Texas bans Vista/ But its not a April Fool's Joke

[LinuxMint-4]

(OK at the end of the article, it says it isn't a April fool's joke....maybe it isn't. I remember hearing elsewhere a year or so ago that Vista was actually banned at some govt. agencies. So it could be true. But today is April 1st....so here goes....)

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April 1, 2009 |
Texas seeks to ban Windows Vista purchases
By Dave Parrack


http://vista.blorge.com/2009/04/01/texa ... purchases/

Texas seeks to ban Windows Vista purchases Windows Vista has some very forthright critics who have spent the last two years mocking Microsoft for its latest and far-from-greatest operating system. Which is fair enough because Vista has been a major fail in most departments. But do these issues warrant a U.S. state trying to get Windows Vista banned?

Vista has been nothing short of a disaster for Microsoft. It launched with major problems, gained poor reviews from previously-contented Windows users and was generally derided for not being Windows XP, the aging OS which still has its fans today. Even though most of the early problems with Vista have been cleared up by two essential service packs, this hasn’t been enough to turn some people onto this particular operating system.

My San Antonio News reports that a rider added to the $182.2 billion state budget of Texas would effectively ban Windows Vista from being bought by any state agencies with the exception of institutions of higher education.

Any state agencies which did want to buy Vista would have to “get written approval from the Legislative Budget Board before buying.” Senator Juan Hinojosa, vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is the man responsible for adding the provision to the two-year budget plan. His simple reason for doing so is, “Don’t buy it, because it’s not worth it.”

He continued:

We have a lot of problems with the Vista program. It had a lot of bugs. It takes up a lot of memory. It’s not compatible with other equipment, and it’s supposed to be an upgrade from the XP program that is being used by state agencies, and it’s not.

Rather unsurprisingly, Microsoft isn’t too happy about this move, pointing towards the 1,500 Microsoft employees based in Texas and the $500 million data center recently opened in San Antonio. What does the company get in return for its ongoing commitment to the state of Texas? Having one of its products named, shamed, and effectively banned for being rubbish.

This is truly bizarre and could surely only happen in Texas. No-one is going to lie and claim that Vista is the greatest piece of software in the world - it’s clearly not - but it’s not so bad it deserves banning. I wonder what Hinojosa thinks of Windows 7? Will he also seek to ban that when it’s finally released? After all, it’s more Vista-like than XP-like.

For those who are wondering: despite the date of this article it isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke. Proving reality is sometimes stranger than fiction.

[eddie]

Most of the intelligent computer people here in Texas, have already banned Vista for a while now. I have not heard of anyone who has benefitted from the complex in San Antonio. I would love to work there and sneak in linux.... My brother a cs instructor teaches Vista at the local Texas college. He will not allow it's use at his home though. In fact when his daughter asked him about using Vista on her computer, he gave an emphatic "NO". She was stunned, but he explained the reasons later to her. By the way, my brother also not only teaches Ubuntu installs in the hardware classes, but he also shows them how to use live cd's to recover foobarred windows boxes.