Windows Expertise

MANIFESTO

Apparently, there's been a hue and cry regarding Microsoft's announcement that it'll stop sales of its XP operating system in a few months.

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves by June 30 have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

[Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve] Ballmer said the customers buying PCs with XP are IT departments who are having trouble shifting old machines to newer technology.

Golly. Ya think? Just how feasible is it for companies, public institutions, and non-profits to convert their machines (and networks?) between now and June, particularly in light of the economic travails everyone seems to be undergoing?

On a more practical level, I've worked with both systems, and I much prefer XP. It seems to me that, for almost any task, from, say, accessing files to setting up a network printer, Vista includes at least one additional level that one has to go through to get where one wants to be. I'm sure these additional mouse clicks have been put in for security reasons, but, as a result, the system isn't exactly user friendly.

I often think that Microsoft's latest gumming up of the works will lead people to adopt the streamlined Macintosh operating system, but such logic has yet to be demonstrated.