"David Dickinson" <eveningstar@die-spammer-die.mvps.org> wrote:
[color=blue]
> I gotta tell ya', I've made a lot of money from using and supporting
> Microsoft products over the last 28 years. But now, I'm afraid.
>
> The Vista user interface has many, many counter-intuitive features,
> including some that through creating confusion will cause disasters,
> including loss of data. In fact, Explorer windows may show inaccurate
> information. Vista doesn't play well with other machines on a network.
> Administering it can be tedious and time-consuming when compared to previous
> OS's. A lot of stuff either doesn't work the way you expect or just doesn't
> work at all. It's been dumbed down in some areas so much that
> administrators can't do some things they need to do (such as customized
> backups), while some other "features" have been made so complicated that the
> average user is going to have to ask for help where none was needed before.
> And while it certainly does have a pretty interface, it's a hardware hog
> with lousy performance even in the most stripped-down configuration. People
> can buy tremendous hardware thinking that they're going to get the machine
> of their dreams, only to find out that it's slower than molasses in January
> (for instance, will DX10 destroy DirectX's place in the market?).
>
> And it's buggy, and has been hacked on live TV (with promises from eEye of
> more to come).
>
> Nevertheless, I'm going to have to support Vista. But my clients will be
> calling more about computer problems than about finding solutions for their
> business operations. And they'll be unhappy about it.
>
> I realize that hardware vendors eventually will come up with truly
> Vista-compatible drivers, third-parties will offer software to overcome many
> of Vista's user-interface and configurability weaknesses, and eventually
> Microsoft will issue hotfixes and service packs to fix the bugs and security
> holes. And I have no doubt that near-future hardware advances eventually
> will make up for some of Vista's performance problems.
>
> But I'm convinced that the next couple of years are not going to be fun, and
> I even wonder if we'll be using Vista's Explorer UI at all by then.
>
> I just hope I never resort to saying "Look, don't blame me. I didn't write
> this thing." I'll probably be better off if I recommend to my clients that
> they avoid getting Vista for a couple of years.[/color]

good assessment.

yes, people "in the know" are simply switching over to the Mac.

i think a lot of people thought Microsoft would really put some effort
into Vista, but they decided not to.

apple now has the best operating system and everyone knows it. they also
make the cheapest high end hardware, so it's an easy choice now that
Macs can run windows (if needed) with no speed penalty.

the Microsoft era is basically over.

[url]http://www.apple.com/hardware[/url]
[url]http://www.apple.com/software[/url]

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