Was thinking yesterday Microsoft should've gone the route the anti-trust folk were floating for a while: Release several different, competing versions of the OS. We've essentially got that going on now with Vista vs. XP, though one's purposefully end of lifed.

Seriously, though, Vista does many things that don't follow the years of training people have gotten while using 3.1-XP. DLL Hell is not just a programmer's nightmare, it's also shaped the way installers work and apps behave and created work-arounds that are now part of the OS's culture. Not restarting after you install a new app is nice, but how many of us wonder if we shouldn't anyway?

Vista is good at security, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate it telling me when a background app is trying to phone home. XP is best at providing a standard Windows experience. The first needs a name change. My suggestion after seconds of thought is Microsoft SecurityOS.

Here's another recent example of what's going on in Vista that makes me think MS should've called it a new OS, and popped up when I asked a recent app to give me its "introductory tour".

Why can't I get Help from this program?

The Help for this program was created in Windows Help format, which was used in previous versions of Windows and it is not supported in Windows Vista.

For more information, see Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) is no longer included with Windows on the Microsoft support website.


Nice. Reminds me of the wacky Aero error and DVD incompatibilities I received earlier. If I'm supposed to think this is Windows, I have to wonder, is this OS really done?