David Gildeh

Let’s face it, Windows Vista was a major disappointment and one I’ve been stuck with for a year and a half since it came with my Dell Laptop. Slow performance, crap security restrictions, I couldn’t wait to get rid of it and upgrade to 64-bit Windows Vista when it came out! I’m elated, but that could be because I’ve got so used to the slow crappy performance of Vista, that Windows 7 just astounds me (as it’s been so long since I saw a new OS on Windows that worked and was performing!)

Now that I’ve had my PC running for a week on Windows 7, I can safely say, Microsoft has fixed all the complaints me and the rest of the world had when Vista appeared. I’m not a great Microsoft fan (at any chance I’ll go for an OpenSource alternative) but you have to admit when it comes to Operating Systems and Office tools, they set the standard. Look at the competition:

• MAC OS – I like the designs of the hardware, I hate the design of their OS. We rented two iMacs (the brand new ones) for our exhibition in December at SambaStream. Having used them for 3 days straight, I still don’t get why they’re so great. The fact they stubbornly refuse by default to support a right mouse button (they do if you get another mouse, but I spent 3 days holding the action key down to simulate a right mouse click!) after all these years is just the start. Another annoying thing is the way you access your programs the same way you’re browsing files, I miss my start menu when I use MAC OS. And I know I’m getting anal here, but why doesn’t it snaplock my files/icons nicely by default, instead icons lie all over the screen unaligned looking messy…
• Linux – I use Ubuntu on our servers (no GUI) but I’ve tried using the Desktop Linux distros several times. Unfortunately I have yet to experience an installation that just works without any critical issues. For example, screen resolutions, if you change the screen resolution in Windows, it will try it, if you don’t click Accept it reverts back to the old one. In the last Linux distro my brother installed it didn’t do this over Christmas, changing the resolution just left a blank screen. Fortunately we had another monitor to attach and fix it, but any average user would be stumped at that point. Linux has come a LONG way in the past few years but still has a long way to go until it’s as usable and fool proof as Windows.
• Unix/Solaris/everything else – Apart from servers, does anyone actually use these on their desktops? Unless you’re an Uber-geek, probably not…

One day the browser will be the only OS we care about, and my money’s on Google Chrome right now, but we’re still (for everyone apart from business users) a long way away from that reality, where we can use all our applications through a web browser.

Anyway, until that day, I’ll be sticking to Windows. I’ll happily switch to a decent Linux Desktop once they fix all the usability issues and 90% of my day-to-day applications work through the browser and the rest can run on Linux. As for MAC OS – overrated. Cool hardware, but their software is style over substance, looks nice but a bitch to use.