Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Vista has been all over the news recently, and as I expected most reviews are not favorable. The conclusion seems to be that Vista is a good upgrade for those in need of a new machine, but it's not worth the money or hassle to upgrade.
Arstechnica had an blurb about how 75% of Vista reviews mention OS X. Most reviews point out that the look and feel of Vista is a complete rip of OS X, and most of the bundled applications like those for photos and movies have been on the Mac for years and are much more advanced.
The review at The Register is particularly harsh
So, there's our first look at Vista. It does benefit from a lot of good ideas, many of them Apple's, of course, but good nevertheless. It simply doesn't work very well, unfortunately. There are serious problems with execution; it's not polished; it's not ready. It should not be on the market, and certainly not for the outrageous prices being charged. Don't buy it, at least until after the first service pack is out. Don't pay to be a beta tester
In this interview on CNN, Bill Gates gets very nervous when asked if Vista was going after the Mac OS look.
Not surprisingly, Vista sales are not doing well. Steve Ballmer is blaming piracy for the low sales. Yeah, that'll make the share holders feel better about Microsoft. All this and Leopard hasn't even hit the market (or potentially new versions of iLife and iWork).
A couple weeks ago Best Buy had large inserts promoting the Vista launch, discounting new PCs and offering other promotions. Now that the buzz has died down, looks like they are actually promoting the switch to Mac! Ars had another article about how Macs hold their resale value. Macs are more expensive than crappy Dells (though only a little more expensive than comparably quality machines like Thinkpads).
Finally, a new iPod video ripper has just been released. MediaFork seems like a simple way to go from DVD to iPod. There aren't a lot of settings to mess with, just insert your DVD and hit go.
Arstechnica had an blurb about how 75% of Vista reviews mention OS X. Most reviews point out that the look and feel of Vista is a complete rip of OS X, and most of the bundled applications like those for photos and movies have been on the Mac for years and are much more advanced.
The review at The Register is particularly harsh
So, there's our first look at Vista. It does benefit from a lot of good ideas, many of them Apple's, of course, but good nevertheless. It simply doesn't work very well, unfortunately. There are serious problems with execution; it's not polished; it's not ready. It should not be on the market, and certainly not for the outrageous prices being charged. Don't buy it, at least until after the first service pack is out. Don't pay to be a beta tester
In this interview on CNN, Bill Gates gets very nervous when asked if Vista was going after the Mac OS look.
Not surprisingly, Vista sales are not doing well. Steve Ballmer is blaming piracy for the low sales. Yeah, that'll make the share holders feel better about Microsoft. All this and Leopard hasn't even hit the market (or potentially new versions of iLife and iWork).
A couple weeks ago Best Buy had large inserts promoting the Vista launch, discounting new PCs and offering other promotions. Now that the buzz has died down, looks like they are actually promoting the switch to Mac! Ars had another article about how Macs hold their resale value. Macs are more expensive than crappy Dells (though only a little more expensive than comparably quality machines like Thinkpads).
Finally, a new iPod video ripper has just been released. MediaFork seems like a simple way to go from DVD to iPod. There aren't a lot of settings to mess with, just insert your DVD and hit go.