Windows 7 Launches Today

It's been all over the InterTubing, but I've been too busy here at Birdman Central to write anything up. But, here's my shot into the "Weeee! Windows 7 is launching!" gleefest. Don't get me wrong, I really do hope that this iteration of Windows is an actual, honest-to-goodness, solid, stable, just works OS. But, unlike with the stockmarket, past performance of product quality is usually a good indicator of future performance.

With that being said, the InterTubing has been rife with high praise for Windows 7, essentially calling it What Vista Should Have Been. But, I've been hearing that since the first betas were released, and to be very frank, I'll believe it when I see it. More specifically, I'll believe it when I read the post-coital reviews, the been-using-it-at-least-a-month first hand accounts, and maybe taking some time at my local Shit Buy to play with the damned thing. Being the Tech Guru of the Birdman household is a lot of responsibility, and I'm not itching to upgrade the one Vista machine (a laptop) we have floating around here. Not that Vista's all that great. In fact, the damned thing will seize up if you unplug it while the laptop is still running, then plug it back it in.

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It's a fucking laptop for fuck's sake! How do you build a fucking piece of shit laptop that can't be unplugged than plugged back in while it's still running? The whole point of a laptop is portability, people! Get with the program.

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Okay, now that I've got that out of my system …

Sometimes, it doesn't seize. The behavior seems somewhat random, though I think it's a combination of shit hardware and leaving Vista running too long between reboots. Anyway, the craptop runs well enough for what it's used for: email, surfing the InterTubes, playing solitaire (this version rocks!), and um … uh … yeah, that's about it. Occasionally, I'll hook it into the TV to watch a movie. That's a whole other pain in the ass unto itself, and I won't bore you with the details. I'm just waiting to grab a MacBook Pro for those duties, especially now that a Mini Displayport + USB to HDMI adapter is available (Seriously, Apple, no audio out of the Mini Displayport? You'd better have a damned good reason why not.) So, I'm not looking to upgrade the machine, at least not in the short term. We'll see.

Anyway, ran across this piece, which seems to be the lone voice in the "Microsoft is Great! Microsoft is Back on Top! Windows 7 Will Save the Planet!" chorus that is echoing around the InterTubes, clogging my bandwidth. If you're too lazy to click on a link and read a few paragraphs I'll give you the summary: Even Vista received high praise before it's launch, and now a bunch of tech journalist luminaries are regretting that they wrote such nice things.

We'll see how this goes. My bet, after about two weeks of "Yippee! Windows is nearly usable!" the first reports of shittiness will begin dribbling out into the InterTubing, a major security hole will be discovered (my bet is that it will be of the "Fixed in previous OSes, how the fuck did this get through code review" variety), testing from security gurus will show that Win 7 is just as vulnerable to attack as Vista and XP, and, oh, yeah, it isn't much more stable or reliable over the long haul than XP.

But, that's just my prediction based on Microsoft's past performance. I could be wrong, yet, I doubt it.