I just started Windows XP (in Parallels) for the first time in a while to do some IE8 testing and try to download the Windows 7 RC for future testing.
It’s astonishingly bad. Everything about it. Windows. IE8. Windows Update. Microsoft Update. Automatic updates. Windows Geniune Advantage™. MSN Messenger. The Desktop Cleanup Wizard. Everything. I can’t believe how many people use Windows every day, and how much collective aggravation, wasted time, and damage to our industry has been caused by Microsoft’s sloppiness.
Using Windows for 10 minutes after using Macs full-time for 5 years really helps put all of this in perspective.
I’ve truly never used Vista. Not even once. But I bet Windows 7 won’t be any better — none of Microsoft’s deep-rooted issues that caused Vista’s problems have changed.
As anyone who’s followed me for a while now knows, I’m a flight simulator engineer. Some few years back the company I work(ed) for made the economic decision to migrate from a Unix platform (albeit of many flavours) to Windows NT. The idea was to save costs by replacing expensive proprietary Unix hardware (SGI, IBM, etc) with cheaper PC hardware. Linux wasn’t mature enough at the time hence the choice of NT. In both my opinion and that of several ‘old timers’ this was a big mistake but it’s too late to correct that now.
Anyway the point of this rambling nonsense is that I’ve just had a 7 month break away from the simulator world and hence away from Windows, using only my Macs running with OSX. I’ve now been back on a customer site for 10 days and already I HATE WINDOWS! It’s clumsy, cumbersome, unreliable and infuriatingly slow. Give me a Unix platform every time.
