Apparently I’m not alone in finding Windows Vista a less than compelling upgrade over XP. Bloggers all over, including more than a few on my daily or weekly reading list like Philip Greenspun and Joe Wilcox, seem to be finding the same irritating flaws. Those pro reviewer reviews that come out on the first day of product’s introduction can be informative but they’re nothing compared to the weight of response from actual users over the following weeks and months. And p.s., that’s one of the reasons why I generally avoid first gen iterations of stuff like the iPhone or MacBook Pro.
Also, speaking of first day pro reviews, VMWare’s excellent Fusion software for emulating other operating systems under OS X is finally out of beta this week and the reviews are flowing in. Robert Mohns at Macintouch has a lengthy review that find Fusion “outstanding.” John Gruber, who can distill more Mac wisdom in a few sentences that most reviewers deliver in 1,200 words, says it’s favored by several friends over Parallels Desktop (scroll down to bottom of Aug. 6 entries).
Sense a contradiction in my philosophy? Perhaps. But in the case of both Fusion and Adobe’s Lightroom, I used free beta software for months, software which kept getting better and better, before ponying up for the first release. Unlike a major new OS or hardware, the iterations of public betas all but eliminate the usual first gen snafus.
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