One of the perks of programming Microsoft .Net professionally is that you get a MSDN subscription. To the uninitiated, this means you get access to just about every piece of software MS has unleashed on an unsuspecting world.
While my employer takes care of the hefty subscription fee, I can go on a download spree that would bring tears to the eyes of the most committed 18 year old Bit Torrenter.
My old AMD Athalon workhorse was in need of an upgrade, so as well as the usual suspects of new mb, processor, disk and ram – I thought I might as well install Vista, since I could get it for “free”.
I’ve been using Vista Ultimate now for about 3 weeks and to call the experience underwhelming would be an understatement the size of The Great Khali.
For an Operating System 6 years in the making, there truly is nothing to recommend the upgrade from XP. Like Gordon Brown, we were led to believe great things would happen when he arrived, but after a brief fanfare the cold reality was that the cupboard was bare.
Yes it looks a bit nicer, yes the automatic updates are a bit better integrated, yes it’s stable (on my PC at least), but then so is XP, but honestly that’s about in terms of features worth talking about. I wouldn’t advise anyone to spend their hard earned cash on this turkey. And lets not even mention the crazy over zealoussecurity software.
At the moment the trailblazers in the OS field are Apple. While I’ve always been turned off by the cult of Apple, I have to admit their OS kicks ass. It contains an impressive array of features, that just work, my favourite is Time Machine with the beautiful 3D interface.
Apple are demonstrating to all of us in IT, that with clever, well designed products you can take on the big boys and win. And that, if you ask me, is a very good thing indeed.
