[IWE] Re: Vista thread

[Hugh Nicholes]

In the greater scope of things, Vista has not been too bad for me. While
I don't work for the Beast, I do work for a Big Ass Router Company, who
has had some input into Vista networking, particularly the wireless
aspect. On behalf of BARC, for the last 26 months or so, I have gotten
to do some bleeding edge work which is entertaining even on a steaming
pile like Vista. Some of my work is buried in the shipping Vista, but
most will be passed on to Independent Hardware Vendors, Intel, Broadcom,
Atheros, and the like. They will use my stuff as a template and add
their own bells and whistles. This means that I get the fun of initial
design without the pain of dealing with all the implementation bugs that
the end users report. Not too bad.

That said, I have had versions of Vista on machines for the last couple
years, and I have no idea if it's actually good for anything. I have
never tried to use an office package, mail, or even browse outside of my
lab firewall. It appears to be shiny, bloated, slow, and offers a whole
new level of experience negating new features (did you know that the
stupid pop-up "This process needs your permission. Do you REALLY want to
do this?" can be avoided?) Documentation of the innards will probably
catch up in time for the next great new OS to be released, which will
make them all obsolete. There is enough old Windows technology still in
Vista merged with new stuff (all developed by different groups who don't
talk to each other) to make it an internal culture clash. There are new
security schools of thought competing with established Windows
tradition. There are hardware variants (32 bit versions will take an
unsigned driver; 64 bit versions won't.)

It's my general personal opinion that Vista is fucked up as a football
bat. But I'm a good whore and I do my work with a smile and spend my
paycheck without guilt. It is kind of weird to spend years working on
something you really wouldn't want to use though. Funny old world...

My $0.02,
Hugh