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Vista deserters and Vista defenders

It is now nearly seven months since Windows Vista was released for consumer use and a chorus of complaints about the new system has arisen. Service Pack 1 is coming and as time goes on Microsoft may fix some of Vista’s problems and hardware vendors may get more drivers written. But in the meantime there are a number of articles by users of Vista saying that it would be better to go back to XP. I have already noted the Vista complaints by Jim Louderback, outgoing editor of PC Magazine. Yesterday, Joel Spolsky added his negative opinion. (Spolsky is a software developer who once worked at Microsoft as program manager on the Excel team.) Spolsky writes:

I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled).

Another deserter is James Fallows. He’s not a computer professional (although he once spent six months at Microsoft) but is a well-known journalist and writer who is an experienced computer user and has often written about computers. He writes that he has given up on Vista:

But in what I’ve written about technology through this time I have made two important bad calls. Until recently, only one.

That came in 1984, when the first crude, slow, toaster-looking Macintosh appeared. I tried it out and thought: for what I care about, this is no good! What I cared about was writing and storing research data. For tasks like those, the early Mac could not match what I already had: a snazzy IBM PC AT, with its blinding-fast 80286 chip. I missed, early on, what the Mac was about.

The other bad call came late last year, when I said that users should wait to buy new computers until the new version of Windows, Vista, was available — and that “of course” they should buy Vista-equipped machines once they could. That was wrong. I apologize.

He goes on to say:

Still, I’ve concluded that this initial release of Vista is not worth it. I’m digging out an install disk for Windows XP and putting that back on my machines.

On the other side of the fence is Ed Bott, who is beginning to take on a beleaguered and polemical tone. He is scathing in his denunciation of Louderback and what he calls “whining”. He writes:

All anecdotes are equal, but some are more equal than others. The Vista system I’m working on right now sleeps and resumes perfectly, It’s a model network citizen. It doesn’t crash. I’ve been amazingly productive with it. I have two notebooks and three more desktop systems working equally well, and I could introduce you to friends and neighbors who tell nearly identical stories. You won’t read any of those Vista success stories on Slashdot or Digg, though, because they don’t fit into the accepted narrative.

Vista-bashing is the ticket to online success. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I could literally double my income if I went into the Vista-bashing business. Want to guess how many times Jim Louderback’s writing was featured on Slashdot in the last four years? Only once, until he pushed the “Vista sucks” button.

Mary Jo Foley summarizes the situation for Vista by writing:

Call it complaining. Call it whining. The end result is the same: Windows Vista’s image is tarnished. And it’s corroding more and more rapidly as the weeks are going on.

Microsoft has dismissed much of the Vista criticisms as coming from hard-core and hard-to-satisfy techies who always want more and better. But even some of Microsoft’s biggest customers and closest developers are going public with their reasons why a number of things in Vista that are just plain bad. And these are people who have been working with Vista builds for years, not those feeling panicked when confronted with the new and unfamiliar.

I’ll repeat what I have said from the beginning: the average PC user should hold out as long as possible before switching to Vista.

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