Commentary, Rants, and Raves

I'm still alive, just way too busy to update anything.

It's here. Microsoft Windows Vista goes on sale Tuesday.

It's a rushed product that has now had two months of public scrutiny in its final form. If you're even thinking of upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista, please save your sanity and don't do it. Just don't even think about buying a Vista upgrade. Microsoft's new operating system demands more hardware upgrades than Windows 95 did. Besides, the price factor alone should give you pause for thought: Any given edition of Windows Vista costs about half again as much as a comparable edition of Windows XP.

If you really, truly, desperately want Windows Vista on your computer, then buy a new computer with it preinstalled. I'm serious. Even though you'll have to buy a more expensive computer, it'll be less expensive than trying to upgrade your existing computer to something Windows Vista will be happy with, and you'll be far less frustrated and disappointed than trying to install an upgrade. It might even save you from the devastation of being stuck with a half-installed OS, unable to finish and unable to go back, should the upgrade fail for any reason.

To their credit, like XP, Vista has a files and settings migration wizard which will let you transfer your files and program settings from your old computer to a new one, but like XP there's a catch. It will not transfer your programs themselves. You must install your non-Microsoft applications on the new computer before running the wizard, in order for the wizard to recognize what settings need to be transfered. You do still have your installation disks, updates, patches, and license keys, right?

Oh, did I mention that Windows Vista is a rushed product, in spite of being four years late? It isn't even on store shelves yet, and Microsoft have already announced that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will be pushed before the year is out. Even Firefox has issues with Vista. Here are ten more reasons if you need them.

Still on the Windows-bashing front, I have come across what may actually be the longest suicide note in history. The note itself is called "Output Content Protection and Windows Vista," was written by Microsoft, and weighs in at 44 pages long. It details the DRM system's output "protection" subsystem present in Windows Vista and what's required of hardware manufacturers to comply.

The Free Software Foundation has a two-part analysis of Microsoft's "suicide note" by former corporate hacker Oliver Day, looking at both the unusually vague technical specifications and at Peter Gutmann's analysis (to which I linked above).

Full compliance requires the suspension of the known laws of physics, and even partial compliance will require hardware manufacturers to make and sell very expensive products. Worse still, Microsoft reserve the right to turn any such expensive device into a paperweight by revoking the driver's certificate, and they've shown the intent to do so under even the slightest bit of pressure from the RIAA or MPAA. (Microsoft have fallen behind with patches to several bugs with exploits already in the wild, yet they recently rushed out a DRM patch to Windows Media Player almost before the proof of concept hit security researchers' desks.)

If any hardware manufacturers decide to adhere strictly enough to join Microsoft's Windows suicide party, then the best that can happen in the event of a driver certificate revocation is that Windows itself will intentionally degrade whatever it considers "premium content" or "protected content" to a point as bad as broadcast (analog) radio/TV program content. The worst that'll happen is that Windows will completely disable the device whenever such content is loaded. Both cases result in symptoms completely indistinguishable from plain and simple hardware failure and the unfair tarnishing of the hardware manufacturer's name.

So what are the alternatives?

If upgrading to Windows Vista is too expensive yet leaving Microsoft behind is even more so, then stay with Windows XP. The only useful features in Windows Vista are available for Windows XP: Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (which still isn't as good as Mozilla Firefox is), Microsoft Windows Defender, and a host of third-party applications, many of which can be downloaded and used for free.

The most hassle-free way to upgrade from Windows to a better operating system is to buy an Apple Macintosh computer. Most of the "innovative" features of Windows Vista were copied, poorly in some cases, from Apple Mac OS X. OS X 10.5 "Leopard" is due out the Spring of this year, and unlike Windows, which tends to get slower and more resource intensive with each new version, OS X gets faster and filled with actual useful features. In an interesting turn of events, Microsoft is committing with the release of Windows Vista the act of cruelty for which Apple has been routinely slammed: abandoning support for not-that-old computer systems, yet with Leopard Apple aren't leaving any recent Macs behind.

However, if you need or want to keep your PC hardware investment and just leave Microsoft's software behind, then download, burn, and install a distribution of GNU/Linux. The most popular home distro is Ubuntu and related projects. The number one problem facing Linux is, ironically, its most liberating feature: choice. The operating system is able to perform a bewildering variety of tasks and roles, and each one of those roles typically requires choosing the right tool for the job (as does any task in life). Linux makes the easy things easy and the hard things at least possible, but only if the right distribution and programs are chosen. To that end, someone has made a very easy to use Linux distribution chooser to make that task simple. Take the test and answer a few simple questions, look up the distros it recommends, find which one fits the bill, and either buy or download it. Regardless of distribution, for the most part, this is an operating system especially designed for computers new and old.