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Another former Vista enthusiast gets round to actually running it...

Rage in the tech community over a well-known Vista booster, who has written pages of enthusiastic praise for the new Windows version. Apparently, this character has just burst into publication with cries of pain, having (finally) discovered that if he installs it on his PC, it doesn't work properly.

Pretty crap. Even so... he has some of my sympathy.

Several of us pro hax have been discussing the difficulties of getting actual Vista release code in the last three months. Fortunately for me, I was able to write my PCW column on the basis of a few months' time on various betas (without the assistance of the esteemed M Bisson, by the way, I'd certainly have given up!) and with the privilege of access to MSDN downloads.

Despite a couple of dozen phone calls, emails and other contacts, I still don't have the official release copy of Vista shrink-wrapped that I was assured "has already been sent" back in November.

A colleague, with a bona fide commission from a Microsoft Partner publisher to prepare a book on Vista, supposedly for launch with the shrink-wrap, was reduced to begging for a disc from people with MSDN access. Microsoft simply refused to provide the software.

The Editor of one magazine was invited to the launch. He explained he wouldn't be writing the review. "That's not the point!" said PR. "We want you there in a personal capacity." His reporter rang up and said: "I'll be the one writing the launch up, but you haven't invited me..." and PR responded: "Sorry, we've invited the Editor. There won't be room for hangers-on - too many TV sound crews."

On one occasion, I got to a senior Round Table meeting between hax and product managers, to discover that one well-known columnist and I were the only hax there who had copies. The PR bunnies affected to believe that copies would be sent out the next week. "Monday" they said. I've seen 15 Mondays since then.

On the day of the launch, despite the enforced absence of literally dozens of qualified reporters with commissions to write the event up, it was discovered that the room was full of antique ex-hax who have long since left the industry, or at the least, have stopped writing for the meeja.

Other tales follow a similar course. It was almost as if they did not want people to review it.

In fact, I suspect back-stabbing and in-fighting between various public relations companies and simple incompetence in the dying art of press relations work, explains all.

For further reading, try these cries of pain...