Posted on 02/28/2009 11:10:45 PM PST by Swordmaker
It's official, Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system gets the prize for being the most overhyped, underperforming information and communication technology (ICT) project. Windows Vista garnered 5,222 of 6,043 votes (86 percent) entered via the Web to snag top honors in the first-ever Fiasco Awards announced in Barcelona, Spain, today, beating out other contenders, including Google's Lively virtual world, the One Laptop per Child computer (developed by the Nicholas Negroponte-chaired One Laptop Per Child Association, Inc.) and Second Life. Second prize went to SAGA, the oft-malfunctioning administration and academic management system developed by Spain's Catalan Education Department for public school teachers in Catalonia.
Vista was announced in July 2005 and hit the market in January 2007 after a mega PR blitz by Microsoft, which promised it would be a slick, secure successor to the company's popular Windows XP operating system. Vista came with an eye-catching graphical user interface, and Microsoft positioned the operating system's Windows Media Center software as a tool that would make the PC the new hub of home entertainment systems. What Microsoft made less clear was that many customers couldn't run Vista without upgrading their PCs.
What's more, the Fiasco Awards Web site points out, the new operating system was complicated to navigate and had compatibility problems with many programs and hardware drivers, leading many people to just stick with Windows XP. Vista was such a dismal failure that many PC makers even recommended that consumers steer clear of it.
The company's recent introduction of Windows 7—Vista's successor after only two years—indicates that even Microsoft views Vista with disappointment, according to the awards organizers. The lesson, they said: more testing should be done to check reliability and performance before rolling out major product-marketing campaigns.
The purpose of the Fiasco awards is to "promote critical spirit and a positive attitude towards failure, which is a necessary stage in the road to success," say the award's organizers, who are identified on the Web site only as a "group of people linked to the ICT (information and communication technology) sector." The site notes that Thomas Edison made more than 1,000 attempts before inventing the light bulb, "so he learned how not to do it in more than 1,000 different ways."
Other finalists: Second Life (the virtual world's Web software must be downloaded on one's PC, which excludes people who don't own their own computers), One Laptop per Child (a plan hatched by the developed world to bring computers to the developing world at $100 a pop, only they it ended up costing nearly twice that), and Google Lively (a virtual world that relied more on the company's brand than on any interesting features to compete with Second Life; it was put out of its misery at the end of 2008, after just five months of operation).
One of Microsoft’s biggest problems is releasing things before they are really ready to go. They have huge problems with buggy first versions.
It’s funny, though: as much cold, wet dead a$$ as Vista sucks, Windows 2008 Server, which (from what I understand) uses the same code base, is pretty good. I have to deploy a Windows network (one of the PHBs signed off on something expensive without talking to IT, so the camel in now fully in the tent) and I am going to have all 2k8 servers.
Amen!
And yet, the United States Military continues to use it and push it on a regular basis. This goes beyond stupid.....
Yeah, I've noticed a lot of software is like that. Just never realized that put them in contention for award-winning Fiasco status. < shakes head >
Don’t underestimate the power of FUD.
That's why they won't make an Office for Linux - the ubiquity of Word and Excel is what keeps them dominant, not their operating systems.
I know the feeling. I was so annoyed at Windows95 crashing all the time I tried OS/2". Then I tried to make Linux work on a corrupted Windows98 machine I did'nt have a recovery disk for. Finally I was in the market for a new laptop so I went and bought a Dell with Linux preloaded so I knew it would work!
I found out that I did not have to go to that extreme, they now have Live CD's that boot up Linux without having to touch anything on your hard drive so you can try it without any worries.
LOL!
Thanks. I thought you were completely nuts with the comment about the soundcards. :-)
The only added feature I've seen in Windows is that the constant balloon popups are like having a free "Duck Hunt" game on the computer. The absolute most annoying one to me is "You have unused icons on your desktop! Click here to clean them up!"
If that were the case, then Gates would owe anyone with Vista a free copy of Windows Seven’
Hell yea , I agree with that .. I have vISAT on my laptop ( came with it _ I HATE IT !
Anyone know if there is a cheap way to get XP Pro as a replacement? Microsoft should off free “downgrades” to XP for anyone that has VISTA...
I have XP pro on 2 other PC and it’s a great OS..Also I have a new i-MAc and for a guy who ALWAYS hated MAC , well , you can’t beat it .
Open Office comes bundled with most Linux versions. I seldom use that but the Graphic Image manipulation program (GIMP) is something I use all the time. Here is an example of something I made using the county by county returns for the last election:
I second the Bloatware comment.... Everytime I try to open a dang media program it throws up some stupid Media Center that as far as I can tell is as useless as tits on a bull.
And the not allowing multiple email accounts without making a seperate account is beyond stupid IMHO.
I dont think the run up to ME was anywhere near Vista after all when ME came out you had XP in the works and 98 was only a few years old. When Vista came out MS had went more than half a decade and numerous setbacks because ‘they were going to get it right’ in the end Vista was a phenomenally AVERAGE PRODUCT which considering the buildup and the money behind it made it a far bigger fiasco than ME.
Well, then they may lose control of the situation. Open Office, as of v3, is competitive and reads and writes Office-format files. It's not quite as polished and complete as office, but I'd say about 98%. Plenty enough to be competitive anyway. For example, I recently built a new box and loaded Open Office first, and haven't yet bothered to take the 15 minutes or so to load Orifice. It's been like three months and the 2% or whatever of deficiencies in Open Office haven't irritated me sufficiently that I would take even the 15 minutes to load Office and fix the problem.
I use NeoOffice on the Mac and it’s awfully slow. Unless the Linux OpenOffice version performs better, they’ve still got a little work to do. In the past the problem has always been document archives and formatting - alternate office suites never quite render the tables and headers in those older Word documents correctly, and most businesses consider that a deal-breaker.
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