Vista was released with a lot of hype and reservations. Microsoft’s bid to make Vista the do everything player for all types of media raises issues of what is really burried inside the kernel and if/when if it will cripple the computer and turn it into an expensive boat anchor. According to white papers from Microsoft the ability to be a good citizen and respect the digital rights of the media it’s playing (i.e. HD DVDs) is integrated deeply into the OS and has the ability to disable parts of the systems when it feels it’s been compromised. I can understand trying to protect the rights of the media’s copyright owners but I’m concerned about the “false positives.”

I’ve been using computers for over 30 years and pride myself on being able to build, troubleshoot, and program them to suite my own needs. Each release of the OS makes this harder and harder to do. The need for special hardware and signed device drivers just to do what I’ve been doing for the last 30 years concerns me and has me thinking that Windows XP may be my last Microsoft OS. I don’t use a computer as a media player for media that contains DRM (digital Rights Management). I use my computer to create audio (podcasts) and video and to consume what others have created so the fact that the OS gives me the ability to play commerical media doesn’t impress me. The fact that it was designed from the ground up to keep digital content, that I will never use, safe from hackers, is a poor use of my new Core 2 Dual processor with 2 GB of RAM. I’m sure my photo and video editing tools could use the extra CPU cycles that Vista is using to protect the system from hackers.

I feel that Vista was not possible a few years ago because the DRM code and anit-hacker routines build into the OS would slow down the OS and would not be usable for what we come to use a computer for. The reason I upgraded to a faster processor and more RAM is so I can get things done faster not so the OS can use the extra cycles to “serve and protect” and not let my programs take advantage of the additional CPU cycles.

Time will tell if Microsoft went down the right path and if businesses embrace the new OS. I’m sticking with XP for now and will wait out the storm and get ready to jump ship if needed.

Tags: microsoft vista, vista, drm