barely fatal

I finally had the chance to have closer look at Windows Vista, and I really don’t see why virtually everyone keeps on ripping it apart. It is stable, you can turn off the annoyances and any good firewall keeps it from calling home. It needs some getting used to, but that’s normal I’d say. So far I had no compatibility problems (that might change when I get it on my own computer and play games on it, though). It’s pretty and does the job, so what. I also like the new style of the Office 2007 applications, I think they let you handle stuff more effectively. They are not perfect, neither is Vista, but neither is any other OS or word processor. I for one can’t see why everyone’s raving about the supremacy of Mac OSX. It sure is nice, but but far from revolutionary or the answer to all things. In fact, I prefer Windows – simply because I got so used to it.

And the other Apple products like the iPod or iPhone – sure, nice gadgets, intelligent and beautiful designs … but do they really deserve the God status they get from the guys at CNET or Revision3 or everywhere else? I don’t praise Microsoft all day just because I like their OS, or deny others the right of existence, on the contrary. We NEED to point out shortcomings of the technologies we use, then we need to thank the successors or alternatives for doing it better. Hyping one company is unreasonable, especially when you consider how Apple does the exact same things we hate about Microsoft and Google: DRM, restrictive contracts and licenses, data gathering…

It’s ludicrous, short-sighted and biased. Once you start blindly adoring (or hating!) a product, a company, you lose perspective. I hate fanbois. Of course I am a fanboi, too, sometimes. But I keep it on the funny side, maybe mock others or try to convince them to try out something new. I don’t try to evangelize, I’m not a missionary. Variety is the key word here.

I might switch to Vista eventually because of the DirectX 10 support. It is not an evolutionary step I have to take, since XP offers all that I need. ‘cept DirectX 10, so.

Anne – yeah, her again – finally introduced me to Heroes, which is really a brilliant show. Thanks for that!