General

I Would Like to Register a Complaint

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People complain about Vista through me now. I’m not sure if that’s funny or sad?

This is Chris Proctor. You may remember me as having that Vista custom sounds problem in which I couldn’t get certain sounds to play ‘cuz they were too long (and I got a little flak from that Microsoft guy about the vague subject line).

Actually, the vague subject was my fault – and we were QUITE lucky that Larry Osterman picked up on the problem (thanks again, Larry).

Anyway, I’ve been reading some of the horror stories about Vista, and I feel compelled to share some of my experiences. All I can say is that I must be very lucky that I haven’t had serious problems yet, and I’m afraid my brand spanking new computer is going to crash on me any day now. “How new is the computer”, you ask? I bought it around mid-June of this year. But, I’ve started to see little glitches. I wonder if anybody else has these problems.

Heh. My buddy, Christopher Null, just pointed me to this news story: Microsoft Backpedals, Allows XP “Downgrades” From Vista. Is an “I told you so” in order? Perhaps. I guess I’m more justified in knowing that I wasn’t too far off with my assessments, assertions, and ongoing observations. You’re not alone, Mr. Prodctor.

First off, does anybody else end up making Windows Explorer crash just by trying to view a picture? How annoying is that?! I just want to look at a .jpg full-size … “Windows Explorer has stopped working …” Damn it! It happens once every 4 pictures I open, on average. Yes, it’s minor, but it’s a pain in the ass nonetheless.

I have a Sandisk flash drive that doesn’t want to work on Vista. It’s one of those U3-equipped flash drives. It works great with XP, but Vista trips over the U3 system. I had to completely disable U3 just to access the damn thing. That’s annoying.

I also have an MP3 player from Samsung that I haven’t gotten to work at all. Vista gets completely retarded when I stick that player in a USB port. Worse than my flash drive, Vista can’t even open it, can’t make heads or tails of it, trips over driver installation just to look at it. My MP3 player hasn’t gotten any use since I bought it. I’m not happy about that at all. It, in fact, blows! Well, at least I can still charge it through the USB port like it’s supposed to. Hell of a lot of good that does me, though. Irritating!

Now, this one is kinda funny. At the same time I bought the computer, I got a printer with it. The printer is still sitting in its box untouched. Can anybody guess why? I fear Vista will chew it up and spit it out. Compatibility, my ass. What the feck is up with all these compatibility issues, anyway?! If only these operating systems worked like the video game consoles these days, then things would be much happier in cyberspace. 2 words: BACKWARDS COMPATIBLE! Hello?!

And speaking of compatibility and games, Vista’s really making me sad over one particular thing. I CAN’T PLAY MYST! I’d never gotten a chance to play the Myst games when they first came out, so I was psyched when I found Myst 1, 2, 3, and 4 in Best Buy a few months ago (Myst 1, 2, and 3 were in a 10th Anniversary DVD Edition, if that makes any difference). I installed them all and went to it. I tweaked the compatibility parameters for quite some time, and even though I managed to get through Myst 1, I still couldn’t find that sweet spot that didn’t cause a freeze or a crash every 5 minutes. I’m trying to get through Myst 2 right now, and the compatibility issues are even worse. Sometimes I can’t play for a minute before the damn thing freezes on me. Myst 3 and 4 are supposed to be even bigger and more graphics-intensive, so I have no faith at all that they’ll work properly. Total bummer. It’s frustrating as hell.

(Also, Vista keeps picking up erratic messages from my mouse. But, I think it’s a problem with the mouse itself. It’s a third-party rechargeable optical wireless mouse, a Nexxtech, so the problem could be the mouse and not Vista. At random times, the cursor would jump across the screen, and, if there’s a scroll bar in the window, the scroll bar would move. And sometimes, as I’m moving the mouse, the cursor would freeze. When this happens, only clicking will snap the cursor out of its coma, and then it would jump across the screen. This can get quite annoying. Does this happen to anybody else out there? I’d hate to think my groovy little mouse has a case of mechanical Tourette Syndrome.)

Some would claim this is the early adopter tax we must incur from adopting Vista before Service Pack 1. Indeed, there are many things about Windows Vista that make it a better OS compared to Windows XP. I’m more inclined to live inside OS X than I am in XP, however – for the many reasons I’ve already stated.