For my sins, I run Vista. I want to kick the Microsoft habit, but years ago I invested in copies of a few programmes I enjoy using (Wavelab, for instance) that need Windows, so it's a hard habit to kick. I do frequently kick myself for buying Vista instead of XP when I upgraded from Windows 2000, because Vista is worse on several important fronts.
It strikes me that alternate versions of Windows are cruddy. Win 3.1 was, by the standards of the era, OK (Mac zealots may kill me for saying this, but I couldn't afford a Mac back then and my graphical OS choices were limited to Win 3.1 or OS/2, which was widely unsupported). Win95 was a big leap forward aesthetically, but actually pretty broken underneath. Win98 looked like Win95 but generally it worked. Then there was a weird flurry, and Windows 2000 and WinME came out around the same time. WinME was roundly and rightly reviled: it was rotten. Windows 2000 was actually pretty good, and was recommended by Martin Walker of Sound On Sound magazine as a good OS for running music software, which is why I opted for it.
Then WinXP came out. XP is still widely regarded as the best Windows release yet. It was followed by Vista, which is viewed in the same sort of light as WinME and Win95: as an attempt to be innovative, marred by multiple technological failings.
The worst part about being a Vista user is that life doesn't get better with updates. A while back, a Vista update broke my sound drivers. No amount of rolling back, reinstalling or other jiggery-pokery has yet restored them. At some stage, I'll have to reinstall and start from scratch, or just ditch Vista altogether, if I want to get my sound back. (This has, obviously, been a major blow to my ability to enjoy online music, videos, or VoIP at home, and is a general hassle. The only reasons I haven't reinstalled yet are that (1) it's going to take a long time - I'd need to block off a whole weekend for it, because of the amount of software I'd have to reinstall -and (2) that it's quite interesting being a hearing-impaired computer user for a while; it's validated my opinion that subtitles, transcripts and other accessibility measures are important!)
The latest ignominy is that Microsoft just installed a Firefox plugin without my permission. I ran Windows Update (well, if you don't want your Windows machine to get pwned, then you don't have a choice but to run it frequently), noticed that FireFox crashed mysteriously during the update, and then found, after I'd rebooted, that there was a FireFox plugin installed that I hadn't installed myself. Apparently this plugin was forced on - who knows? - hundreds of thousands? millions? - of unsuspecting Vista users. How shady is that? And the thing - it's called Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant
- isn't terribly easy to remove, either.
For me, it's the last straw. In the long run, I'm planning to follow Scott Carpenter's path. As of now, I'm not planning to spend any more money on Microsoft products, ever, unless they're being sold at a loss - and even then, I'll be cautious. I won't be upgrading any of the software I own that requires Windows, because that might require me to invest in the next version of Windows, or the one after that, etc, and I won't be recommending Microsoft products to anyone I know or work with. And dear readers, if I should forget this statement someday and misguidedly purchase another product from the evil empire, you have my permission to hold my feet to the fire over the matter until I am good and sorry.*
* I am permitting myself one exception. Where archived files are in formats that cannot be read other than by Microsoft software, I will use it - and maybe even pay for it - in future if I need to use such files. But I plan to reduce (to zero? If I can!) the number of my own files that are in such a state, and I encourage you to too, especially if you're someone who relies on me for tech support, so that the likelihood of my having to do this is minimal.