Getting Vistaed - the Official definition
I was surprised today that I could not find a post about "Getting Vistaed". Its become such a common term in my small office that I was sure it was ubiquitous. Not so. In fact, the only reference I found was a reference to that silly, fake experiment where people were shown Vista and told it was the next OS to see if they rated it higher than their current perception of Vista (media and community influenced). Sure, when I first used Vista, I liked it better than XP. I still do. However, the improvements were incremental, not monumental. The increased footprint and elevated hardware performance requirements were more significant than the useful features. As a software developer, I can completely understand the fact that this was the bridge that Microsoft needed to cross to evolve their platform and the old Windows Kernel couldn’t come across. That is a HUGE undertaking and I sympathize with Microsoft and the Vista teams for the public beating they’ve taken as a result.
Getting Vistaed (Vista’d)
Getting Vistaed : get-ting vis⋅taed
[get-ting vis-tuhd] –verb
1. Experiencing a spinning blue disk, sometimes accompanied by a darkened screen, where a computer running Windows Vista stops responding for an extended, indeterminate amount of time, after which the screen will return to normal display without any indication as to WTF it was doing. Usually occurs when nothing resource intensive was initiated such as typing an email or answering a nearby telephone.
2. The act of accepting Vista’s prompt to install "updates" whereby the computer spends the next 0.5 to 2 hours showing inaccurate progress indicators of software installations. During this time the computer is unavailable for productive work of any kind and the user is encouraged to catch up on reading or go to the gym and have a good long workout.
Growing up after going overboard
Vista has definitely come a long way in the last 3 years (has it really been that long?). I now use it regularly without complaining that its getting in my way. The features that were added certainly give it an edge over XP. I don’t game or use video intense applications so I can’t attest to the improvements in UI and video, but I expect that a Vista machine can do things no XP machine could. There’s still that lagging WPF framework that developers like me haven’t yet embraced and exploited. I haven’t heard of a virus corrupting someone’s machine since its release. I almost never see the BSOD using Vista. I remember Windows 2000 as a really stable operating system. I recently used a computer running Windows 2000 and I can promise you that no one would want to return to that computing experience. We’ve all grown up. We’ve all come to expect more. That’s why Vista got the shaft when it didn’t rock out of the box. It needed an awful lot of tweaking to bring it back up to snuff with the mature, but old as dirt and unable to evolve, Windows 3.1 kernel. Its there now, sort of.
Apple just got there sooner
Steve Jobs, after a short hiatus doing amazing things, rejoined Apple in 1997. Apple (sans SJ) had been developing a long overdue, next gen OS code-named Copland. Apparently, it sucked. They dumped it, scrapped it, fitted it with cement shoes and tossed it overboard. They then developed and released OSX. When the most recent update to OSX came out, there were problems. Apple got them remedied quickly. The point is, Apple "started over" 10 years ago and now their OS absolutely rocks. Microsoft did the same just 3 years ago. They are certainly a little behind. I’ve heard that Windows 7 is nice. I am hopeful, like a Barack Obama campaign speech, that Microsoft has been heads down for the last three years, focusing on the future and on innovation and on what their OS could be, rather than what it is or what it used to be. With Vista will pass the term "Getting Vistaed", I hope…
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