Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Fear and Loathing with Windows Vista

Ok: so far I have been wondering if there's a reason why Windows Vista has gotten bad rap. I mean, up until now. No wonder any more -- I have tried using Vista for past week or so. And now it is quite clear why people might hate, despite and loathe it. My number one guess: it sucks like no tomorrow.

I mean: a simple thing like printing to a network printer is apparently beyond capabilities of this marvel of engineering. At work I tried printing a 2 page document to a network printer. Workflow for this task goes like so:

  1. Ask Vista nicely to locate printers in da hood: it will find 9 out of 200+ printers there are, none of which is in the same building; I am not entirely convinced these are not just random names drawn out of some sw engineers a$$. At any rate, none is a real printer within building I work at.
  2. Lend Vista a helping hand (first with just one finger raised...): tell it IP name to have a look at.
  3. Stare at the popup that claims it has no idea what type of a printer this might be; offering a not-so-helpful list of 79 known printer manufacturers, most with 500+ types of printers
  4. Go check the actual type of printer (from its side), write it carefully down
  5. Cross-check with list Vista gave you: notice that there is no such printer amongst thousands listed (I wonder if these are even real printers... maybe they were just generated using Jabberwocky)
  6. Try using something that is as close to the actual type as possible (same manufacturer, same product line, same number, couple of same letters)
  7. Try printing
  8. Observe Vista producing to print a stack of paper thicker than your local phone book -- likely because it saw no problem in seding Postscript file to what appears to be a PCL printer.
  9. Count your blessing when half-way through printing there is paper jam that prevents some of paper waste
  10. Wonder out aloud how is it that previous versions of Windows managed get above (minus printing tons of crap; replaced with printing out the actual doc) done with fewer steps. As does MacOS; and even Linux.

Now, some of you may think I just made above up. I so wish this was the case, but no, it is a sad but true story. And the rest (who heard me curse, and wave that stack of paper angrily, in general direction of my laptop); pardon my french. Yes, that kind of language is not suitable for corporate setting, I know. Next time I will use my mother tongue for expressing my true feelings.

I don't know if there is already a law outlawing manu(factu)re, distribution and selling of Vista. But if not, I sure hope Obama admistration considers it a crime punished by something severe. Like having to use Vista for all your work, for term to exceed 20 years. Without parole.

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