Windows Vista gripes from Lenovo
The problems Lenovo employees face with Vista and how one of them deals with them.
On December 14th, I wrote that IBM recommends Windows XP. Unbeknownst to me, on the very same day a Lenovo blogger was griping about Windows Vista.
I don't have any Vista gripes. That's because, as I blogged about in September* I think XP is a better choice for Windows users. Personally, I've been avoiding Vista.
Matt Kohut has instead been fighting with Vista. Mr. Kohut works for Lenovo, which to some measure, makes their living selling Vista.
To me, his gripes are particularly significant. For one thing, he is not talking about a test drive or a brief review, but rather about his experiences living with Vista and the obstacles that result as he tries to get his job done. And, he works for Lenovo, so in a sense, he is biting the hand that feeds him.
In brief, his Vista problems have to do with:
--WiFi networking that used to work but doesn't any more
--A corporate print management system that won't print PDFs from the Foxit reader
--An IBM developed application that doesn't work under Vista
--An upcoming switch to a Cisco VPN that doesn't support Vista
But that's just the appetizer. This is the main gripe course:
"A few weeks ago I was talking shop with one of our field technical specialists, Henry. I mentioned my Vista issues in hopes that he had some ideas. He had an intriguing solution - installing and running a virtual machine (VM) on his PC. He is using a Vista machine with our basic factory preload but then launches and runs XP once Vista has loaded."
It's hard to imagine a more significant statement about Vista than a Lenovo employee that deals with it's problems by running XP in a virtual machine.
Ouch.
*
I make a case for XP over Vista
I pity the fool (Windows XP good, Vista bad)
When to convert from Windows XP to Vista, Part 2
Putting Windows Vista on trial
See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.