Ogden Computers - Tulsa Computer Repair and Maintenance

Is Vista the New ME?

For everyone that was around and on computers for the whole Y2K phenomenon, you’ll remember Windows Millennium Edition (or ME). This was an OS that failed at nearly everything you could throw at it. It was not user friendly at all. Too many of the functions had changed from previous versions of Windows, making the learning curve much steeper than an upgrade should have. At the same time, nothing significant was added to make it more useful. The OS was buggy and slow. Only two years later, XP came out. XP is said by many to be the best OS designed to date. It has been the primary OS used for the last 8ish years.

Well, is Vista going to be experiencing the same short lifespan as ME, or is Vista just the beginning of Microsoft’s extremely bloated releases?

Whether the second is true or not, I would argue that Vista is today’s Windows ME. There are many signs that Vista is not going to make it much longer (other than the fact that Windows 7 is slated for 2009).

The release of Windows Vista was full of controversy. There are still internal emails being released to the public proving that Microsoft knew that Vista would not run on most of the computers that they claimed would run it. Most computers still don’t meet the recommended requirements to run Vista smoothly (not the mention the Aero theme).

The alternatives are gaining share. This makes sense in Apple’s case. OSX is a very easy to use and well thought out operating system. Sure, it doesn’t give you the freedom to customize like Windows does, but many non-technical users are alright with that, as long as it does everything that they need (usually internet, email, and word processing). While it makes sense in Apple’s case, Microsoft never expected to lose market share to Linux. Netbooks have drastically increased the Linux market share, not to mention Linux’s dominance over the server market. The netbook phenomenon actually made MS extend the support date for Windows XP over a year past what they originally intended.

When Vista was released, they explained that they improved many of the common utilities that were built into XP. This is true in the case of Task Manager, but what about defrag? The new defrag program is so full or bugs that most of the people that I know who would normally run defrag won’t even touch it because of the constant lag, no estimation of progress, and the possibility of it never ending (this is a very common problem).

People simply don’t want to deal with Vista.  You can go to nearly any non-technical computer message board (such as Craigslist) and find people looking for Licenses of Windows XP so that they can be rid of Vista permanently.  Many people even ask me where they can find a copy of XP now that Microsoft is no longer selling it.

What was revolutionary with Vista? Really nothing. Vista is just a bloated version of Windows XP that added in a bit more eye candy and ate up many times more resources than all the versions before it combined.

So, does this mark the beginning of Microsoft’s end? When ME was released, there were no viable alternatives to Windows. There was no compatible software designed for the Mac, and Linux was still just a baby. Now, Linux is growing up and there is compatible software for both Mac and Linux (not to mention alternative free software). If MS doesn’t rethink their position, then they could lose it.