29 Reasons to Not Get Vista

Microsoft Windows Vista hits (assaults) consumers on 30 January 2007. Starting with New Years Day that gives you twenty nine days to think about the big mistake you're about to make.

Every day of January 2007 until Microsoft Windows Vista is released you can read yet another good reason why it's not a good idea to get it.

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.

It's bad enough I had to revisit a laboratory PC I rescued (running XP SP2) because WGA popped up and went crazy with the nags (found the easy temp solution using Russinovich's Autoruns). Then the shitload of patches from this past Tuesday (of course I never really got around to fully patching this box after wrestling with it for 4 hours in removing the malware). Office XP still needs a patch job with SP3 and the original CD is nowhere to be found.

Now Billy Boy wants to play the ultimate nanny on top of all of the bullshit we have discussed ad nauseam between hidden recovery partitions, the registry, WGA, etc, etc.

If I want to run Windows it had better be in a sandboxed environment. I can't trust myself to run as an admin full time on an ancient OS that still uses the same single user setup from the previous geological period. And now Redmond wants to take that away.

Change a component that could redefine your 'computer'? You may end up having to shell out for another full Windows licence after having upgraded your motherboard. The ramifications are staggering.

And I haven't even brought up WGA on steroids, LiveCare, or the other 'features' that were scrapped in the past to make Vista essentially XP SP3.

The bottom line? M$ wants you shelling out for the ultimate edition.

Hang on to XP? We all know what is going to happen down the road. M$ will pull the plug, everyone and his brother will be forced onto Vista with their shiny new PCs, and support is going to be a nightmare.