Windows Vista

This weekend I finalised my laptop's move from Windows to SUSE. XP was due for a rehash anyway (the installation was a year old). I took the 40GB drive out of the machine (it still had the Windows installation on it), replaced it with the 60GB I use in my external USB chassis, and told SUSE it could have all of the 60GB.

I now have a version of Windows XP Professional running inside a VMWare virtual machine if I need to run software that doesn't have an equivalent on the Linux platform (Visual Studio being the main one), but I've done the switch.

For the record, it took longer to download 100MB of VMWare Server (yes, the free one), than it did to set it up and install Windows XP inside a virtual machine, and I'm on broadband. In other words, virtual XP seems to be as quick (and definitely quicker during installation) than native XP.

Anyway, the subject of this entry is Windows Vista. Microsoft business strategy is as follows: force people to use Microsoft products.

I'm sorry, but I refuse. Oh wait, I can't refuse. I'm using XP in a virtual machine because I have to. Ugh.

I have Vista Beta 2 installed on two machines on our home network. One is my desktop PC, and one is my boyfriend's PC. I haven't booted into Vista on my PC for over a month, out of choice. I have decided that it is just not "cool" enough. The feature set does not outweigh the sheer size of the OS, nor its hardware requirements.

My desktop PC has an ATI Radeon 9200 card in it. I bought this card because it is good enough to play all the games I play (Sims 2, Warcraft III, Age of Empires III, Civilization IV). It plays the games well.

Unfortunately, it's not good enough to run Vista's Aero Glass interface.

I have an iMac sitting next to this PC. It runs OS X 10.4. There are features in the GUI that Vista is only adding now.

I just installed SUSE on my notebook. There's a plugin for X Windows called xgl that runs a 3D GUI better than Vista (and it's still in beta stage). And I'll bet it works on my desktop PC.

The point of this rant? I refuse to install Vista on any of my PCs once it's released. I will not let Microsoft dictate the basic requirements of my computer. I will not let Microsoft dictate what I can and can't do with my computer. That's why, after 13 years of trying, I've finally done the switch. The "I need Outlook" excuse was a lame one. I discovered I don't need Outlook, and that suits me just fine.