Microsoft
It occurs to me that Microsoft have, on occasion, come up with decent software. For example, I am currently using Windows Live Writer to produce this post. It's a simple piece of software, all it does is provide a GUI for editing blog posts.
But here's the trick. It works, and it's actually nicer than the default web-based LJ interface.
Thing is, though, Microsoft just aren't consistent. This is never more obvious when it comes to operating systems. Am I the only person who think that when the majority of Vista users will only hype on about how they have no issues with Vista, that's not a good thing. If I'm upgrading something as important as an OS I don't want merely "no issues", I want "the following is better". As far as I can tell, the only improvements in Vista are:
- Aero (pretty, but something of a resource hog. Also, I prefer the transparency effects in KDE)
- Speedboost (using a flash stick as a 'supplemental' page file. Not really a boost at all if you have enough hardware RAM to actually run Vista in the first place)
So really, Vista seems to offer very little real advantage over XP. So why bother? Right now, I think my next PC (in a couple of years time, I guess) will be running OpenSUSE/KDE.