I used to be the kind of person to upgrade software immediately as soon as new versions were available, because it used to be true that upgrades meant there would be some kind of improvement. But lately Microsoft has been working to redefine the term "software upgrade" to mean "an entirely different application rewritten from the ground up without any quality control." First there was Visual Studio 2005, which is definitely quirkier and slower than Visual Studio 2003. Then, in the same vein, there's SQL Server Business Intelligence Studio, which I've had the pleasure of using for a year now. It has one of the slowest and buggiest interfaces in a Microsoft product I've ever seen. How is it even possible that the faster the computer hardware gets, the slower the applications run?

Now there's Windows Vista. I have not heard a single good thing about Vista (not counting programmers excited about something new to program for). I just talked to someone over the weekend who bought a new computer with Vista installed on it and now he can't run any of his old software. Today I found this Slashdot article describing hideously slow copy and delete functionality in Vista. An OS that can't copy and delete files efficiently?? I can only assume it's because they are trying to ensure that you aren't copying digitally-protected media content. It really makes me wonder if it's not time to seriously look at Linux again or maybe even AppleOS. Hell, even AmigaOS might be an improvement at this point. :)