Revolting Software Practices: Vista goes too far

Disgusting: The new Microsoft operating system, Vista. I was content thinking that it was just going to be a big, badly-programmed expensive piece of crap designed to separate the ignorant from their money in ever-growing bloody chunks…until now. I just learned The Last Straws.

As company behavior, this crosses the line. It’s deceptive and anti-competitive and I’m not flipping happy about it. I don’t know what to do about it; I already boycott the company just for writing crappy code and doing a shitty job on security and overcharging people and screwing smaller companies whenever they can — generally for being a very fat and very poor citizen of the technical community, really.

Anyway, here’s what these people think they can get away with now:

1. Vista can be installed on exactly two computers. That includes swapping out certain of your hardware, like your motherboard. After that you can pay the two hundred bucks again for it. (The “Ultimate” version at the other end of the Spectrum of Screwedness is four hundred, and still only 2 installs allowed.)

2. It won’t let you put an ISO (backup image of a CD) anywhere on your hard-drive. Not just an ISO of the Vista CD — an ISO of any CD. So hopefully you don’t have any program CDs that you want to ever back up or anything.

3. Direct X 10, which is a “required” component by some new software, including some very popular video games like Halo 2 and the Marvel MMORPG*, is proprietary software that Microsoft is restricting to Vista only. Why would they do that, when it would obviously be better for users and the video game industry both to make new games available to a wider audience? Well, because they just finally got XP stable, of course! They know that nobody in their right fucking mind would pay all that money to upgrade from a finally-stable, at-least-somewhat-secure program (which also cost a serious chunk of change) to the latest train-wreck of Microsoft fux0rdness.

I’m sorry, but I was teching professionally through three Windows upgrades, and under my personal dictionary entry for “utterly batguano crazy” there’s a cross-reference to “being a Windows early-adopter”. I feel especially sorry for businesses, who often get bent over by the Redmond Shuffle, a sterling example of why all forms of planned obsolencence ought to be illegal. You want continuing revenue? Innovate, you sodding cows, and quit growing your companies past all possibility of sustainability! Sheesh.

Anyway, there’s good news: The current version of Ubuntu, Dapper Drake, while sillily named, is a darn good OS, and I haven’t run Windows at home for years now and don’t miss a thing about it (except a simple graphical synchronization tool. The lack of that does annoy me, even if I’m perfectly capable of using the command-line tools). It’s even easy to install (especially with Automatix), and I’ve never had to use a driver disk to hook up a single thing (how many Windows users can say that?). That haven’t-had-to-reboot-in-months thing is pretty darn cool too. Oh yeah, and it’s free.

-PD

As a P.S. of sorts, let me add that the PlayStation 3 is a mfing joke. Six hundred bucks for a game console? For four hundred bucks (with a little bargain-shopping) I could have a pretty phat computer, that would play games and surf the Internet and store all my data and burn CDs and DVDs and replace my social life! ;) Seriously though, what the hell is the big deal over this thing? Especially with the half-as-expensive Nintendo-with-cool-new-controllers coming out soon–?

* Is this pronounced “MORE PIG!” or what?