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The Breakthrough Company by Keith McFarland
A New York Times bestseller, The Breakthrough Company, published by Crown/Random House, is available at Amazon.com.
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February 13, 2008
The Pestilence called Microsoft Vista
Posted by Keith McFarland at 11:32 AM
Note to my readers: Don't make the mistake of allowing the pestilence called Microsoft Vista through the gate of your company -- if your experience is like mine, it is a pestilence likely to wreak havoc for months. Avoid Office 2007, too, since after more than a week of work, it is still not clear to me where all the problems with the new Microsoft software really lie. Here's my open letter to Microsoft:
To: Steve Ballmer, CEO
Steve,
Now that Jerry has turned down your $45 billion offer for Yahoo, you are probably feeling flush, wondering what to do with all that cash. So here's a note for your suggestion box: Take a billion or so of those dollars and FIX VISTA, and while you are at it, FIX OFFICE 2007.
As I prepared last week to start my 35-city book tour, I decided it was time for a new laptop. Nothing was wrong with my old HP with XP, but it had 2 years and 200,000 miles on it, so why take chances, right?
I went to Dell.com and picked out a new XPS (fire engine red—way cool). Only problem was, the model I wanted wasn't available with the XP operating system. What to do? I had heard that Vista had problems, but how bad could it be, right? I mean, Vista was built (seemingly over most of the past decade) by one of the most powerful companies on earth. Surely the problems with Vista were being exaggerated.
Wrong. Vista is quite possibly the biggest consumer products disaster in my life time. If only I had hit the technology chat rooms before placing that order. Right after I loaded my new laptop with Office 2003, it crashed. No worries, my savvy tech guy told me. All I needed to do is shell out another $400 for Office 2007 and my new Vista machine would be good to go. Only it wasn't. Power Point still crashes frequently, Outlook crashes and errors are common. The machine often requires 20 minutes to boot up or to shut down.
During the past week I have personally invested no less than 18 hours installing and reinstalling software and patches, talking to tech support people, and cruising information sites. And today—eight days after my travails began—my system still blue-screens an average of twice a day. Vista caused problems in virtually every area of my computing life, from Quick Time (videos suddenly disappeared from my hard disk) to my Blackberry, which no longer syncs.
Now, I know what you are going to say, Steve. I must just be that one in a million guy who gets a lemon from Dell, right? For the vast majority of people, Vista is working fine. Not according my recent Google search for "Vista Sucks." We both know that my horrible experience with Vista is shared far and wide.
I've always stood on the sidelines of the religious war that pits Microsoft against the open source barbarians at the gate. Frankly, I don't give a vermin's posterior about all that. Like most business users, I've been willing to, every couple of years, upgrade software that worked okay with a slightly more bloated version loaded with bells and whistles I neither asked for nor wanted. It was our little secret, Steve. I wrote the checks, and you made my life easy. Until you didn't.
Corporate America is going to push back on this one, Steve, and in a big way. Better stop worrying so much about how to buy Yahoo and start thinking about boring stuff like building products that work. Microsoft has always been able to talk (and spend) its way out of a jam in the past, but this Vista thing is different. Time for a wake up call.
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Try google docs. Very reliable. Stores all your stuff online. Capable of a decent subset of most common functions used by typical office users. I've switched to it and never looked back. Even vista can run a web browser, and thats all you need for google docs.
Keith,
I really sorry about your experience with Windows Vista, Office 2003 and Office 2007. But I sorry much more because you blame the wrong company. You should blame Dell or, why not, your "savvy tech gui". Have you ever heard about driver or hardware conflicts?
I´m using Windows Vista with Office 2007 in my HP Pavilion laptop and in my "Frankstain desktop" months ago. I´ve installed Windows Vista with Office 2003 or Office 2007 in many friend´s laptops too. Could you guess what I´ve heard about? Only the best!!! My laptop takes only 45 seconds to start up.
I´m not here to defend Microsoft and to fight Dell. But I think you should talk only about you realy know and not about madness.
Dear Mr. McFarland,
The solution for all your problems is very easy. Buy an Apple computer!
