PGTS Journal Edition 0035
April, 2008

Vista - Collapsing Under Its Own Weight

There were no new articles for the month of April. However I did finally get some hands-on experience with Microsoft's latest operating system, Vista. Of course the blogosphere has been a-buzz with news about Vista for almost four years now (if you include the 12 months that it might have been called Longhorn. In fact it has been on the drawing board as Longhorn for possibly six years.

I had my first opportunity to use Vista while using a computer to access the Internet, last year, while on holiday in New Zealand. You can read a more detailed account in my blog entitled Windoze Vista Is Not Dead -- It Just Smells Funny.

Suffice to say, I was profoundly underwelmed by the experience, especially in regard to Vista's performance. I had not seen software of such poor quality in a major release of an OS since ... Well, not since Windows 95! And I really did think I would never see an Operating System as bad as Windows 95 again! But Microsoft have plumbed the depths of poor quality and lowered the bar remarkably with their latest effort.

Of course there has been an enormous amount of publicity, advertising, hyperbola and bovine excretia shovelled out through various media outlets regarding Vista. But as the shine comes off and the appaling quality and (to put it midly) the sub-optimal performance of the product has been difficult if not impossible to gloss over, the volume has gradually been turned down on the spin channels. Rather than eat their words, at first, many so-called online journalists just tried to pretend that it wasn't happening. Finally, after almost two years of dismal sales, Gartner announced that Vista was collapsing under its own weight All of which I have found rather cruel but fair. The most amusing discovery of the month was the Rocking Our Sales Video which was produced (as a joke) by the Microsoft Sales Team. This proved that Microsoft still have lots of employees with a sense of humour, even if they can't create (working) software.