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The story of the Windows Vista Operating System has not been a happy one, to say the very least and has in many ways, “damaged” Microsoft and its reputation. To be fair Microsoft may well have been far too slow in seeing the problem that was forming under their feet during the development of Vista, but they weren’t deliberately malicious in releasing Vista, just unwise.

But from these events it seems that lessons have been learned and perhaps Windows 7 will be the product that MS wanted Vista to be. Anyway on the public blogs and Comments sections it has been amusing to see some of the moaning and groaning…

It Started With a Leak…

Over the weekend, someone leaked an early beta of Windows 7 and of course in the States we have the big CES 2009 show where it is expected that Steve Bulmer will officially introduce Windows 7 and possibly a public Beta with a product launch, late Summer/early Autumn. I posted a the following:

“Heck, I’m looking forward to Windows 7 but, only on official release. Although I have been in IT for a couple and more decades, I really “don’t do Beta Testing”, life is far too short, I want the actual product !”

Oh the unmitigated moaning and groaning that followed. There were the usual “Apple Mac is the answer”, a few Linux promoters and quite a number of Win98/2000 is fine for me and lots of general moans about IT and IT Departments so, as I was in the mood, I engaged in some pen to pen combat, all good fun. Some of the comments that came back were very thoughtful and pointed to industry and commercially specific situations which led to interesting ‘discussions’ so not all, were ‘moans’ some contained good practical observations.

The Man from Del Monte…

Quite amusingly, one of the best technical experts I have ever had the pleasure of working with had been watching this web activity and mailed me to say that he had a copy of Windows 7 and had installed it and I used part of what he said on the DT Blogs.

As an explanation, I decided to use as a ‘reference point’ an advertising campaign run some years back by the Del Monte fruit juice company where growers wait with trepidation the visit of the Buyer to inspect the crop. From this the slogan; “The Man from Del Monte say Yes !” …and they then get the crop in.

“For any who are interested and as a result of this ‘thread’, one of my “IT Technical Gurus” and a chap I used in the UK and flew over to the States frequently when on a project there, has mailed me on Windows 7.

This chap is essentially a UNIX and Linux expert and technically, is in totally another league compared with your average ‘techie’. He is running a Beta of Win 7 and gives it (for him) a big thumbs up. Personally if “The man from Del Monte says so…” I guess that I am looking forward to Windows 7…”

Later I added a direct quote from my friend Nick…

There seems to be one really good bit of news on Win 7, it won’t require brand new hardware and to finish a quote from my Man from Del Monte, with a sting in the tail:

“In short, I like it (and I’ve hated all the new releases of Windows since ’95) – it does what I want and does it nicely (and quickly). What’s the betting that they’ll cock it up and turn it into junk before RTM? ”

You probably know that RTM is Release to Manufacturing and therefore product launch.”

Being Fair to Vista

As part of one ‘thread’ I posted the following:

“I run x2 XP64 and x2 Vista64 Business PCs for my own purposes. I love XP and ‘hated Vista’ but as MS have patched Vista, it has become a far better product, if it was launched today at its current level, there would be few complaints.

Yes I am an ‘IT Pro’ and have never been paid by Microsoft ever but having started out being an XP fan (but it was total shit in its first year too…2000 was far better), if you were to ask me today based upon XP where it is today, Vista where it is today and bearing in mind all my current PCs are technically pretty equal, that I would have to choose between the two, I would go VISTA – hands down and without too much thought.”

Vista as we know it is a pretty pale shadow of what was intended, new file system, no need for third party anti-virus products… the list is extensive and it was 3-4 years late (no one will give an exact time lapse) but most certainly and despite the public Beta, should never have been released in the state it was. However and having said that, through updates and good peripheral software drivers, Vista has become stable and a slimmed down version of what it is today, in Windows 7 would be good.

But it is More than Operating Systems…

Another thread from me:

“MS is essentially a two product company, the OS Windows and, MS Office however, its ‘hold’ on the market extends through third party applications which run on the OS. An example of this is Adobe who make and market key products such as Photoshop and graphics based DTP and Web products.

If Adobe ‘ported’ their software to Linux and, started supporting an “Open Developer Community”, Microsoft would start to feeling the ‘chill winds’ rapidly.

Whilst Office 2007 has many good or even ‘great’ features, the hard core reality is that “Office” products have not moved on much in a decade. Sure the interface has changed but the underlying functionality hasn’t. I run a copy of Office 2007 on one PC so that I can give support to various ‘mates’ but personally, I only use Open Office, an excellent product and free.”

Bottom Line

Of course from the last came a usual idiot who so full of themselves, can’t be bothered to read other people’s contributions and “Ohoo you can use a Mac….” I bet the clown has a University Degree of some kind which only goes to prove how devalued a Degree has become.

“On the question of Adobe products, of course you are right, they all started on the Mac and were subsequently ‘ported’ to Windows where they have since prospered and evolved.

Most “creatives” work on Macs by preference, you only have to pick up the average Photoshop Tutorial Book to acknowledge that. My interest in graphics, photography is all done in the Windows environment but that is my preference and, most importantly, my money.

Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly enough so with regard to OS ‘s and all that, I am an experienced IT Project Manager and totally ‘agnostic’ in the sense that I work within the Budget and commercial aims of any company that employs me, all my decisions are based upon that not my personal preferences, that is a ‘luxury’ I leave to the “users” who can whine to their boss if they like.

However, some of the comments here are about “I love Mac”, “Windows 98/2000 is great…” and so on. My comment about me personally moving to Linux if all my main applications ran on it is in fact walking away from the tyranny imposed by big corporations such as Microsoft and Apple about what version we the users are ‘allowed’ to run. Linux is free, open and with thousands of dedicated programmers supporting it because “they want to” and devoid of a product release cycles…”