Why "Vista" Nick White Left Microsoft 130
An anonymous reader writes "Earlier this week Nick White, Product Manager for Windows Vista and blogger at WindowsVistaBlog, announced that he was leaving Microsoft. Geek.com previously interviewed Nick about what SP1 for Vista was all about, so they sat down with him yesterday to get the details behind his departure, his proudest moments at Microsoft, a few regrettable moments, and more."
I'll give them another chance: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there's still a lot of life left in the concept of a Personal Computer Operating System. I use a PC to produce media, and that's not something I expect to be doing on a network appliance or cell phone any time soon. I'm going to be needing a standalone computer that runs my applications for a while still, and it would be great to have a few flexible and versatile professional, commercial operating systems to choose from, especially ones that will run the hardware of my choice and my favorite applications.
Corporations, even big ones (especially big ones) will have turnover at the top over time. This means they can change, for the better and for the worse. I've seen Apple go both ways in my adult life, for example, and I'm sure we all can point to corporations that have improved and those that have started sucking.
Vista was an unmitigated disaster for my productivity needs. XP is a great success, good enough that it has earned my trust enough to at least check out the next OS they put out.
It's very easy to hate Microsoft, but I can still hope they get it right next time.
Re:What a bunch of convoluted nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm glad you brought that up.
Here is an example;
"Frankly, I think Windows Vista has gotten a bum rap, as I use it every day - even after having left MS - and I would have a hard time using anything else and still be as productive."
He gave the reason I gave up on Vista. I couldn't get anything done. In a meeting I tried to show a DVD. It started OK but stopped to ask if I wanted to upgrade my AV. The stupid computer asked me to upgrade now, even though we were doing a presentation and had no network connections at the time. I wounder if it would have crashed if I told it to upgrade.
We wrote documents and tried to send them to the laser instead of the default inkjet printer. Couldn't find any way to do it without changing the default printer. Later a Google search told me to use the big round logo. It's really a button. Who would of guessed?
The Ubuntu install went fine. I was able to log into my network, attach to printers, edit documents, burn CD's, edit photos, scan documents, etc. on the default setup. Vista was full of shareware requesting upgrades for everything. Almost nothing worked. It couldn't log into my servers, I couldn't select printers without a Google search, and movies stopped after playing for 15 minutes for a stupid dialog box.
With lots of training and system customization, I might be able to become productive on Vista, but the first attempts very poor.
He said nothing, because ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Doh!
MS Speak (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I'll give them another chance: (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, my favorite pro audio adapter for music production is still an RME PCI card, and there's only one model Mac that will allow me to install it, and that happens to cost more than 5 grand. I really wish Apple made more than one model of full-size personal computer. So for now, I'm "stuck" using 3 Core 2 Duo machines. They are networked, so I can make use of Reaper's ReaMote capability to spread the rendering of audio over all three of them. It lets me work at very high bit and sample rates.
I just pray to the FSM every night that someday I'll be able to run OSX on my own hardware. I love the interface, I just don't want other people to know I'm using an Apple product. Bad things can happen.
Re:Propaganda (Score:3, Interesting)
Now vendors should get a rap on the knuckles for installing any software that isn't a full functioning product. You want to install a photo editor, fine, but it better not expire. Only subscription based services such as AV updates should require a payment to get the signature file updates. Nobody should have to sweep off all the declined offers. They should auto uninstall completely and restore the original file type associations on failure to accept the sales pitch.
A photo editor on my wife's machine broke the ability for the photocopier software to use the scanner. Attempting to photocopy something simply launched the expired trial editor. Uninstalling the editor left windows looking for the missing photo editor.. Umm how about letting the photocopier get the scan? The anti-consumer action should be banned. We use Ubuntu with the scanner now. Windows is broken by a trial software package.