Microsoft Vista (MSFT)

Here's my advice about Windows Vista. If you are thinking about upgrading your computer to it, DON'T. In the language of the King James Version of the Bible - SEE THOU DO IT NOT! Wait to use Vista when you buy a new computer! And perhaps, the better advice, avoid Vista altogether and buy a Mac. It's not worth the hassle to upgrade your old machine, even if it is fairly new. I spent hours last night and early this morning recovering from a total computer crash due to an installation of Vista that just stopped about half way through. And to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, I tried to re-install it a 2nd time, but to no avail. Stepping on thumb tacks while slipping razor blades between my toes, while also drinking turpentine with crushed iced and having my forehead rubbed hard with course #30 sand paper would have been more fun than the Vista experience. (Don't you hate it when step on those thumb tacks? I hate when that happens!!).

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are to be congratulated for concocting what amounts to a scheme to mass mug people out of $170 each by providing what turns out to be trashy software that can kill your computer during installation. Don't fall for it, don't put more money into the pockets of those bums Gates and Franken-Ballmer. Just WAIT until the kinks are worked out... which means WAIT at least a year. If Gates and Ballmer were the guys who come to take care of my lawn, they would have been over and would have killed my lawn and still charged me, but promise to come back in a year with a "service pack" that would reverse the damage.

Some have had no trouble loading, while others have. Vista installation woes seem to be random and unpredictable. A number of companies have advised their people to avoid loading Vista into company issued machines, or even personal machines because of the possibility of incompatibility with corporate systems. MSFT was under the gun to get this thing out, but it was clearly not ready for primetime. This would be like a major drug company rushing a drug through phase III, releasing it and then killing a bunch of people. Thank pitch forks and pointed ears (since that's what I think of when I think of Gates and Ballmer) that MSFT is not a drug company!

I've been there early for all the big updates of Windows in the past. Hands down, Vista is the worst upgrade experience I've ever had; loading Windows 3.1 with the 14 diskettes or whatever it was, was a better experience. I've got a media center PC here with dual core Pentium and a couple of gigs of memory - the works; so the machine wasn't deficient. I also took the precaution of partitioning the drive so that Vista would be installed to pristine sectors, etc. All of those measures, and being advised by the Vista advisor that my pc made the grade, made no difference; it was DOA - a black screen with a rapidly blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner and nothing more.

By the way, it's clear that Gates is yet another celebrity chump who has sunk to creating his own reality of what's right and wrong. I'm not the only one who has noticed Gates' disconnect with the masses. MacWorld writer Peter Cohen has written an excellent article, "Bill Gates loses his grip on reality". Sure, Cohen is on the side of the enemy, but his analysis of the recent Newsweek interview of Gates is spot on. Gates is lying, or delusional when he says Microsoft has been the innovator filched by Apple. No way that Microshaft is the innovator, not when I can't load their crappy Vista OS on to my computer without it turning into a complete debacle.