Windows Vista Is A Piece Of Crap

I bought a new home PC the other day and spent part of last evening getting it set up. My old home computer was an old-reliable I'd bought about 6 or 8 years ago, and had done some memory and hardware upgrades on it. But it finally gave up the ghost while I was in Idaho. Probable cause: power supply failure. I could have fixed it, but I figured I'd upgrade. The old one was under-powered and sluggish, probably due to the bane of all geriatric Windows-based machines: registry bloat. And computers are getting so darn cheap these days, I got a more powerful computer than my current desktop at work for less money than I spent on the last upgrades I did to the home PC.

The big question I had going into the electronics store was: Mac or Windows? I've dealt with Macs before, and like them, but I've worked much more with Windows. I'm not a big fan of Windows, but I can find my way around. And what is still the case is that Macs are much more expensive than Windows machines. You can argue all you want about how you get what you pay for, but it's hard for a moderately competent home computer user to want to shell out several hundred more dollars. If I had money to burn, I'd buy a Mac. I'd also own a Lexus instead of a Plymouth minivan, have a rack of better clothes, and would probably have leveraged my home. So I bought a Compaq PC for $400. That was just for the computer, mouse, and keyboard. I had just bought a nice monitor before the old computer died, and have a relatively new printer and scanner.

The PC had Windows Vista pre-installed. I paid the guy at the store $60 to "optimize" the computer, i.e. get rid of all the other pre-installed crap-ware and make me a system recovery disk. You can't buy a new PC these days without Vista, which is Window's most recent operating system. My laptop and my work computer both operate under Windows XP, which I am used to and for the most part am happy with. I have some experience with Vista, setting up my daughter's laptop, and it was not a good experience. And after the experience I've just had messing with my new home PC, I'm here to tell you that Windows Vista by itself fully justifies those recent smarmy and annoying Mac Guy vs. Windows Guy commercials. I almost shoveled the PC back in its box and went and exchanged it (plus about $800) for a Mac.

Here's what I want out of an OS. That it work. I don't need flashy. If a feature proves itself to me, I'll use it. But I've seldom found a desktop gadget, browser plug-in, or side utility that blew my hair back. I also like control, which is one of the things I like about PCs. Mac takes care of things for you. You click a mouse and stuff happens. You don't know what causes it, or what the computer is doing. You don't know where your files and apps really are, and it's hard to mess with the OS. Mac does this very, very well, so you hardly miss your sense of control.

My desire for control is one of the reasons I like apps to be somewhat segregated. I don't need to have a word processor that is fully integrated with everything else on my machine: all my email contacts, recipes, financial records, etc. It's one of the reasons I cheered when Windows was forced to keep its browser, Internet Explorer, separate from its (older) operating systems. But apparently, Windows no longer has to do that. IE is part of Vista. And there was where I ran into trouble.

I set up my computer, plugged in all the cables, including the internet connection, and voila! It worked. Then I started installing software. I first installed the anti-virus/anti-spyware programs. Then, I immediately installed Firefox, and thank God I did. It ended up being my lifeline. I next installed software for my peripheral devices, my printer and scanner. The printer was almost new, and gave me no problem. The scanner, a good one made by Canon, was where the fun began. The scanner is probably less than a year older than Vista itself, but was not Vista compatible. Vista warned me that the scanner might not work properly if I went ahead and tried to install it. It said the problem was with Canon, and were no more specific than that. It did not tell me that trying to install the scanner software would disable a part of my OS. I went to the Canon web site but could not find a Vista update for the model scanner I had, a strike against Canon, which in my experience has excellent customer support. So I said to myself, "What the heck. What's the worst that could happen?"

The software seemed to install fine, and the scanner even worked, so I went on to do other things. Then the operating system complained about something or other I was doing and brought up a link. I clicked the link and nothing happened. I tried to bring up IE, and the computer gave me a message that IE had to shut down (before really even starting). No matter what I tried, I couldn't launch the Microsoft browser. I started wondering if maybe I should re-install the browser. But I quickly figured out that would entail re-installing the whole OS, since Microsoft had integrated the browser with the OS. Install IE version 8 Beta? Hold on. Stay cool. Fire up Firefox and try to find out if there's a workaround.

I did a Google search on the error message I was getting. It turns out that the problem I was having was very common, and seemed to be caused by many things. The quick fix is to go into the control settings and reset the browser. I did this, and the browser started working again. But every time I shut the browser down, it would need resetting to start up again. Not a good thing if you want your browser to remember your settings, passwords, history, etc. So I browsed around among all the Google links and quickly surmised that, as I expected, the culprit was probably Omni-Page, a third party utility that came with my Canon scanner software. I had never used it before, so I uninstalled it and everything worked fine. It still does.

But I'm not happy and will remember this experience the next time I buy a computer. I figure this episode has pushed me one step closer to going to a Mac. Windows XP is a fine operating system, and Vista seems to be mostly fluff and geegaws with not much value added. It seems like Microsoft wanted to put a lot of the ooh-ahh stuff into the OS that Windows users make fun of Mac users for being impressed with. But, as usual when Microsoft copies Mac, they miss the point, they don't do a good job, and they take something that's not broken and break it. Now they've gone against one of the things I like about Windows. They've integrated their browser with their OS in an unnecessary way and made it susceptible to failure for reasons that seem totally unconnected to the function of a browser. And the whole experience brings up a raft of questions: Why would Microsoft put out an operating system that, when incompatibilities arise with another piece of software, rather than disabling that piece of software it disables a part of its OS? Why, if Windows knows what's causing a problem, is it not able to recommend better solutions to the user? Why, when IE fails, doesn't the OS Help system let the user know that he can reset IE? Why would a piece of third-part scanner software cause a browser to fail completely? Why have I still not been able to figure out how to get my daughter's Vista laptop to talk to her apartment's wireless router? It's not the router because I can walk in to her apartment with my XP laptop and log on, no problem. It's not the wireless device on her laptop because her laptop connects to the router at my house. Why all of these other problems all over the internet?

I know the Mac is not a panacea. I've had a few head-banging experiences with Macs. But Macs seem to have gotten better over the years. Vista has gotten me closer to buying the Lexus.