Windows Vista: the end of one revolution and the beginning of another

Yes, Windows Vista and Office 2007 are now available for ordinary consumers. And you needn't worry about being trampled by the crowds; indications are that there are no significant lines at stores. And why might that be? Perhaps because the personal computer experience is now the antithesis of what it began as.

Take the wayback machine to 30 years ago. This is the pre-IBM PC time, the mainframizoic era. Giant dinosaur computers from IBM, RCA, and DEC roam the earth, and mortals tremble when their hear their three-lettered corporate roars. MIS (the name for IT workers in those days) cares for and feeds these monoliths in their glass data centers, their native habitat. And unwashed and unclean business supplicants fill out forms requesting applications, while MIS folk occasionally allow them to gaze upon the wonders of their domain:

"Sssh. That's an IBM 370/168 over there sunning itself on the data center floor. She's feeding on an entire row of disk drives and writing the output to tape. And when she's done with that, she's going to run the payroll. Isn't she a BEAUTY?"

"Your business application? Gosh, we couldn't possibly do anything about that until we run it through the corporate approval committee. With some luck, though, we might be able to get approval for your program in a few weeks and maybe a prototype in about six months."

Now the business people weren't happy with this situation. But nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. However, a few heretics who wanted to get something done brought in Apple IIs from home and put a program called VisiCalc on them. Suddenly, they could build models and simple applications in a few days instead of months. And best of all, they didn't have to go hat in hand to the MIS zookeepers.

The meme of the mainframeizoic era? PCs were rebellion. PCs were power to the people. PCs were revolutionary -- they called into question business as usual.

Now a few years later, IBM legitimized the PC for business. And when IBM stumbled, then Microsoft eliminated all (well almost all) competitors to Redmond's vision of PCs running their software everywhere.

Return to the modern day. The revolutionary cadre of PC rebels now is in charge. But was the promise of fast-moving business and worker productivity fulfilled?

Yes, there's now a computer on every desk and in every briefcase. But while the mainframeizoic catch-22 dialog with MIS (now IT) has been automated, it is no more helpful than it was 30 years ago. Now, the business person's frustration in trying to improve his business is stymied by an anonymous and faceless entity: the dialog box. Even today, business people running the latest and greatest software from Microsoft face these actual Vista messages:

"You must be logged in as administrator to change this setting."
"Upgrade has been disabled."
"Windows is trying to determine why Internet Explorer is not responding."
"To help protect your computer, Windows Firewall has blocked some features of this program."
"Genuine validation required for Windows Vista. A properly licensed copy of Windows Vista that has passed Microsoft Genuine validation is required to enable cert features and obtain non-security updates and product support. "
"This installation is forbidden by system policy. Contact your system administrator."

What began as the democratization of computing to every marketer and business person has now become a distraction from getting work done. Rather than freeing executives to focus on business, PCs now are the policemen of the business, ensuring that no one moves too fast or too far from what's approved.

Want proof? Try installing Windows Vista on your work PC, hook it up to the network, and call IT for help making it work. Despite the fact that this system was five years in development and testing, designed from the ground up to make the business person's job easier and more secure, don't expect a welcome and cheerful response. Instead, corporate management and IT are saying things like,

"Run Windows Vista? Gosh, we couldn't possibly do anything about that until we run it through the corporate approval committee. With some luck, though, we might be able to get approval for the program in a few weeks and maybe get it to you in about six months when the first service pack comes out."

In 30 years, it's amazing how little has changed.

It is time for another worker rebellion. But this time, the tools are different. The revolutionaries today are employing a million free Internet services, personal Web sites, and startups without investments in the status quo. The first shots have already been fired by business people forwarding their email to free GMail accounts to bypass corporate restrictions, airing dirty corporate laundry on personal blogs on Blogger and Weblogs, and launching test versions of new ideas using services from Google, Amazon, and Yahoo. And the famous Windows PC banner is long gone from rebel uniforms. Today's rebel is wearing a Google T-shirt, carrying an Apple laptop and promoting their company from a Linux infrastructure they don't even own.

Everyone from Bill Gates to high school students sees this change coming. But in this revolution, Microsoft is the defender of the status quo with billions of dollars of revenue and profit at stake, not the poor upstart. And for the new rebel generation that has grown up with computers, they see the Windows Vista PC, not as a tool that will help them build their dreams, but a barrier whose end user license agreements, restrictions on content, and closed development processes stand in their way. The high-school developer in a garage with a cool idea isn't thinking about getting her product to Microsoft -- she wants to get it onto the Internet where it make her world famous, not hold her hostage to lawyers and marketers locked into an obsolete business model. She wants her ideas to be used and shared in millions of devices across the world, not locked in a vault with a thousand others, waiting for a competitor's threat to free them.

The instigator of one revolution is never the leader of the next. Bill Gates knows that, and he is moving on from Microsoft. It's time the rest of us did too. We have nothing to lose but our nostalgia for when Microsoft actually mattered.

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