Accidentally found an interesting article that reviewed Microsoft as a whole. One of the main points in the article pointed out that Vista has been one of the worst things for Microsoft and that it has caused even dedicated fans like the author to switch to alternatives such as Linux and Mac.

Regardless of whether the author points out specific bugs and annoyances, as many loyal worshipers of Microsoft will criticize, he points out that overall very little has been improved and much more has been made worse. You can read reviews all over the Internet that come to the same conclusion. Most avid computer users who really use computers for more than just surfing the Internet and gaming will tell you the same thing. Obviously there are those who follow the Microsoft religion and may never be saved, but that’s life.

I hope that Vista helps people see that Microsoft doesn’t produce a quality product, instead they pushed out Vista before it was really read and then provide service packs and updates for it frequently. What other business could get away with selling a product that didn’t work correctly and still be the largest in the business. It is very sad that people don’t see that Microsoft can simple push out another version and tell all software manufacturers that they can only produce their product for Vista and thus forcing everyone to upgrade. This business model is more of a scam than anything else. I found the following quote to sum up the Vista situation very nicely.

In recent my conversations with execs from big PC makers, one said that the good news about Apple gaining market share is that maybe, just maybe, Microsoft would "get the picture" and work harder to build a better product. Just yesterday, another exec told me that customers were "crying like schoolgirls" to get XP put back onto shipped Vista machines.

In many cases if you look at Microsoft’s record they will add something that has been in the open source world years and call it an innovation. Instead of actively improving the computer experience as a whole Microsoft has in many cases slowed progress and driven people away from computers. Internet Exploder (Internet Explorer) is a prime example of Microsoft holding back progress. As web standards progress IE has failed to catch up and since it holds the largest share of users web developers have to cater to its quirks. Many innovative features that other browsers support have not been fully explored due to IE’s lack of support. In other cases extra development time must be devoted to ensuring that a web site works with IE. For basic comparison of IE feature support, not including many non-rendering feature such as standard search engine support, can be seen in this comparison.