Seven is on the left

OVER at IDG, one popular columnist believes at Vista will continue to slide into the shade while another new writer who arrived from CNET says that "Vista and Office Could Be the Downfall of Microsoft" and here is what he expects to happen next:

When the time comes that Windows XP can no longer be pre-installed on new computers, Macs and Linux will both benefit, of course. How much? I can't wait to see. If someone has to learn a new operating system, they may as well do it on a system that's immune to most malicious software. I hear that the tech support from Apple is terrific, certainly the price on Linux can't be beat. And they can both run Open Office.

Vista is not the last among Microsoft's headaches. Its successor, Vista 7, already contains embarrassing bugs that are quite severe, not just cosmetic.

Following the availability of Windows 7 client Beta and Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta, Microsoft revealed that neither of the next versions of its Windows operating systems were able to join domains with names exceeding 15 characters in length. Any attempt to join Windows 7 client Beta or Windows Server 2008 R2 Beta machines to a Domain Name System (DNS) with a 15+ character domain name would result in an error message, the company informed - “The attempt to join this computer to the << domain_name >>.com domain failed. The parameter is incorrect.”

And this is what they call "beta"? A couple of years ago, Microsoft fanalysts said that Microsoft was "Chang[ing the] Meaning Of 'Release Candidate'." They were referring to Vista.

Joe Wilcox, an analyst with JupiterResearch, said that Microsoft's corrupted the term.

"'Release candidate' is a long-standing term, it has meaning behind it," said Wilcox. "The name says it all. This should be code that's ready to release." It's not, said Wilcox. And Microsoft told him so.

"I was told that Microsoft recognizes that it has plenty of work still to do on Windows Vista and that Release Candidate 1 is not a near-final version," Wilcox went on. "I was told that Microsoft's approach, perhaps, definition, of a release candidate had 'evolved.' I countered that Microsoft had changed the definition."

Michael Cherry of Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft agreed that Microsoft's misused 'release candidate.'

"They've completely messed up the vocabulary," he said. "What exactly is a pre-release candidate?" he asked, referring to the term Microsoft used last week to describe a publicly-available build of Vista that immediately preceded RC1. "What they released [as RC1] would in the old vocabulary be a Beta 3."

Cherry said he had installed RC1, but immediately had several bugs to report. "Someone like me shouldn't be submitting four new bugs on a build called 'release candidate,'" he said.

So history appears to be repeating itself. The Vista 7 BSOD saga is reaching new heights (yes, "beta" means fatal BSODs, by Microsoft's standards). We gave examples some days ago [1, 2] and this just does not stop.

BSOD at start-up:

[...]

BSOD after logging in:

[...]

BSOD while looking at themes:

[...]

So there you go. Nothing much has changed really, and even the error message is presented the same way as some of the previous versions of Windows. Still counting on Windows 7?

Watch the videos, which make compelling proof. Thanks to Juna for collecting this pictorial evidence. ⬆

Truths about Vista 7:

• Microsoft Polices Coverage of Vista 7 by 'Kicking Out' Disobedient Journalist
• Microsoft is Bribing Bloggers Again... for Vista 7 Raves
• Vista 7 Truths and Sins
• Quote of the Day: Vista 7 Actually Worse than Vista
• Verdict of 7 Reviews: Anti-Competitive, Disappointing