Vista Bashing:The New National Pastime?

by **shanaya** June 5th 2008, 6:53 pm

Vista Bashing: the New National Pastime?

Each time Microsoft has come out with a new operating system that constituted a major change, some computer users have balked. I knew many who shunned Windows when it first appeared, preferring the simplicity and familiarity of MS-DOS. There were many Windows/Windows for Workgroups 3.11 fans who steadfastly resisted the lure of Windows 95 even though the latter was more stable and much more user-friendly. On the business side, many companies continued to run Windows NT Workstation on their desktops long after Windows 2000 came out, and a significant number are still running Windows 2000 now.

Windows XP represented the convergence of the consumer and business lines - sort of. Although XP still had its Home and Pro versions, the two were built on the same kernel (whereas the Windows 9.x family was completely different under the hood from Windows NT/2000). But many users on both sides of that fence complained mightily at being "forced" to moved to XP. Their main complaints? System requirements were too high, it wouldn't run well or at all on older or less powerful machines, the interface had changed too much, Explorer worked differently ... sounding familiar?

Those are the same gripes we've been hearing about Vista since its release. And they're the same gripes we've heard about every major new OS. But what's different this time is that more than a year after Vista's public debut, the furor hasn't died down. If anything, it has become set in stone for many folks. They're convinced that Vista is a "bad OS" and XP is wonderful (conveniently forgetting how awful they thought it was in the beginning).

Why is it that this time, folks aren't quieting down after they've had time to get used to the new operating system and discover its many cool features? As so many of my readers attest, Vista is not a bad OS. Many of us are happily running it with no stability or performance problems. Many of us have found that most (although admittedly not all) of the interface changes make our work lives easier - about to the same extent as XP's did. Yet there are still millions who swear they will never "downgrade" to Vista, there is a big movement afoot on the Internet to "save" XP from being put to death by Microsoft, and new articles appear in print and on the web every day, proclaiming that Vista is a failure. Vista appears to have become ensconced as the nation's favorite whipping boy, perhaps second only to the president of the United States.

Most likely there are a number of reasons for this. Like all new OS releases, Vista does indeed require more processing power and memory than its predecessors, as well as a modern video card if you want to enjoy its fancy Aero transparencies. But Vista had the misfortune to be released just as the U.S. economy was tightening, which made it more difficult for many people to afford the more powerful machines. Consequently, many of them tried upgrading computers that weren't made for it to Vista, and had bad experiences - hardware incompatibilities, performance problems, and so forth. This happened with XP too, but perhaps to a lesser extent.

Maybe more significantly, though, hardware vendors dropped the ball and let a lot of us down. They put computers on the market that were preloaded with Vista but which ran it abysmally. My Sony Vaio TX compact notebook is a case in point. Perhaps to save money, perhaps in a rush to get Vista-installed machines on the market, or perhaps for some other reason that escapes me, these computers hit the shelves and gave a lot of folks a terrible first impression of Vista. If my only exposure to Vista had been the little Sony as it came out of the box, I would have thought it was an awful OS, too.

As it turns out, much of the problem is the OEM configuration and you can tweak the settings to make these machines perform much better. Service Pack 1 also helps. But the average person who brings home a new computer and finds that it's slow as molasses doesn't want to have to figure out how to tune it up. He/she concludes that the system itself is a dud, that the new operating system is a dud, or both.

Another aspect of Vista's bad timing is that it came out shortly after a version of Linux that is actually somewhat user friendly finally appeared. Ubuntu made it possible for non-techie people to run Linux, and of course its cost (little or nothing) made it an attractive alternative to Vista - especially with the price for Ultimate edition coming in considerably higher than most people had ever paid for an operating system.

All the lousy experiences with Vista, along with the growing popularity of Ubuntu and the release of the new Leopard version of OS X, have led to a flood of bad publicity for the new Microsoft OS from both the general public and the tech press. And the latter have to bear much of the responsibility for egging all this Vista-hating on. Journalism in general has taken a turn toward over sensationalization and focus on doom and gloom, and tech industry reporters have followed the trend. Apparently adopting the philosophy that "good news is no news," many publications are much more apt to commission articles that uncover (or invent) supposed conspiracies or that proclaim someone as a villain or something as a failure than stories that take a more balanced approach.

That means those few of us who dispute the current almost religious belief that Vista is the spawn of Satan are dismissed as Microsoft apologists or at best, ridiculed as naïve and technically unknowledgeable, regardless of our credentials. Our friends on the anti-Vista side of the fence delight in harassing us any time we encounter a problem with our computers, no matter how minor, immediately blaming it on Vista. When they have a problem doing something with their XP (or Linux or Mac) computers, though, it's never the operating system's fault.

Vista bashing is so ingrained in the media now that the OS probably doesn't have a chance of being accepted by the average consumer. When they watch TV, they're inundated with commercials where the obnoxiously condescending Mac guy shakes his head at the travails of the poor PC man, who laments that Vista is "glitchy," unreliable, and oh so unsexy. It's funny; most of us say political candidates ought to stick to their own ideas, beliefs and records instead of running negative campaigns based on their opponents' real or imagined weaknesses. Shouldn't the same thing apply to company advertising? Apple's focus on PCs and Vista make you wonder: if their own product is so great, why aren't they talking about that instead of bashing their competitor all the time?

But exaggerated criticism from competitors' customers is to be expected. The really sad thing is the way Microsoft users have split into two opposing camps, with we who like both XP and Vista caught in the middle. Instead of acknowledging that both Microsoft operating systems are good products and each has its strengths and drawbacks, many XP users bash Vista just as fervently as the "Anybody But Microsoft" crowd (and in some cases, more so). It reminds me of the way a certain major U.S. political party has split itself in half during this year's presidential campaign.

But politics aside, I don't see how all this Vista-bashing serves any useful purpose. Unlike in an election, we don't have to narrow the choices down to one. It seems to me that you should use the operating system you like best, and not spend a lot of time and energy dwelling on what's wrong with the one(s) you don't like. We have more viable choices in that regard than we ever had before, so what's all the groaning and griping about?

Tell us what you think. Are you getting at least a little bit tired of hearing over and over that Vista is a dog? Do you wish Apple's commercials would tell you something - anything - about Apple's software instead of going on and on about Microsoft's? Do you ever find yourself having to defend your use of Vista to family and friends? Who do you think is most to blame for Vista's perceived unpopularity: Microsoft? Apple? Hardware vendors? The tech press? The mainstream media? XP die-hards? The alignment of the stars? Tell us your experiences and opinions at feedback@vistanews.com.