with the minimal hardware Apple need: you'll need to get entirely new hardware to manage things. To get any of the supposed benefits of Vista you'll have to shell out for a completely new computer, beef up the one you already have (if it's even possible) for major chump bucks - and still pay Bill Gates another $400. For that money you could get an Apple or Linux laptop and be a lot better off. |
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