Stay Away From Microsoft VISTA

After spending days of frustration making my programs Vista compatible, with mixed success, I unexpectedly feel like I need to add my voice to the growing chorus who are saying that Windows Vista is the worst of all worlds, and a total unmitigated disaster of an Operating System.

Now I am not a knee-jerk Microsoft hater.  Personally i have a deep distrust and dislike for Apple and their marketing-scam-driven design methodology, and having used linux for a few years and dealt with linux servers for a while, i can honestly say i am not a fan of linux.  But every time i try to cut MS some slack they seem determined to prove they really are as f*cked up as their worst critics claim.

XP Pro is a fine operating system.
Microsoft Vista is a disaster.  Stay far away from it.

By far the worst thing is all this bullshit braindead User Access Control and the entire support system around it that is designed to improve security but instead winds up making using the operating system like living with the most annoying roomate you ever had in college.  If this is what a corporation with a reputation for User Interface testing produces, i'm going to rethink the entire notion of user interface testing.  I'd rather have my cat design a UAC system -- at least the cat knows what every damn firewall program knows -- you need to have ways to whitelist applications, etc.

But for me by far the most evil, harmfull, idiotic thing MS Vista does is with regards to the "Virtualization" approach to keeping old programs compatible.  Basically to solve compatibility problems with programs whose authors were stupid enough to use Microsoft's genius Registry System (another horribly stupid idea with everlasting negative reprecussions) or dares to create files in ITS OWN DIRECTORY, Vista tries to help these programs by creating secret hidden copies of the files they create, which neither users nor the programs will ever be able to find.  Best yet, it tricks the programs into thinking these files are in different locations.  Oh want more?  Ok, there can be multiple copies of these files, one in the original directory (which are now unbeknownst to the program unwritable) and then another copy in the secret directory.  Oh users with admin privileges will see the files in the normal directory, others get the secret hidden shadow copies.  Now watch the fun when users think they are working with one file but are really working with another.  More fun: If a program deletes the file -- guess what? it's still there? no it's not, its the other older shadow copy!  Please shoot the person at microsoft who thought this was a good idea.

You can read more about the virtual store here: http://msdn2.microso...ibrary/bb530410.aspx

Look, if they wanted to solve this problem they could simply have said, that all programs which need to write files in such directories need to be installed and set to run in a compatibility mode where everything works as expected in win XP.  This current solution is a total unmitigated disaster for everyone involved.

Here's another lesson for designers: Don't try to be so f*cking clever writing all kinds of secret behind the scenes stuff like this -- the result is a train wreck.

To "help" programmers microsoft also wrote this system for "embedding manifests" inside exe's which lets you tell Vista to stop it's f*cking nonsense with your program.  Getting this thing to work is an utter nightmare.  Best of all you won't get any feedback as you struggle to figure out why/how on god's earth you do this.  Embedding a manifest is incredibly convoluted and error prone.

You honestly get the feeling that there must be some cabal in Microsoft which is trying to bring the company down.  If there is, can you hurry up so we can get something better?

Stay away from MS Vista.