March 10, 2008
An awe-inspiring Vista. Not.
Some dissatisfied PC owners have had such an awful time with Microsoft's craptastic new operating system, Vista, that they've decided to sue the software giant.
Here’s one story of a Vista upgrade early last year that did not go well. Jon, let’s call him, (bear with me — I’ll reveal his full identity later) upgrades two XP machines to Vista. Then he discovers that his printer, regular scanner and film scanner lack Vista drivers. He has to stick with XP on one machine just so he can continue to use the peripherals.
Did Jon simply have bad luck? Apparently not. When another person, Steven, hears about Jon’s woes, he says drivers are missing in every category — “this is the same across the whole ecosystem.”
Then there’s Mike, who buys a laptop that has a reassuring “Windows Vista Capable” logo affixed. He thinks that he will be able to run Vista in all of its glory, as well as favorite Microsoft programs like Movie Maker. His report: “I personally got burned.” His new laptop — logo or no logo — lacks the necessary graphics chip and can run neither his favorite video-editing software nor anything but a hobbled version of Vista. “I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine,” he says.
It turns out that Mike is clearly not a naïf. He’s Mike Nash, a Microsoft vice president who oversees Windows product management. And Jon, who is dismayed to learn that the drivers he needs don’t exist? That’s Jon A. Shirley, a Microsoft board member and former president and chief operating officer. And Steven, who reports that missing drivers are anything but exceptional, is in a good position to know: he’s Steven Sinofsky, the company’s senior vice president responsible for Windows.
Now, those hapless Microsoft execs obviously aren't the plaintiffs; they're just some of the unfortunate souls who must regret upgrading from XP -- and whose e-mails were turned over to Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen as part of the discovery process in the duo's legal assault on the Washington-based computing behemoth, which has been upgraded to a class-action suit.
I take no joy in their troubles (he tapped out on the keyboard of his reliable, remarkably stable OS-X powered iBook G4), but those e-mails sure are ... a bit embarrassing for a company determined to prove that Apple's not the only game in town when it comes to elegant and easy-to-use operating systems.
More on the suit -- and Vista's suckitude -- courtesy of the New York Times here.
Posted by Mike Lief at March 10, 2008 09:43 PM
| TrackBack