They are the most reliable, steady, crash-free, fun to work computers on earth. They come ready to go, no need to install new software. If you use the Office package, they have it available too, or you can use their own "office" package which includes among others, Pages 08 which is very similar to Word; or Keynote 08 which is their "Powerpoint" software. You even can import all your Powerpoint files into Keynote and make those presentations more fun and interesting.
Believe me Keith, you won't regret it. I have been working with Macs for 15 years and it is worth it. Try it, you'll see.
Jose
I feel your pain. I've had Vista for a number of months now and I've had more problems than i have patience to endure. I eventually switch over to Ubuntu. I've had to tinker with it a bit to work perfectly with my machine but hey, it's free and i can actually fix the issues without having to reinstall the entire operating system (which I've done twice with Vista).
I'm resolved, open source is the way to go!
Hello all
It is good to see that only one Microsoft shill has commented on this article. I have use vista for a year now, it is pure junk. I am actually very close to some of the high end people a MS and Dell and do know some of the compatibility problems that are going on with this mess. What Mr Ballmer needs to start with is a little look at business history starting with the Edsel en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel . I am sure he had dropped out of Harvard before he had a chance to study it, and learn from it.
Yours
Keith,
I completely agree. Vista is a disaster. I'm perfectly okay with Microsoft (and all other companies, for that matter) making their own problems obsolete. However, the new product actually had to provide consumers with more benefit. Even though it felt like I was selling an internal organ every time I had to pony up the fee for a new op system, the new bells and whistles generally gave me more control and a more pleasing interface.
This has held usually true with Microsoft products until now. While Microsoft is not known for creating intuitive or secure products, the network (monopoly?) effects have outweighed not upgrading or switching op systems. But Vista and office 2007 immediately imploded once I received them. '07 makes me wish for the pains of '03. I'm personally glad Google is eating Microsoft's lunch- perhaps it will be enough to awaken Microsoft from its long coma.
Based on a lot of reading prior to buying a new computer, I chose not to buy or build a standard PC. Instead, I chose to purchase an Apple and use a virtualization app for any Windows-specific software I may need along with using Windows XP Pro rather than Vista.
Now, While I agree with Jose that the Mac is a very good machine, don't get the idea that the Mac is perfect; it isn't. However, compared to the issues I have read about and experienced myself in the Windows environment, the Mac very nearly is perfect. Any machine and any operating system will have its problems, but the design and tight specifications that Apple keeps within its hardware means that the large majority of its machines work perfectly out of the box.
If you have been doing any reading about Microsoft products lately, you will learn that their new Office package is actually attempting to re-write the document standards used in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other applications that are actually breaking archived documents and making them unreadable by either the new or the old versions of the apps. Apparently this is an attempt to break all of the 'Office compatible' Open Source applications but is also breaking their own legacy apps as well. The advantage in iWork for the Mac is that it is compatible with the majority of these legacy standard documents and is less bloated with 'features' that only a very few people ever actually use in Office.
Also, if your company is using something like Open Directory that seems to be such the Microsoft rage today, well, don't let anyone tell you that the Mac can't use it. Networking a Mac into a Windows-only environment is far, far easier than your Windows IT department may want you to believe. It's different, yes. But it's also easier than Windows networking. I have put Apple computers seamlessly into Windows networks several times now and the issues I run into are always on the Windows side, rather than the Mac accessing the network itself. And now that the Mac can run Windows through either Boot Camp (making the Mac just another Windows machine) or through virtualization (letting both operating systems run simultaneously) networking is actually easier once it is set up.
The point of this ramble is simple; while no machine and no OS is actually perfect, OS X Leopard is far better in actual quality than Vista while giving you as much or more capability for your dollar for Apple hardware when matched with any other name-brand manufacturer. True, you can buy cheaper hardware, but you are losing some built-in features of the Apple when you do.
My son who owns an IT company and certified Microsoft says never buy a new product from MS at least in the first year. Let them work out the bugs which were not found by others in testing because of the need to launch the product. The public is part of the testing process.
Keith,
You did an excellent job last night at WSU. It was worth staying for the extra 5 points! haha! I'm a 45 year old adult learner, Mayor of a small community and looking for a new career. My current career allows me to retire at 50-55! I learned alot more about my current situation and why I'm so frustrated going to work. I sat by Mr. Kierlin and you said some well deserved comments about him! Thank You. PS. I was going to buy a new computer but have been holding off because of VISTA!
