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An open letter to Bill Gates

• Robert Peston
• 6 Feb 07, 08:48 AM

Dear Bill Gates

Give me back my weekend. I bought a new Windows Vista laptop – and that’s when the trouble began.

My dislike of your new user interface you can put down to the conservatism that comes with advancing years. However having loyally stuck by the galumphing, unaesthetic functionality of your operating systems over the past 15 years, while faced with ridicule from pretentious Mac-loving types, I resent your attempt at an elegance transplant.

But what really grates is that your system is incompatible with two of the vital tools of my trade. Vista refuses to load the software for my newish Olympus digital recorder. And here’s what takes the biscuit. Vista rejects my HP IPAQ handheld device – even though the software for that was created by Microsoft!

So in order to put Vista at the centre of what I do, I would have to buy hundreds of pounds of new hardware. Which may be great news for your industry, but makes me regret never having defected to Steve Jobs. Perhaps now’s the time.

The only thing that gives me any comfort is that I am apparently not alone in my Vista-stress. Over lunch yesterday with the head of a very large media company, I learned of Vista incompatibility problems with financial ramifications that might actually register in Redmond.

My conclusion? For all the expensive and much-extended gestation, Vista was not ready for commercial release. And, just so you know, I’ve never once had a comparably horrible experience with the Google boys.

Yours sincerely

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