Caveat: I have no hands-on with Microsoft’s Windows Vista as yet so I do not speak from experience really, on this topic. I attended one of those Microsoft Vista launching shin-digs at a swanky hotel before it’s release and was treated to it’s obvious eye-candy, and I’ve read a great deal about it - but have avoided specifying any new machines with Vista for work. I’ve bought at least 7 machines since Vista launched, so I had the opportunity to grab a copy, but really haven’t felt the need to ‘move my own cheese’ so to speak. However, it certainly appears that the anti-Vista sentiment is growing. More evidence of this landed in my inbox yesterday…

from Infoworld. InfoWorld was once a great trade magazine, but has since become online-only and I have to admit I don’t read them much anymore because of that. The upshot is that Microsoft has announced the end of OEM sales of Windows XP as June 30th of this year (some vendors get as long as Dec 31, 2009 to cut over), and InfoWorld is trying to get a petition going to Microsoft to Save XP and extend the product indefinitely, or at least until they have something people want to buy!

My gut reaction to the Microsoft Life Cycle policy for Windows XP is “meh”. When completely free alternatives exist that are just as good, and in many respects far superior to Windows why do we care? Besides who wants to be running an operating system that is no longer supported by updates and fixes?

I understand this is a problem for Microsoft - if no one in business wants to incur the (real) fiscal pain of moving to a new OS (for no good reason), or that new OS is crappy while the old one disappears, what IT guy that can get away with it won’t just load their old copy of XP on every new machine?

But the problems in business are not small - there is no way any of my aging hardware will support Vista in the first place, so Microsoft is telling me that not only do I have to face the real potential problems that there are no drivers for all my special hardware (chip burners, hasps, old ISA board-based telephony) *and* special software that may not run on Vista (if ever) that we use to run our business, but I also have to find enough cash to RE-buy all new PCs just to run this new OS!?

These problems all stem from the fact that Microsoft’s Windows is totally entrenched in business, and basically holds an effective monopoly position. They were already found guilty of this (twice! - once in Europe) and have been able to wiggle out of any serious penalties because of their buddy-buddy relationship with the current administration in the US, and by paying a pittance of a fine in Europe (please correct me here, I’m just going on memory).

I also feel just like a lot of non-Linux people feel when presented with a totally different OS. How do I get my stuff done? Where the hell is everything? Why do I have to completely relearn how to use a computer every 5 years? Linux has improved massively over time too, but with every release, I can still get to a command line and get things done just like I did in 1980 if I want.

I have no comfort level with Vista yet either, and I will have to buy a copy at some point (for work) so I can prepare, unless I can make a good case to swing over the entire company to Linux. With virtualization, I might be able to do just that and there is already some talk about it from one of our major VARs. Just run Linux and double click to run your Windows apps on a virtual machine - one copy of Windows all set up with all your Windows specific apps rolled out to the company.

The trouble with Windows for me is all the licensing bullshit. Coming from a Linux perspective, why do I have to keep paying for something I already bought many times over? I just don’t get it. I can see paying for software updates, or patches but I already bought the OS - can’t I use it how I want? No, they say, I didn’t buy it - I licensed it. Well, I don’t like that model that makes you rich and me unfree to do whatever I want with software I bought, and I will fight the good fight against it.