The Rich Geek

As most of you are probably aware Microsoft is planning to stop selling new licenses of windows XP on June 30th (thats tomorrow). I for one think this is quite foolish. However From Microsoft’s perspective they probably see it as a brilliant business move.

my reaction to the news…. HOLY FREAKIN CRAP WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!! everyone head for the hills it’s y2k all over again! Stock up on bullets, AA batteries, jelly beans ,food, & water! (not necessarily in that order). I’m telling you people we’re headed for a computing disaster of biblical proportions. We’re talking Blue screens of death, plagues of viral identity theft, e-mail never showing up, and software incompatibility like you wouldn’t believe. No really you might as well just give up and go live in a cave thats how bad it’s going to get.

Ok I’m being a bit alarmist it’s not like we’re really all going to die or that suddenly we’ll all wake up tomorrow and XP won’t work anymore. But heres the thing my friends, Vista is a disaster. Vista is like windows ME the sequel. I know I know before all you Vista apologists jump on me hear me out. It’s not just the usual load of bugs and issues a new OS always seems to have (which btw is a whole other issue we could discuss), because I agree XP had it’s share of issues when it debued.. Vista has a load of other issues that are far more concerning. Theres the extreme resource hogging and Bloat of the program, the Driver signing requirements, the fact that it’s just brimming with DRM, and then theres all the software compatibility problems.

The Bloat and resource hogging is especially irritating to me. I remember when each OS release meant that you had a faster, more stable, and generally just better OS to work with. Not anymore. Now you get a program that runs like molasses and takes more than three times the resources just to do that. I mean vista basic uses 15 GB of HD space while windows XP home uses 1.5 GB (thats TEN times the freakin space) and they do basically the same thing with little improvement. What could they possibly be doing with all that space? Thats flippin crazy I mean all i can think of is thats where they hide the secret artificial intelligence that will allow Bill Gates to turn all our windows based PCs against us and rule the world with an army of Dell soldiers.

Aside from that the most worrying thing to me is the DRM. DRM is a cancer that needs to be stopped or it will only continue to spread into every facet of our daily lives. It will destroy our society if we let it, and it has no legitimate reason to exist. DRM doesn’t stop the pirates, all it does is treat customers like criminals and make honest peoples use of their own property inconvenient (or in some cases impossible). Why does Microsoft feel the need to sell us out to the RIAA and MPAA? Honestly they could tell them to screw off and theres not much those two could do against Microsoft. I mean really do you think they would really not allow customers to use movies and music on windows? That would be pretty suicidal. If Bill and Microsoft just stood up and said HEY guess what we’re not gonna play this game it would all go away.

Unfortunately thats not the case…. and the sad truth is that Microsoft and Apple may be working together to create a world in which DRM and Trusted computing rule our lives and dictate to us what we’re allowed to do with out own computers. A world in which our data is at the mercy of those who license us the software to use it. It drives me crazy how so many of these companys just can’t seem to understand that nobody wants this bullshit. All this does is piss off customers and really thats all it ever will do.

In the end I think if Microsoft really wants to sell vista they could do it without eliminating choice. I mean after all if it’s so great won’t people eventually make the switch on their own? But regardless XP is a mature OS that could continue to be a useful and great OS for many years if Microsoft continued to support it. I think if they made XP their basic windows lowered the cost and continued to make updates for it then it would do nothing but help their bottom line. But that would just be CRAZY right… oh wait no the other thing. It would MAKE SENSE! I guess I expect too much. So heres the thing, I know not everyone agrees with me but many people do. So if you really want to get them to listen us the customers theres a few things we could do.

1) If you buy a new computer preloaded with vista and you uninstall it to load something else. Make sure you send Microsoft an e-mail, or better yet an old fashioned snail mail letter (the dead tree kind). If enough people do this they can’t keep using the preinstalled systems as “evidence” of how many people “choose” to use Vista (seriously how pathetic is that). Better yet if enough of us do this then eventually they’ll be so buried in mail and complaints they’ll have to do something to appease us just to make it stop.

2) Buy a Mac. I know self explanatory right.

3) The last thing we could all do which might just solve our problem long term is to turn open source. Try to use Linux, open office, Firefox, and any other open source alternatives. If we hurt their bottom lines bad enough they’ll have to do what makes their customers happy and make a quality product in order to compete.

I still can’t get over the fact it takes 15 GB of HD space just to load the damn thing…. I mean seriously 15? Why? What are you using the space for man? TELL ME!!!! I mean I remember when a freakin 20 GB hard drive was like HOLY CRAP what could we ever fill that with, and now the operating system takes almost that much space? How does that make sense? Seriously people we all just need to tell Microsoft to stick vista right up their ass!

Thats my word! Peace out y’all!

~The Amazing Mr. J