As the cycle of nature goes, after some heating period comes a cooling phase. Things finally started settling down between me and my laptop. But our relationship was put to test once again, this time by a messenger. Now one might wonder what role does a messenger has to play in a relationship between two people. So just to make things clear, my love and I speak all together a different language and we need an interpreter or a messenger for communicating, which in our case, is the Operating System running on my laptop. The Operating System (OS) is the system software that makes the computer work. We can say that an OS is software that acts as an interface between you and the hardware. It not only contains drivers used to speak the hardware's language, but also offers you a very specific graphical user interface (GUI) to control the computer. An OS can also act as an interface (from the hardware) to the other software. Now that’s hell of a job.
The time when I bought my HP laptop, apparently HP and Microsoft got into some kind of deal and made it mandatory for HP to run Windows Vista and higher versions. So by default my laptop was shipped with vista, which off course “was” the messenger.Vista, what a cool thing to be running on your laptop, was my initial reaction and most of the people using it for the first time would agree with me. After all if you get some of the features like: Future Fix Notifications, Windows Explorer’s Details Pane, Windows Explorer’s Folders Pane, Volume Mixer Changes, Task Manager Additions, Windows Explorer’s Breadcrumb Bar, Richer Drags, and Voice Recognition who would not get impressed. But, remember folks all that glitters is not gold. As rightly said by PC Magazine, "Call it a nice-to-have product rather than a must-have."
My first enlightenment came when I tried to run a software from previous windows version. Well I must say it was a nightmare. It was then when I realized devil was indeed wearing a Prada. That entire flashy interface, claiming to take user experience to an all together new level was in fact an attempt to conceal the draconian features the new windows software has got. Vista enforces new forms of “Digital Rights Management (DRM)”. DRM is more accurately called Digital Restrictions Management, because it is a technology that Big Media and computer companies try to impose on us all, in order to have control over how our computers are used.Technology security expert Bruce Schneier explains it most concisely: 'Windows Vista includes an array of “features” that you don't want. These features will make your computer less reliable and less secure. They'll make your computer less stable and run slower. They will cause technical support problems. They may even require you to upgrade some of your peripheral hardware and existing software. And these features won't do anything useful. In fact, they're working against you. They're digital rights management (DRM) features built into Vista at the behest of the entertainment industry—And you don't get to refuse them. '
As one of the blog explains:
DRM gives power to Microsoft and Big Media.
- They decide which programs you can and can't use on your computer
- They decide which features of your computer or software you can use at any given moment
- They force you to install new programs even when you don't want to (and, of course, pay for the privilege)
- They restrict your access to certain programs and even to your own data files
DRM is enforced by technological barriers. You try to do something, and your computer tells you that you can't. To make this effective, your computer has to be constantly monitoring what you are doing. This constant monitoring uses computing power and memory, and is a large part of the reason why Microsoft is telling you that you have to buy new and more powerful hardware in order to run Vista. They want you to buy new hardware not because you need it, but because your computer needs it in order to be more effective at restricting what you do.
Microsoft and other computer companies sometimes refer to these restrictions as “Trusted Computing.” Given that they are designed to make it so that your computer stops trusting you and starts trusting Microsoft, these restrictions are more appropriately called “Treacherous Computing”.
Even when you legally buy Vista, you don't own it.
Windows Vista, like previous versions of Windows, is proprietary software: leased to you under a license that severely restricts how you can use it, and without source code, so nobody but Microsoft can change it or even verify what it really does.
Microsoft says it best:
The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so, you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways.
To make it even more confusing, different versions of Vista have different licensing restrictions. You can read all of the licenses at this link.It's painful to read the licenses, and this is often why people don't object to them. But if we don't start objecting, we will lose valuable freedoms. Here are some of the ridiculous restrictions you will find in your reading:
- If your copy of Vista came with the purchase of a new computer, that copy of Vista may only be legally used on that machine, forever.
- If you bought Vista in a retail store and installed it on a machine you already owned, you have to completely delete it on that machine before you can install it on another machine.
- You give Microsoft the right, through programs like Windows Defender, to delete programs from your system that it decides are spyware.
- You consent to being spied upon by Microsoft, through the “Windows Genuine Advantage” system. This system tries to identify instances of copying that Microsoft thinks are illegitimate. Unfortunately, a recent study indicated that this system has already screwed up in over 500,000 cases.
And off course how one can forget of laptop battery life. I almost lost my love to this problem. The new features of Vista can drain the battery much more rapidly than Windows XP, reducing battery life. Well actually there’s a solution to this problem. With the Windows Aero visual effects turned off, battery life is equal to or better than Windows XP systems. Apart from the battery life problem there’s this explorer of vista getting constantly crashed. Every time you try to login this dreaded message box reading “Explorer has stopped working, searching for a solution…” is displayed. To solve your explorer related problem you can click in here.
With all these plethora of problems plaguing us, tell me how in the world one is expected to continue having a cordial relation with ones laptop? There off course are many sources for solving above mentioned problems but I rather choose to give up vista and upgrade to windows 7. Communication lines have been restored between me and my machine. And to this date they have been working just fine. The vista episode really proved that “Devil wears the Prada!”
