Vista - Rant Time

Now for a less useful entry.

I wonder how Microsoft can continue to be so clueless of what it's consumers really want from their Operating Systems. I used to work for the friggin' company.

Well Microsoft Windows VISTA will likely be yet another OS to give us all the fancy new User Interface features (i.e.: Bells and Whistles) without really solving the past Operating System problems.

I'm thinking: The day Microsoft builds an Operating System that has all the 'crap' stripped out of it and gives the user the option to add the modules they really need without having to worry about this dependency and that dependency. For example, 90% of my spyware / advert problems went away after switching to the Firefox browser. One reason I would appreciate this feature is that I could build a barebones version of Windows for use with my Snapstream PVR setup. This would eliminate all processes, services, applets, etc. that weren't critical to Beyond TV running.

Ah but as with every manufacturer these days, Microsoft is continuing to follow suit by provided 15 trillion flavors of the new OS. For example according to the website there will be the following releases of the OS (obviously this could change on release):

Windows Vista Business
Windows Vista Enterprise
Windows Vista Home Premium
Windows Vista Home Basic
Windows Vista Ultimate

I don't know about everyone else but this is getting out of hand. I do understand fully the reasons for having 2 different retail versions - One for home and one for business. I DO NOT understand why it's necessary to have five (or even 10 if you count the obvious OEM versions of the ones listed above).

When is someone going to give me the option to add different features and remove them. When I install an OS, I expect the OS to do 2 things and only 2 things: display my Files/Folders graphically, and allow me to execute applications from those Files/Folders. Ah well, I guess I'm getting a little peeved about their marketing model.

I'll wrap this up, time to install Linux, or pick myself up a Intel Mac.

Let me know your feelings on the matter. I'd love to hear them.