September 11, 2005

Gosh, Windows...!

So Windows Vista will come out (when it does) with 7 different versions. My first thought: "[Groan] Oh, that'll be just great for support, trying to figure out which people are using and why 'feature X works on my other computer but not on this one...'." How can Microsoft tout usability and simplicity? Because most people don't know anything else. For example, since switching to Linux, I use a filesystem that does not need defragmentation. It's out there, but all Windows filesystems (don't know about the upcoming WinFS, which apparently won't be ready in time for Vista's release anyway) need defragmentation. So, users have to remember, manually, to defragment their hard disk periodically or suffer a performance loss. (Windows does not automatically add defragmentation to their Scheduled Tasks.)

Second thought, from one of the comments at the Slashdot link: artificial limitations. Windows is making all of this stuff, but they'll only give it to you if you pay more. This doesn't even sound like a good business model, let alone the fact that GNU software is simply free: Word and Outlook, widely used applications, have limited imitations in Windows by default (WordPad and Outlook Express), because they can't give away the major draw--MS Office--with the OS. Gosh.

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