OK, this post is more about my first and nightmarish experience with Vista than a product management tip.
Over the weekend, my aunt visiting from New York asked me if I could figure out what was wrong with her PC. She said her problem was that she just could not surf to hotmail.com using IE, but could happily get there using Firefox (go figure!!). She could get to msn and then click on My MSN and log into hotmail, but the text of all messages was blank (who would want to read text of emails anyways – after all the from and to and subject lines is all one needs, right?).
I told her that I should be able to easily fix this by uninstalling IE and reinstalling it. Last wise words spoken by me. I figured this was going to be a ten minute job – wrong – thanks to Vista. Found out that you just cannot uninstall IE on Vista – nor could I find what version of IE was installed because trying to do that started giving a never ending script error.
So started googling for solutions – so what do I find – every other Tom, Dick and Harry has run into the same issue – IE7 wants to ask the user if he wants the phishing filter on and a bunch of other settings (runonce.aspx). It is supposed to ask only once, but it has a bug before it gets to ask you. So it thinks it has never asked you and always gives you a blank page.
After 3 hours of trying to grapple with this and trying everything from using restore points (which fails) and editing registry to add two dwords that MS recommends you manually add, I just gave up. I told my aunt to stick with Firefox. She dropped her laptop on her way out – she said it was an accident, but I am not sure if she dropped it in sheer frustration – I would if I were her.
MS wants to discontinue support for XP by Jan 2009 and start shoving Vista down everyone’s throat – they are doing it to consumers now and businesses are next. What a great customer service? I think their slogan now is “Do all evil”
Then I read this article – Vista’s big problem: 92 percent of developers ignoring it – what a surprise?
It is amazing how MS just does not get it anymore. I think Bill Gates was smart once again – he quickly got off this Titanic before it is headed for the iceberg.
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Software Product Manager by Gopal Shenoy 
Unfortunately, consumers have no choice. Unless the computer companies like Dell and HP stand up for us and demand that they will only install XP, MS gets its way. The only other community that they will listen to is the developer community and we know that they are on our side based on the article.
I have MAC with BootCamp and I installed Vista on it. It all works great except…- The Vista does not find any internet connection in the area. After hours of work I called Microsoft (here in Germany), the call disconnected 3 time (you pay extra for calling them, 40cent/1Minute) I was doing all this just to hear at the end from the technical support that ”sorry, we cant help you, our service will cost you money, you should go with it to the place where you bought the Vista”. What a great answer of Microsoft! First, I bought it in AMAZON, second also if it was a computer store, there are chance they will not know what to do.
So I told him ”If I do not find help I stay with MAC and that’s all, I will have no other choice”. His answer – ”well, if that is what you want, just do so”
Maybe it was one lazy worker there, but for my it represent the whole Microsoft International.
Microsoft needs to just cut their losses, and
scrap Vista, before it scraps THEM !
I bought a Dell 6 months ago with XP on board, figuring I’d get another couple of years out of my investment into the PC/Win architecture. After that I’m switching to Apple. Cooler hardware, cooler OS, and way cooler CEO.
A buddy of mine runs all of his PC applications on Mac using Parallels, and swears it works fine. I don’t want to go through the headache/expense of updating all my software.
Are you listening Gates and Ballmer?