I know it is at times far too easy to knock Microsoft. It might even be unfair. We all know that most people with a mind for these things prefer Firefox to Internet Explorer, use Google instead of MSN to search the web, complain about Windows and can run off lists of issues with crashes, rebuilds, security exploits, hacks, cracks… and yet, almost all of us use a Windows system, at work and at home, and can’t really imagine life without one.

But still. Can’t they just release one bit of integral software that isn’t full of bugs? When Windows XP came out, it was full of problems. Some people even chose Windows ME over it (yes, I did learn to regret that one). Only after a few years of complaints and a list of updates as long as the Service Agreement has it become anything near a solid system. Windows 98 – the same. Windows NT… hmm.

And now, we have lovely, shiny, sparkling Vista. It looks very nice. Nice menus, nice transparencies, nice search features… nice new incompatibilities with previous hardware, nice new software issues, nice new features you can get with third party desktop programs. And lots of nice, new bugs.

So even though I don’t use Vista, I couldn’t help but look at the recent and official Vista Service Pack 1 blog post. A ream of paragraphs detailing the latest issues and fixes. A separate list for reasons why you can’t bathe in the glory of SP1 (including my personal favourite – ‘you have already installed it’). Another list for the device drivers that won’t work once you’ve installed SP1 (clearly they hadn’t alienated enough hardware with the original release)… and no mention of the various programs that will mysteriously stop working (I guess that’s old news).

Yet the post still manages to end with ‘In sum, we are extremely pleased with Windows Vista SP1 and the benefits it offers our customers, and we look forward to hearing about your experience.’ What? Huh? You haven’t told me anything about the benefits of SP1! All you’ve said is I can get a year’s worth of benefits – what - a year’s worth of public beta testing? This stunning, ‘Usual Suspects’ style twist is followed by a stream of happy comments, made by a community that, presumably, is extremely pleased with being part of the 5 year cycle of paying over the odds to beta test for Microsoft. Perhaps even a chosen few crying out that Vista is ‘an OS for the future’ or it needs time to ‘bed’. Bed? What do you mean, ‘bed’?!?

I know that it must be remarkably difficult to write an Operating System. The amount of unique and conflicting hardware and software available means that it must be almost impossible to ensure it will all work. And all this hardware and software is only cutting edge for as many months as it takes for the next technological leap to occur, and so I can forgive the compatibility issues, especially when you consider it is a next-gen OS (why should it be backwards compatible?). But you’d think, with that much money, with a market share so complete, they’d be able to release something that wasn’t riddled with issues from the start, to a global community that wasn’t so used to sending them the mountains of information required to write an OS we’d have been happier waiting to use in the first place?!?

Here is my experience; just as I refused to upgrade to XP until SP2 had been out for a while, I refuse to upgrade to Vista. They should release a demo version we can install, try, and uninstall, like Internet Explorer 8. At least they are honest that IE8 is a beta at the moment. Maybe the next Windows should be called Windows Beta. Whatever they call it (Vienna?), it makes me feel sad that I’ll eventually install a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a working version of Vista in a few years. And I know I’ll be moaning about the new Windows W, and using Internet Explorer X only when Windows Update says I need to download and install Y to combat the latest problem they have found with Z.

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