An Open Letter to John C. Dvorak about Vista’s Death
First I have to disclose that this isn’t entirely an open letter. I did mail it to him also, but who knows if it will get read. I just read an article he wrote entitled "Vista Death Watch" about how Vista is a dead product. For starters, Vista is not a dead product, and I think service pack 1 will breath new life into it. I also hope people will understand that Vista is not meant to run on that computer that you drug out your closet and cleaned all of the cat hair off of.
I would be shocked if someone running a new PC with current software is "upgrading" back to XP.
With that, here is my letter:
John,
I wanted to share an opinion with you on the entire Vista thing. I think there is one major thing that Microsoft just HAS to do to be able make any progress as an OS. If you look at how Mac OS has evolved, it pretty much always has had to function with an emulator for backwards compatibility. They did it with "Classic" for OS 9 and with Rosetta for PPC with the intel switch. Microsoft tries to make the ridiculous aftermarket of products and software totally compatible so people who are still *cough* running a dos based app for this or a Windows 98 app for that. Microsoft has to draw a line in the sand, and scrap this backward compatibility/any old hardware will work strategy. It can be done, perhaps the super scaled down version of XP they are selling abroad to thwart piracy. But leverage virtual PC and a lite version of the XP OS that they intend to maintain for a reasonable period. And make Windows Vista 2.0 groundbreaking, use it to launch the new sql based file system and truly innovate.
We all know John is sometimes cranky just to be cranky, and just browsing his most recent articles on PC Magazine shows:
- The Google Phone is Doomed
- The Vista Death Watch
- Web Site Entropy
- What’s Wrong with Open-Source Software?
Definitely a negative tone eh? Oh well, he has been around as long as I can remember reading about PCs and has a respected opinion, I give him credit. I am just hoping he will respond and admit that Microsoft hasn’t necessarily lost focus on the operating system, but kept too much focus on making sure it works for everyone no matter what they are using or what they are running on it.
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Comments
I know of several folks who are junking Vista on their BRAND NEW machines, which came with Vista installed, and installing XP instead.
Be shocked if you like. It’s the truth.
[Editor: I love how people with these super constructive comments always leave no way to contact them]
Great response. I’m baffled by Dvorak half the time. I don’t think the man actually has an opinion about anything, which allows him to write something bad about everything with a straight face.