So I'm sitting here this beautiful, sunny weekend, in the office, running benchmarks. Of course, I really like running benchmarks, but not on beautiful, sunny weekends. The reason for this is that Microsoft's Windows Vista is a total piece of junk. I'd use stronger language than that if I could.

I'm working on an article for Network World evaluating the effectiveness of Wi-Fi power-save mode - that is, whether it has an impact on throughput or runtime or both when enabled. More on that in the article, but I thought upon starting this effort that I'd be a big boy and use the latest Microsoft OS, namely Vista, for this project. After all, Vista's been out there for some time; it's hard to find a PC that doesn't come with one of the way-too-many flavors of Vista, and vendors should have had plenty of time to re-do any drivers that need re-doing. No such luck.

First of all, Vista is very hard to use. MS has really screwed up the user interface, supposedly to enable them to compete with the simple and elegant interface of the Mac, but in the process familiar elements have moved to new locations with new names, networking is very - very - hard to set up, and the whole thing is just plain frustrating.

I've noted before that changing a user interface that's working just fine just to change it is stupid, arrogant, and pointless, creating training and support headaches that simply should not exist. To create underlying changes in the OS that break applications and drivers is similarly stupid, arrogant, and pointless. And nonsense. Insert bad language here.

For example, one of the drivers for a .11n adapter that I'm using seemed to provide no way to change the power save mode setting. I dropped the vendor a line; they responded with screen shots showing that such is not the case and illustrating what I needed to do. The only problem is that the screen shot didn't match what the client software was really displaying. Oh, my, are you using Vista? came the response. Yep. Well, um, those features aren't supported under Vista. Oh, great. Spend more, get less, use bad language, etc. And start over using XP, which is why I'm in the office, running benchmarks, on this beautiful, sunny weekend.

I'm never, ever going to adopt Vista here. XP is nothing to get very excited about, but it was the best OS MS ever produced, despite its very many flaws, and I've learned how to make it work and manageable. Vista is a huge step backwards. We should simply refuse to buy products that include it, demand that XP remain available, and stop playing Microsoft's game. They work for us, right? They seem to believe it's the other way around.

As I've previously noted, I'm proceeding ahead with plans to switch to Macs and LINUX. I'd switch faster if Apple would produce a Mac Mini with .11n - what's up with that? New Core 2 Duo and no .11n? Why? I guess Microsoft isn't the only company that makes mistakes, but regardless, Apple seems to make a lot fewer.

I'll keep the XP machines alive as long as I need to, but I am looking forward to the day when there's no more Microsoft software at Farpoint Group.