Windows Me was such a bad operating system that even Microsoft officials admitted to me in private at the time that the company had made a mistake in releasing what was at best \u201cbeta\u201d code. Why did the company do it? Windows XP was still a year away and the company was clearly itching to squeeze the last drops of blood it could out of its dying, DOS-based Windows 95 and 98 franchise.<\/p>\n
The technology press lambasted Microsoft for releasing the software, which constantly plagued users with the infamous \u201cblue screen of death\u201d \u2014 the screen that inevitably meant it was time to reboot. Many consumers who made the mistake of installing it \u2014 I was one of them \u2014 quickly backtracked to Windows 98. Last May, PC World, an influential US IT magazine, listed Windows Me as the fourth-worst technology product of all time. \u201cForget Y2K, this was the real millennium bug,\u201d wrote PC World journalist Dan Tynan.<\/p>\n
Is Microsoft repeating history with Vista, its shiny new operating system released in January? If one believes the news reports, it seems consumers are far from happy with Microsoft\u2019s latest offering. Some people are even drawing parallels between Windows Me and Vista. In my experience, Vista is not nearly as awful as Me. But Microsoft is having problems convincing consumers why they should not simply continue using XP.<\/p>\n
Computer maker Dell recently conceded that a considerable number of its customers are demanding XP instead of Vista preinstalled on new PCs. A Dell official said recently that the company was \u201cstepping back\u201d from telling people they must upgrade to Vista.<\/p>\n
According to computer industry magazine CRN, system builders and value-added resellers have taken to \u201cripping the much-ballyhooed operating system off desktops and notebooks at a breakneck pace because of the problems that come with moving clients to Vista\u201d. Worse still, CRN discovered in comprehensive laboratory testing that Vista and XP are equally at risk to viruses and exploits and that, overall, Vista brings only marginal security advantages over XP.<\/p>\n
But perhaps the biggest criticism of Vista has been its insatiable hunger for system resources. It will run on a PC with 1GB of RAM, but 2GB is strongly preferred. By contrast, XP ran happily on 512MB. Vista\u2019s nifty Aero interface \u2014 the eye candy that makes it look so good \u2014 is also a resource hog, consuming memory and processor cycles.<\/p>\n
Personally, I\u2019ve had mixed success with Vista. I installed it on my desktop PC at home, a machine I cobbled together myself with components from various sources. This machine, which runs XP and Ubuntu Linux perfectly, suddenly developed a habit of rebooting randomly several times a day. So, instead, I installed Vista on my notebook, a ThinkPad, which proved a more rewarding experience. Still, after a couple of months, I couldn\u2019t really see any benefit in running Vista over XP, other than for staring at the cute graphics. So, I formatted the machine\u2019s hard drive and replaced Vista with Ubuntu, which has better eye candy than Vista anyway.<\/p>\n
Other users have also had mixed success with Vista. Of a small sample of SA technology journalists I spoke to for this column, some thought Vista worked just fine; others strongly disliked it \u2014 for various reasons. I found a similar reaction when I polled nontechnical colleagues, with most Vista users who disliked it complaining about its hefty hardware requirements.<\/p>\n
Vista is, however, no Windows Me. And for that we ought to be thankful.<\/p>\n