Vista SP1: Not What it Should Have Been?

I read three reviews today (and saw several more headlines when I Google’d “vista sp1 review”) that talked about the first service pack for Vista being – what amounts to, I suppose – nothing to get excited about. Don’t take my word for it, read the reviews for yourself. 

I just don’t get it. Now approaching what, SEVEN years in development and Vista STILL isn’t compelling? Microsoft has had over a YEAR to do SP1 and in some cases performance actually gets WORSE?

XP might not be the best thing in the world either, but at least I know what to expect from it because I’ve used it at work for so long. I was going to give Vista another shot when SP1 shipped, but now it looks like it’s just not worth the effort.

I remember when I first installed the Vista gold code. It was on a nice new machine, too. Within 28 hours I had reverted back to XP.

Google's Statement on the Hostile Takeover

It’s very fascinating to me how differently peoples’ minds react after reading the exact same thing. It all depends on many things, of course, including your state of mind when you read it as well as your history with the subject matter. One of those seems a little more subjective than the other, but they both participate in opinion-forming. 

When I read the Google blog post about Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo (see http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/yahoo-and-future-of-internet.html), I thought it was very well written and that the message was very well said. I also related very much to what they were trying to say.

An hour later, after more reading, I found that several people were taking the standpoint that Google was (effectively) a pot calling a kettle black. Google, they claimed, IS a monopoly, so what gives them the right to go after Microsoft for trying to buy Yahoo?My opinion is that Google didn’t obtain its market share the same way Microsoft obtained theirs. And that’s really a big difference. I use Google search, for example, because I regularly try the others and they just don’t get me what I want. If they did, I’d switch. I use Google maps because MSN Maps doesn’t work on Safari (or perhaps even Firefox, at least as well as they do in IE). I’ve seen the MSN maps in action, and I’d like to use them, but I just can’t. I am physically unable to because Microsoft chooses to make them unavailable to me. This goes back to my point about how Microsoft obtained their market share.

In short, I believe the point is this: Google wants everyone to use their products. Microsoft wants everyone to use their products as long as you use THEIR operating system, THEIR browser, etc. I believe consumers have the right to more freedom than that. And that’s one of the smaller reasons why I don’t use Microsoft products anymore.