More raves for Vista


This time from Jim Louderback, the newly departed editor of PC Magazine, who uses his farewell column to do something I suppose he has wanted to do for ages — tell the truth about Vista. “Why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn’t work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.” See here.

Then there’s this: “I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won’t bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain’t cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system.”

Really? You think? Translation: Now that I’m no longer working at PC Mag, I can finally tell you the truth. Vista blows. Vista is a boat anchor. Vista paid my salary for the past few years, but now that I’m no longer sucking on the Redmond teat I’m going to play hero and tell you what I didn’t dare tell you before.

Okay. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m cynical. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that Jim’s epiphany about Vista is only occurring right now. What’s that? You don’t believe it? Yeah, me neither.

You know, the courage of the Fourth Estate never ceases to amaze me. Have you ever seen a group of people so convinced of their own moral righteousness, and so absolutely full of shit? Okay, maybe medical doctors. But right after that comes the press. Such proud defenders of truth, justice and the American way! Putting their lives at risk to bring us the truth. What would our society do without them?

But I digress. We were talking about Vista. Beastmaster, Monkey Boy, throw in the towel. Vista is a disaster. By refusing to admit it, you’re just making it worse. You look clueless, out of touch. You look like IBM during those years when they kept insisting the whole world really was going to move to OS/2 long after everyone knew it wasn’t going to happen. Remember those days? Remember IBM putting out press releases talking about OS/2’s fantastic momentum? Remember how you guys at Microsoft used to laugh at IBM? I’d tell you to go look in the mirror, but we all know you don’t throw a reflection. But trust me. The ghost of Jim Cannavino is roaming the halls in Redmond.

My favorite part of the Louderback piece is where Handsome Jim ends on what I hope is an ironic note: “If Microsoft can’t get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux.”

Of course! Linux, the obvious choice! Because those Linux guys have really got the driver issue worked out. I’d offer to send you a new 24-inch iMac but you probably wouldn’t like its rock-solid Unix foundation and its best-in-class user interface and its full complement of drivers. Nowhere near as nice as that brown Ubuntu desktop preloaded on a Dell. Good luck with that.