So, funny thing: this morning, I was looking to see if VTech had finally gotten around to releasing an update for its cordless VTech phones with respect to making them Vista compatible, so I googled “vtech skype vista support”, because I’m too lazy to sort through their own site. You might recall me ranting about why Vista enrages me, and using the lack of drivers / support one of my chief beefs. Anywhoo, I thought perhaps another site had found a solution, perhaps someone blogged about it. Funny thing was that my own rant ranked #7 on the google search

So I am showing you this not just to show off that this blog has ranking for some pretty obscure terms, but that blog post on my blog outranks VTech itself when it comes for what I think is a relevant search term. I am only casual observer for SEO topics, but looks like a clear example where VTech needs a hand — not just in terms of being the right one to rank for the appropriate topic, but from a public relations point of view, as well.

In fact, VTech has solved the problem as of a few weeks ago, as it did release a new software update so that its now Vista compatible, with the page in question over here.

[edit: or, over here where “VTech released a Vista compatible update for their Skype phones” — VTech, please thank Andy Beard by sending him something (like a free phone, maybe?) after the exchange I had with him below]

Where is does that page rank in the scheme of things? Well, nowhere to be honest. Why is this important? Only because about a year ago VTech made some noises about never releasing an update that would work with Vista machines, which have been (obviously) received quite negatively.

Chalk one up under “why SEO is important”, I think.

You may have heard that Vista SP1 is coming / has come / will destroy you / devour small animals / capture all of your bases. There’s some more news that installing it will likely render even *MORE* programs unusable.

Well, if you could see me now, my eyes have rolled so far back into my head that I am actually seeing my own ear wax (which isn’t that difficult, as I have a prodigious amount, according to unconfirmed sources).

And that groaning that you’re hearing isn’t the enormous effort its taking for my eyes to do this anatomically impossible task.

Nay, its the frustration I am feeling with Microsoft.

I ranted once about Vista, and at the time, my biggest beef were the software incompatibilities. Looks like with this major update, I can look to even *more* of the same problems are likely to incur, and there is a short list over here.

Of course, what Microsoft doesn’t know, is what it cannot know, which is how many *other* programs also break with this new update, which we will of course find out in due course.

Of which I will *not* be party to, because I, for one, probably won’t be downloading SP1 if I can help it in the near future (and that doesn’t even include the “other” problems — like corrupting your hard drive — which have in fact, delayed SP1 from being deployed in a wide enough scale).

But whenever it will be, it’ll definitely be after I figure out how to get my damn eyeballs to stop staring at my ear wax.

I’d like to think of myself as pro-Microsoft.  I know it has its fair share of detractors amongst the geek community (at last poll: 95% of them, which had an error rate of +/- 5%), but I figure as long as you know what you’re getting into, as I feel I do (most times) it does the trick.  Well, anyway.  Last week I upgraded to Vista.

By “upgrade” I mean, I actually bought a new PC as I was sick and tired of using a five year old piece of hardware.  Elitest to some, I know, but it had just gotten unimaginably slow to use.  I mean, I shuddered every time I right-clicked in explorer because I knew I was in for a 30 second wait.  Or, even worse, trying to create a “new folder” in the windows explorer area.  That’s about a 45 second wait.  As I say, my every day Windows experience, even after defraging and deleting and spyware blasting efforts (and actually much more) had become an abomination.

So, I upgraded my PC, and along with it came Vista Premium.

Now, there are a lot of complaints with Vista, but I think that many of them stem from the fact that its a processor and memory hog.  I thought this wouldn’t be a problem with a new PC (quad core, 3 gigs of ram) and its not.  But there was one thing I heard about but was still unprepared for.  And that was how much stuff — software and hardware — is *not* Vista compatible.

• Some favourite shareware games (have you heard of the Cradle of Rome, perhaps?)
• My new terrabyte external hard drive (I had announced it on Pownce a while back — incidentally I have 5 more invites if you’re interested) from Western Digital.
• My dual VTech Skype phone.
• And — *almost* — the xbox media center.  But I got *that* to work, thank God, because Vista’s Media Center is also an abomination when compared to the sleek awesomeness of the Xbox Media Center.

For me, everything else about Vista is pretty solid.  I don’t quite understand how it cost *billions* to produce, but that’s a post for another time.  I mean, the new “search” function is pretty slick, and so is the aero interface, but this incompatibility thing? Its rendered $600 dollars worth of hardware un-usable, and is actually changing what I have to do and buy because of it.  I can’t talk using my VTech phone for skype conversations, so now I have to buy another headset.   Thank goodness the external hard drive came from Costco, which has an extended return policy on hardware, so I plan to take it back.

But amongst the many things that Vista *doesn’t* have going for it, the incompatibility thing is one thing that cannot, and should not, be ignored for anyone wishing to upgrade themselves out of Windows XP.  Even if you have the latest and greatest hardware running it, incompatibility issues may (as they did for me) change, and make more expensive, your every day computing experience.

[and no, I don’t think upgrading to Vista pre-SP1 will help — although I’m doing that as we speak]