Microsoft admits it: Vista is a turkey

For at least a year I have been reading articles about fantastic new features that were dropped out of the developing Microsoft Vista because the project was mismanaged and out of control. Well, now it is official: Microsoft Vista sucks, according to the New York Times and quoted Microsoft executives:

Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.

Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person, Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”

Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.

It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.

Their remarks come from a stream of internal communications at Microsoft in February 2007, after Vista had been released as a supposedly finished product and customers were paying full retail price. Between the nonexistent drivers and PCs mislabeled as being ready for Vista when they really were not, Vista instantly acquired a reputation at birth: Does Not Play Well With Others.

We usually do not have the opportunity to overhear Microsoft’s most senior executives vent their personal frustrations with Windows. But a lawsuit filed against Microsoft in March 2007 in United States District Court in Seattle has pried loose a packet of internal company documents. The plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, bought PCs in late 2006, before Vista’s release, and contend that Microsoft’s “Windows Vista Capable” stickers were misleading when affixed to machines that turned out to be incapable of running the versions of Vista that offered the features Microsoft was marketing as distinctive Vista benefits.

Last month, Judge Marsha A. Pechman granted class-action status to the suit, which is scheduled to go to trial in October. (Microsoft last week appealed the certification decision.)

Anyone who bought a PC that Microsoft labeled “Windows Vista Capable” without also declaring “Premium Capable” is now a party in the suit. The judge also unsealed a cache of 200 e-mail messages and internal reports, covering Microsoft’s discussions of how best to market Vista, beginning in 2005 and extending beyond its introduction in January 2007. The documents incidentally include those accounts of frustrated Vista users in Microsoft’s executive suites.

Quote of the day: Shoes

I first heard this quote back in the 90’s. I saw it on the web recently and I like it enough to make it a quote of the day:

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”
– Ramana Maharshi

The context that I originally heard this quote in was that it is much more rational to learn how to handle yourself psychologically then to demand that that reality change to suit you. Reality tends to change slowly. You can’t change anything until you learn to accept it and truly know what it is.

Much better to have a pair of shoes psychologically, then to try to carpet the world.

Lost treasure: Creation Of The Humanoids

A century before anyone ever uttered the word “hippie” Henry David Thoreau was living that life lost in time in the 19th century. Twenty years before Blade Runner a film called “Creation Of The Humanoids” was doing “cyber punk” before the term was even invented.

I had a memory fragment of this movie from when I saw it on a UHF channel a lifetime ago as a small child. Through the magic of usenet I found a science fiction lovers newsgroup with someone on the planet who was able to take my faded memory and produce a movie title.

Luckily enough, it turned out that netflix had a copy ( titled “Drive-in Double Feature: Creation of the Humanoids / War Between the Planets” ).

I just saw it last night and it was fantastic.

The film is set in the future a few generations after a nuclear war wipes out 92% of the population of the Earth. The dwindled human race turns toward building androids as a means of obtaining sufficient labor to rebuild civilization. However, the radiation from the war has made most people sterile. As the human population dwindles the androids become more prominent and more “human”. The story of that conflict is this film.

Since it was made in 1962 the special effects weren’t all that great but if you appreciate campy out-of-date effects you will love this film. What it lacks in special effects it more than makes up for with a highly intelligent and philosophically provocative script. As a bonus, the DVD that it comes on has the film in its original context, as a second film in a double feature made for drive-in movie theaters; complete with intermission commercials from the late 50s encouraging people to go buy snacks and “coming attractions” for films made the better part of a half a century ago. What a freaky trip!

If you are any kind of science fiction fan I encourage you to rent a copy of this film. If you are a science fiction fan I think like me you will consider this film to be a lost and under appreciated treasure.