“Windows Vista steals your information.”
“Windows Vista does not work.”
This is getting stupid and childish. I’ve seen many people complain how Vista is not usable, how it does not work, and now, how it steals all your information and gives it to Microsoft.
Can anyone actually think these days? Can anyone actually remember how it was when Windows XP launched?
Issue #1: “It does not work”
Vista apparently sucks and does not work properly. Applications crash, devices aren’t supported.
Anyone remember the Windows XP launch? Yes, it was the same – people kept saying how XP sucks, how it’s better to stay on 2000, 98 and so on…
I personally never touched Windows XP until it had reached Service Pack 2. I used Windows 2000 Professional up to that point, and when I upgraded, everything worked just fine. This is probably the case I am going to have with XP to Vista transformation – I’m going to wait as long as I can before switching. Some even say you should skip Vista completely, seeing how Windows 7 “will” be released in 2009.
I will believe Windows 7’s 2009 launch when I see it. Until that, if I have some compelling need to upgrade to Vista, I will. And the experts agree
Issue #2: Privacy concerns
Vista is going to tell Microsoft everything you do! Including, but not limited to, the very long list of things mentioned in this article. And it’s not the only article making stupid and scary claims about this.
Let’s be critical for a moment and think. Ok, so starting from the top – your IP address is going to be sent to Microsoft. So what? Any website you visit could do that. Not to mention the claim that Microsoft could get your street address based on the IP, which is absurd – sure, they could find out the country and possibly the city where you live, but any more precise than that? Not going to happen without the assistance of your ISP.
Then there are things like this: codecs, certificates, DRM, online services. Which of these is actually something that you would not want to get updated relatively automatically? I don’t like it when my codecs don’t work, I don’t like it when I’m bugged to install some certificate or asked whether it’s valid or not…
The long list of services that steal your data also include things that are already in Windows XP, such as the user experience enhancement things, which you can disable. A lot of the information being sent Microsoft’s way is also quite insignificant.
Windows XP also had its share of application and services that gathered information. But guess what? Most of them haven’t worked for a long time.
Being critical
With everyone going on about how Vista is so bad, it’s pretty easy to get tempted to join the crowd and not think critically. Everyone said Windows XP sucked when it arrived!
It’s also difficult to find a more objective point of view on how Vista compares to other operating systems, like Mac OS X which has lately gained a lot of popularity. There is, however, an interesting looking Apple vs. Vista -challenge at the Marketing Ninja blog, which has just started rolling, so we’ll see how it’ll turn out to be.
No matter how Vista will turn out to be, I’m going to stick to XP as long as I can. The reinstalling of all apps, games and other stuff is just too big of a hassle to do, unless there’s some serious reasoning behind it.