Oh I feel your pain. I bought a Gateway in Sept and am having the same issues. So, referring to an earlier post, it's not just your Dell. I held off on Vista until now expecting the bugs to be worked out. MS where are you? Apple is slapping you in the face with the tv ads which are so right on target. Put up your dukes, MS and take responsibility for what you created. I've been a tried & true MS fan for more than a decade, but even I'm thinking about going over to the "dark side". In addition to the countless hours chatting with various tech support people, I've also invest ed a money in replacing two ext. hard drives which were corrupted by my Vista machine, replacing my network router and my printer; all in hopes of making Vista happy enough to run properly. MS step up!!
I'm afraid I must agree that you are blaming the wrong company. Many of the problems (but certainly not all) with Vista come because the pre-installed software that comes installed, OTHER than Vista, is total garbage. The major anti-virus software out there that is shipped with almost all PCs is total and complete garbage (hint, it rhymes with jymantec).
Yes, Vista does have some problems, but that is the same as any other new system. There will always be bugs to work out that simply don't present themselves until wide release.
I've been into IT the last 18+ years, I have a lot of grey hair most of it thanks to the inefficiency that Microsoft gives to its customers thanks to the bad products it releases year after year.
I've learned the hard way to never buy neither recommend Microsoft's products until it fixes the usual problems ( LOL ), which it never seems to happen!!
Microsoft doesn't think about us, its customers, it only thinks about getting more money and releasing more problems ( Like .NET, why do I have to recode my apps all over again?? ).
A year ago I went to Microsoft here in México for an interview, and the interviewer didn't like that I used on a regular basis google, neither it didn't like that I use gmail as my email tool. He said that the best products were Microsoft and Microsoft only ( Maybe he was in drugs ).
Do not use Google Docs. Nothing Google gives out is truly free, they keep all the data, and use it to better target advertising.
I'm glad that I am not the only one who has regrettably discovered that a certain anti virus software company's product is a disaster and near total junk. Don't tell anyone but it can cause mischief with XP also.
VISTA is JUNK and the support from MS and HP is laughable if you weren't so frustrated with the problems. The FOOL that loves MS is just that a total idiot saying it is the additional software or the fact you purchased a DELL. He doesn't know what he is talking about. I willbet him the cost of a plane ticket to Miami Fl. he could not solve the problems I have had with my HP with VISTA. I am running an older machine with less memory and it SMOKES VISTA in speed using XP.
VISTA is garbage and I will be switching to Apple.
My experience is quite identical. I've been through every Windows incarnation since 3.1, and Vista truly is a plague. I've run it on five different machines, all brand new, well exceeding specs. I've been forced to turn off the UAC and graphics, just for starters, and I still have machines that take 5-10 minutes to boot, and a bunch of Office 2007 programs that crash repeatedly. I've lost hundreds of hours on what amounts to an operating system with its own built in viruses. Why worry about security, when everything from the file permissions, UAC, activations and on do more damage than any virus I've ever seen. After spending another hour on the phone this week with Office 2007 support, apparently my despair showed enough that the next day a manager called me, trying to talk me back off the ledge. He explained how the problems were just because I wasn't used to Vista yet, or that the service pack would help, etc. Of course, I told him that I was quite used to Vista - the problem was the more I found out about it the more shocked I became at its deep, deep flaws, and I already had the service pack. Finally he could see that I was beyond mad; mad was a long time ago. Now I'm just depressed; depressed because I wasted so much of my time on the most worthless OS release in history. Depressed because after XP came out, I thought there might finally be hope and now it is cruelly dashed. Depressed because I'm now doing what I should have done before, switching away from Vista and Office 2007, and it's going to be a lot of work. But, I'm already using Thunderbird (good riddance Outlook), and the Linux install will be tomorrow. And if I have to go to all the trouble of this switch, I don't think it will matter if MS actually fixes a few things in their next OS, it's not worth the trouble or heartache to give Windows another chance. After way too many years waiting for you to get it right, this is goodbye forever, Redmond.
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