lproven | An amusing review of Vista

From Jem Matzlan at Softwareinreview.com. (Print view link, for your convenience.)

I particularly like the intro for readers unfamiliar with Windows:

Traditionally it has had very poor native hardware support, relying heavily on third-party manufacturers to provide drivers individually. Such drivers are frequently of questionable design quality and have been known to cause system instability, and require frequent updates without user notification. Even many of Microsoft's own hardware products do not work well with some modern versions of Windows.

Software support in Windows is hit-or-miss. Recent versions of Windows have abysmal backwards compatibility with older Windows and MS-DOS binaries. This is particularly troublesome for people who rely on programs that are expensive to upgrade or are distributed by software companies that are no longer in business. Proprietary software manufacturers such as Adobe (and indeed Microsoft itself) generally require that users buy upgrades to existing expensive proprietary Windows software packages in order to use them on new Windows releases. As far as included desktop applications are concerned, Windows has always offered feature-weak and frequently insecure programs like Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Notepad, and Paint. None of the programs included with Windows are, by any stretch of the imagination, competitive in their markets, even among free software projects.

Overall, Windows has always been a mediocre but relatively easy to use operating system. It functions more as a platform for installing third-party software than it does as an operating environment in its own right.

:¬)