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As law professor Michael Geist explains in a recent editorial, "In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the 'user experience' from the user."

This is what I've been hearing again and again. Microsoft wants to control your use of their software. If an e-mail service refused e-mails from certain sources, would you use it? If they wouldn't let you check your e-mail from certain places, would you use it? If you had to pay an additional fee for each computer you used for mail, would you use it?

Microsoft - profits before customers

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Apparently, Vista will not let you install on an empty hard drive with the "upgrade version" as previous versions of Windows did. This is a problem only for some, but it's significant.

What Microsoft is trying to do is convert their software market into a licensing market. This way, no one owns software, only licenses. As an analogy, assume you've purchased the ever so expensive xbox 360, but you're moving across town next month. When you hook up the game system in the new place, it refuses to play games stating that you need to call Microsoft to purchase a new site license. You call and demand to know what happened and the foreigner who answers says that the original purchase price of the xbox allows for only one site so you need to purchase the right to use it elsewhere.

Consumers who want to be in control of their own computers should stay away from Vista.

If you don't want bad press, try making a better product.

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That seems to be an undercurrent (or more than an undercurrent) of thought on the web. Here is a list of 10 good reasons not to buy Vista.

The point about Windows being released with the need for a hardware upgrade is something I can relate to. When XP came out and I was still working retail, they were recommending a Pentium 333Mhz with 256Mb of RAM. I told people not to even try XP without a bare minimum of 400Mhz and 512Mb of RAM.

My experience is that they list what it takes to make the computer not fail when loading, not what it takes to make it run decently. And from Badvista.org, where I found the link to the top 10 list, I also found this article:

Vista is being marketed to content producers, not consumers... These changes won’t enhance user security unfortunately as they were designed to protect only “premium content ?... The new Vista scheme signals to me that they have exhausted new customer acquisition and are now focused on milking their existing market.

Ouch. Well, if you don't want bad press, try making a better product.