Windows Vista — don’t fix what isn’t broken

Ah, Vista. How I love your escapades in the Mac vs. PC commercials on television. I have you installed on my laptop at work but I’m slowly migrating my workstation to a Linux platform so I can get some *real* work done.

Today you alerted me that critical updates were available. As usual, an update to the “Windows Defender” definitions. But today something a little extra:

“Update for Windows Vista (KB947562)” – Recommended

Being curious about Vista’s updates for the first time since being subjected to this horrible OS (it’s no wonder Windows 7 has a projected release date late next year, this last OS release was obviously pure junk), I decided to right-click on it and view the details about what this update fixed.

“You may need to restart your computer for this update to take effect.
Update type: Recommended
Install this update to resolve a set of known application compatibility issues with Windows Vista. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.”

Love the double-reminder that I *may* have to reboot after installing it. Since the details also include a link to Microsoft to explain in more detail, I clicked on it.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947562

Here are the highlights:

This article describes the May 2008 Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Application Compatibility Update. This update is a package of software updates that address common application compatibility issues that occur in Windows Vista.

When you try to install and to run certain legacy games or applications in Windows Vista, you may experience one or more of the following symptoms:
• The game, the application, or the firmware may not be installed correctly.
• The game, the application, or the firmware may cause system instability.
• The primary functions of the game, of the application, or of the firmware may not work correctly.
This update improves application compatibility in Windows Vista by using the following methods:
• The update puts a hard block on the application. A hard block prevents an application that is incompatible with Windows Vista from running on the operating system.

What, what?! Did I just read that last line correctly? Windows is hard-blocking applications that it deems ‘incompatible’ from ever running on your Vista PC. I can just imagine the folks in Redmond flagging a ton of utilities and software just to strong-arm consumers into buying more Microsoft crap.

I never thought I’d ever endorse Windows XP, but XP seems to clearly be the winner in any XP vs Vista debate. I can’t believe Microsoft would actually stoop to fully blocking Vista just by them ‘claiming’ it’s incompatible.

Of course they shoot themselves in the foot by hard-blocking their own Zune software if you upgrade a PC from XP to Vista. Aw shucks, since my wife owns a Zune, I guess that means we just won’t upgrade to Vista. Ever.