Top ten terrible tech products – Vista makes the list

By most accounts, Vista has not been the success Microsoft was looking for. While I’ve never used it myself, I was surprised to see it make a “Top ten terrible tech products” list on cnet:

Windows Vista
Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor’s reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology.

Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list.

For its part, Apple is pouncing on this in their most recent commercial. With early reports that Vista SP1 isn’t the solution people were looking for, it will be interesting to see where Microsoft goes from here. Seems like a great opportunity for someone to grab market share, but I don’t think that someone is going to be Linux quite yet (although the eeePC and the $200 Walmart PC could be beginning to change that).

–jeremy