Microsoft Updates for Vista Not So Helpful

Quote of the day:
The reason lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn’t there the second time. - Willie Tyler

No one knows better than I about how difficult tracing problems in software is, But I also know something that Microsoft seems to have forgotten. Test, test, test, and retest - before you release.

In the last round of critical updates for Vista, a problem with the Graphics Rendering Engine was repaired (it seems, there are stories floating around that the problem was exacerbated by the ‘fix’), yet new ones cropped up. Not exotic problems, which might be excused by saying that perhaps the ‘test group’ was not large enough, and had ‘too standard’ configurations, but basic things, like USB mice and keys. Considering how many machines have moved from a PS/2 mouse to one connected via USB, this should have been thoroughly checked out.

The problems appear to be varying, from total loss of use, to phantom driver problems upon reboots. Now some will say that Microsoft has a Herculean task because of the myriad lines of code that is Windows Vista. Perhaps, but then I would counter that one of their selling points of this ‘new’ operating system was the fact that hardware,  was being further abstracted, and thus bad drivers would therefore be less able to bring the machine down in any  way.

I think anyone who has experienced problems with video drivers with Vista knows this is not fully true.

So with the popularity of Vista declining like that of ‘W’, what is Microsoft to do? I’d suggest that some new blood gets into the coding of any new patches, as the current team must be bleary eyed by now. Perhaps some limited ‘guest coding’ from developers of other operating systems might help. Can you imagine what might change if Linus Torvalds was asked to ‘take a peek’ at some of the Vista code? Sure, he’d come away with some ways to point out the flaws in Windows, but Microsoft would gain some knowledge from a person with the grit to start an operating system on his own. And he had it working with very little help. Surely Bill Gates must rate him as ‘a high bandwidth person’. Besides, isn’t Mr. Ballmer blowing hard about new ‘openness’ at Microsoft?

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[tags] Vista, patches, broken code, new coding, Linus Torvalds, Bill Gates, Mr. Ballmer [/tags]