Microsoft Vista voted tech world's top "Fiasco"

Scientific American ^ | 02/28/2009 | By Larry Greenemeier

[wally_bert]

Love Linux Live CD's, they have saved the day for me a quite a few times.

[ShadowAce]

[DemonDeac]

One of Microsoft’s biggest problems is releasing things before they are really ready to go. They have huge problems with buggy first versions.

[Salo]

It’s funny, though: as much cold, wet dead a$$ as Vista sucks, Windows 2008 Server, which (from what I understand) uses the same code base, is pretty good. I have to deploy a Windows network (one of the PHBs signed off on something expensive without talking to IT, so the camel in now fully in the tent) and I am going to have all 2k8 servers.

[pepperdog]

Amen!

[pctech]

And yet, the United States Military continues to use it and push it on a regular basis. This goes beyond stupid.....

[Still Thinking]

Second Life (the virtual world's Web software must be downloaded on one's PC, which excludes people who don't own their own computers)

Yeah, I've noticed a lot of software is like that. Just never realized that put them in contention for award-winning Fiasco status. < shakes head >

[AFreeBird]

Don’t underestimate the power of FUD.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Its amazing to me that Microsoft manages to stay dominant when a free alternative exists which is better.

That's why they won't make an Office for Linux - the ubiquity of Word and Excel is what keeps them dominant, not their operating systems.

[Nateman]

...people that can’t figure out Linux..

I know the feeling. I was so annoyed at Windows95 crashing all the time I tried OS/2". Then I tried to make Linux work on a corrupted Windows98 machine I did'nt have a recovery disk for. Finally I was in the market for a new laptop so I went and bought a Dell with Linux preloaded so I knew it would work!

I found out that I did not have to go to that extreme, they now have Live CD's that boot up Linux without having to touch anything on your hard drive so you can try it without any worries.

[zeugma]

Vista can now advertise itself as an "Award Winning Operating System."

LOL!

[zeugma]

forgot the /sarc

Thanks. I thought you were completely nuts with the comment about the soundcards. :-)

[Richard Kimball]

I could have written your post, except for the running Vista part. ME was what got me to switch to Mac. I have one laptop with Vista, that we use for the rare times one of my daughter takes a class that requires ActiveX controls (colleges are way behind the curve.)

The only added feature I've seen in Windows is that the constant balloon popups are like having a free "Duck Hunt" game on the computer. The absolute most annoying one to me is "You have unused icons on your desktop! Click here to clean them up!"

[sonic109]

If that were the case, then Gates would owe anyone with Vista a free copy of Windows Seven’
Hell yea , I agree with that .. I have vISAT on my laptop ( came with it _ I HATE IT !
Anyone know if there is a cheap way to get XP Pro as a replacement? Microsoft should off free “downgrades” to XP for anyone that has VISTA...
I have XP pro on 2 other PC and it’s a great OS..Also I have a new i-MAc and for a guy who ALWAYS hated MAC , well , you can’t beat it .

[Nateman]

...they won't make an Office for Linux

Open Office comes bundled with most Linux versions. I seldom use that but the Graphic Image manipulation program (GIMP) is something I use all the time. Here is an example of something I made using the county by county returns for the last election:

[mysterio]

I wouldn't say Vista is the fiasco. I would say the DRM BS in Vista and 7 are the deal killers.

Unless there's an easy was to hack those out, I won't be a PC after this computer bites the dust.

[LowOiL]

My view is an OS should be able to run software, and then get the hell out of the way. I am tired of all this bloatware.

I second the Bloatware comment.... Everytime I try to open a dang media program it throws up some stupid Media Center that as far as I can tell is as useless as tits on a bull.

And the not allowing multiple email accounts without making a seperate account is beyond stupid IMHO.

[N3WBI3]

I dont think the run up to ME was anywhere near Vista after all when ME came out you had XP in the works and 98 was only a few years old. When Vista came out MS had went more than half a decade and numerous setbacks because ‘they were going to get it right’ in the end Vista was a phenomenally AVERAGE PRODUCT which considering the buildup and the money behind it made it a far bigger fiasco than ME.

[Still Thinking]

That's why they won't make an Office for Linux - the ubiquity of Word and Excel is what keeps them dominant, not their operating systems.

Well, then they may lose control of the situation. Open Office, as of v3, is competitive and reads and writes Office-format files. It's not quite as polished and complete as office, but I'd say about 98%. Plenty enough to be competitive anyway. For example, I recently built a new box and loaded Open Office first, and haven't yet bothered to take the 15 minutes or so to load Orifice. It's been like three months and the 2% or whatever of deficiencies in Open Office haven't irritated me sufficiently that I would take even the 15 minutes to load Office and fix the problem.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I use NeoOffice on the Mac and it’s awfully slow. Unless the Linux OpenOffice version performs better, they’ve still got a little work to do. In the past the problem has always been document archives and formatting - alternate office suites never quite render the tables and headers in those older Word documents correctly, and most businesses consider that a deal-breaker.