“Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista” Rebutal

A small article posted on Slashdot followed another article about Ten Reasons to Buy Windows Vista. Well, I read the article and, to be honest, none of author’s points are worth. When you go point-by-point, they are so weak compared to what we got now that isn’t even worth putting them under a microscope, but…

1. Security, security, security:really? Vista is still on beta and there is an official patch for a security vulnerability. Is that really secure, then? What about the thousands of critical bugs open on Windows XP? They were all fixed? If they were, why they are open on XP? Even more, if they aren’t fixable on XP, who can say they are fixable on Vista? Windows is windows, security is an underdog feature.
2. Internet Explorer 7: Oh my God! It looks like Firefox! It must be better! Yeah, right. If I want to have Firefox features, why won’t I use Firefox then? Not even that, but Firefox 1.5, already out for two months has better CSS support than the unreleased IE 7.
3. Righteous eye candy: More eye candy is always nice, but there is limit for everything. For a few days already, I’m running Xgl with Compiz, which allows some very nice things, and I’m using all of them. A co-worked said it would be nice if now the fonts had some effect, like appearing slowly as you typed. My concern with that is that it is something that would take your attention; showing a cube when your switch workspaces or make windows dance when you move them around is something you do when you already took your attention away. There are somethings pointed on the article, but it seems that some very alpha software for Linux did quite the same thing. How that can be a motif to buy Vista?
4. Desktop search: one word: Beagle. About two years around, if my memory works well.
5. Better updates: Hm… will it update my QuickTime installation? Or my World of Warcraft? Or, as usual, will it be only to Windows core components? Will it update the sotware to fix security problems or will pick a version that will change the way the software looks and works, like they did with Windows Media Player 9? Even more, will it update the Windows to next version when it come out? How better is that?
6. More media: Let’s see:
   • Update Windows Media Player: a player is more about codecs than the player itself and that’s why MPlayer is so popular on Linux: it has a very simplistic interface and don’t get in the way.
     
   • Windows Photo Gallery: what is a photo gallery anyway? I usually post them on a website and the software there takes the task of manage it. Also, with the so called “Web 2.0″, this would probably be used by more and more people, making such application worthless.
7. Better backups: Ok, I must agree: backups are important. But there are years that I don’t do a full backup of my data and never lost anything important. Maybe that’s because I’m using a system that takes user data on a different approach. Even more, backups are something people must be taught to be used; better tools won’t help if people don’t have the culture of making backups. Also, a system stable enough to not crash, with a file system capable of supporting a bad application makes a backup tool useless, I think. On the other hand, a tool to transfer data from a computer to another, or from a device to other, is something worth having around (hello dd).
8. Peer-to-peer collaboration: I can point two old things: Apple did something a long time ago, there were some screenshots floating around but I can’t recall the name right now. Even more, there is VNC, which is an old and proved technology. And it is available to Windows, if you need it.
9. Quick setup: Installation in 15 minutes. Nice. If you take the Network setup out of Ubuntu installation (where it updates the repositories information), you get a system running in 20 minutes; if you want a system faster, you can install Slackware on less than 10 minutes… on an old Pentium 2, with a busted HD and a crappy video card and have a full feature system, with browser, graphical interface, and everything else. I did that. Even more, why installing it in 15 minutes is so important? Would I need to install it over and over again, like every Windows?

So, the greatest question is: why should I “buy” Windows Vista if every pointed feature can be found on other operating systems? Even more, two of the pointed features seem to be worth only if you need some continual reinstall of the sysmte, like every old Windows system.

The only reason to keep Windows around is for games, and even that there is only one that said it will only run on Vista. As far as games can run on old Windows installation, there is no reason to buy Vista. No reason at all.