And my opinion is that they suck... they 'suck BAD.'
Admittedly I have found one or two fine products they've offered over the years (e.g., PhotoDraw), but about once every month I go to use it and it informs me that I've got to insert the Install CD again... because it just vaporizes on its own.
Oh well. You get used to their non-thinking ways.
Anyway, the other day I expressed to an experienced programmer (and recovering lawyer) how I thought the brand new operating system, Vista, was simply a marketing ploy by Microsoft to convince us to love something we'd otherwise dislike. I said, "Microsoft is largely trying to solve their own piracy problems, but they've put out the spin that Vista is good for us.
"It's like they took dog doo from your yard and put it on a plate... and with the pretty girls showing a big smile and colored balloons and a brass band they try to sell us on the idea that it's really GREAT stuff!"
He promptly disagreed, citing other's opinions (e.g., the press). Yes, I was surprised that a developer-- a programmer-- someone who is knee-deep all day long in code-- wouldn't detest the stuff by now.
However, it's my studied opinion (remember, I have nearly thirty years experience delving deeply into computers, with twenty of them working the insides of a laptop running some form of Microsoft products) that he's wrong. Microsoft is ill-conceived, horribly mangled, and ill-executed... and so far, no new release has ever done more than stick Band-aid over Band-aid over Band-aid. Here's why:
1. Microsoft operating systems have always been a hideous amalgamation of mistakes cobbled together by teams who hardly speak. Their versions (95, 98, 2000 and XP) are Band-aided by patches covered by security holes covered by revised routines that should have been done right in the first place. The company never should have released a product before its time, but it's their habit to continually do so.
2. Microsoft hasn't the ability to keep a straight course-- even internally. Just look at the products they themselves release-- Microsoft products from their own hands! Note that features are never consistent. SHIFT-TAB does something in one program, and something else in another. Even their menus-- which identical features would ostensibly operate the exact same way-- are unnecessarily different, like when pressing ALT+R for Properties. You get something that happens in Word, that doesn't happen in Excel, but "something else" pops up in Project. It's a nightmare of confusion.
3. Microsoft focuses on the "pretty" and "nice" stuff-- like those Macintosh-like highlighted, glowing buttons, and screen animations fading in and out... every one stealing valuable processor time and memory. The more clever the animation, the slower operates your program.
But, gosh, I forgot... the way they address their problem, yes indeed-- like with Vista-- is to yet again force us out to buy another "modern" computer with gaggles of memory and dazzling hertzes of speed.
It's like giving a safety rating to a car by putting airbags in despite it can't steer, stop, or handle.
Bottom line is that in my opinion, Vista (which in fairness I must yet try), was NOT made to solve our problems. It was conceived, constructed, and marketed to solve Microsoft's own piracy problems by interlocking software keys, registration, distribution, and CPU authentication... stuff that they should have corrected before it left the factory in the first place. But because they tossed in some glowing buttons and animated screens, and told us Vista will be wonderful-- as long as we toss out nearly everything and every device we've gathered in the past five years to make their lumpy, chunky, herky-jerky XP function properly-- we should embrace it.
That whole concept is dog doo.
No matter that everyone is still pretty much doing the same tasks we always do (e.g., writing reports, surfing the web, balancing our checkbooks), now we have to pay more money to do the same things.
It's dog doo for the masses, but gosh, ain't that screen pretty?
Cheers!
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