I’ve never been an apologist for Microsoft’s heavy-handed business tactics, but I’ve also always acknowledged the incredible wealth of talent they have at their disposal. I think a lot of their success can be attributed to developing solid products, and that they would’ve still been successful if they hadn’t resorted to anti-competitive tactics.

So I just can’t wrap my head around what’s going on over there lately.

Mini-Microsoft continues to give us glimpses of a management structure gone amok, and Google continues to dance circles around them in terms of web presence and offerings. So I had to laugh at Joel Spolsky’s comments on the impossible-to-open packaging of Office 2007. Seems like they can’t even get plastic boxes right, let alone operating systems:

I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled).

He’s right — I’ve played around with Vista, and it doesn’t take more than ten minutes to realize it’s junk. They haven’t added anything really useful in terms of new features; most of what’s new is just eye candy. They’ve made the security dialogs so ornery and useless that I couldn’t imagine my grandmother being able to use Vista. Performance has dropped, from what I’ve heard, beyond all the extra video power it takes to render Aero.

The only positive comments I’ve heard is that Vista is easier for system administrators. IT shops which deploy thousands of desktops (like universities) are eager to take advantage of new features like Windows Imaging Format. Is that the strategy? Annoy the piss out of your users, but give IT departments an offer they can’t refuse? Doesn’t sound like a winning approach to me.

For now, I’m telling my family to switch. Becca got a MacBook, and she loves it.