Thought Stream

Vista’s annoying manner of handling IP connections has proven to be a greater challenge than actually getting high speed connections in India. As a result, I’ve got several posts sitting on my laptop that are waiting to be posted. I’ll get them out as soon as possible, now that I’ve got a connection finally working. Did I mention that I hate Vista?

I’ve updated my twitter connection to work with my AirTel number in India, so I’ll be adding tweets faster than blogging.

While being driven to the Bangalore airport today on the way to Delhi, we came across this ‘car’. Apparently it is electrically powered; I can’t imagine this deathtrap has an engine bigger than the motorcycle riding along side it. Funnier yet, it looked like the owner had a driver driving it for him. Yes friends, that is the sign of true luxury on the Indian roadways, a chauffeur driven toy car.

A few months back, I upgraded to a new convertible Tablet PC - the Lenovo X61T - replacing my workhorse tablet, the Toshiba M200. I had the M200 for three years, the longest that I’ve used any laptop. As the M200 approached the end of its useful life, I seriously considered migrating to a new Intel-based MacBook. The key factor that kept me from making the switch was the lack of inking capabilities on Macs. I wasn’t an early adopter of tablets, but by the time the M200 arrived, the technology was stable enough to be useful on a regular basis. The practicality and usefulness of a tablet led me to buy the Lenovo. Buying the Lenovo wasn’t a mistake, but choosing Windows Vista certainly was.

Before I slam Vista outright, I want to recognize how well Microsoft integrated the tablet interface into Vista. Inking is at the core of the operating system, best I can tell, as reflected in the omnipresent Tablet PC Input Panel. Inking definitely feels more natural in Vista than it did on XP. Unfortunately, the instability of Vista, along with odd behavioral issues have made Vista increasingly difficult to deal with. Quite a bit has already been written about Vista’s quirks, so I won’t devote much space to those issues here. However, I can categorize my disappointments with Vista in two key areas, productivity and stability.

First, productivity. Maybe it’s me, but I think most people assume full version upgrades of software should drive greater productivity by either adding a substantial set of new features or simplifying processes through better automation or functionality. Vista fails on all these fronts; in fact it feels more and more like a dot release of XP. To be sure there are a few features that have made me productive, but this has been offset by a loss of productivity on other features. All in all, I don’t see the vast improvement that was promised.

Second, stability. Stability has never been a calling card of Microsoft operating systems. With the release of Vista, Microsoft promised it’s most stable operating system ever. Here too, I don’t see the improvements. Instead Vista has introduced some of the most annoying things I’ve ever seen in an operating system. For example, when docking or undocking my Lenovo, both the laptop screen and the attached external monitor go through a random screen flicker/rotation sequence that varies everytime I dock/undock. Rumor has it that the service pack that Microsoft is due to release will resolve this…I’m not betting on it. In the last few days I’ve started to get random lockups while working on the Lenovo. That is an absolute non-starter for a workhorse PC that I rely on to do all of my work.

I’m seriously considering ‘downgrading’ the Lenovo back to XP. That isn’t an optimal solution, but XP has gone through two service pack releases, with another apparently on the way. Those patches did make XP more stable, and I’d rather wait for a similar set of patches to be released for Vista before returning to it. Vista’s Aero Glass look is slick, but that alone won’t keep me on a system that I can’t rely on.

I don’t plan to replace the Lenovo anytime soon, but I doubt that I’ll keep this machine for three years like the M200. I am nearly certain that my next machine will be one of those Intel powered Apple Macs. Yes, I know that Apple’s laptops have issues of their own, but the operating system has proven to be more reliable than Windows. There is the added attraction of running both OSs on the MacBooks, another nice feature. Now if Apple could bring some of that touch technology from the iPhone to their laptops, we’d have the optimal solution.

It’s been nearly two years since I last visited India [an unusually long gap for me], and seven years since I last spent an entire month there. That is what I plan to do this time, spend the entire month of October in India. My calendar is already filling up with more meetings and travel than a typical work month in the US. Besides for the obligatory visits with relatives, I’ll be attending a course on Venture Capital at the Indian School of Business. Hyderabad based ISB has emerged as India’s world class business school, on par with the top management institutes in the United States and Europe. I know most people would never think of taking a class at a business school while on vacation, but I’m really looking forward to this. It should be fun.

I’ll also be visiting as many startups and early stage companies as possible during this trip. A lot of people would argue that India is in the middle of an economic bubble on the magnitude of the American internet bubble of a decade ago. While that may be true on a certain level, there is a fundamental change underway, led by the rise of the entrepreneurial sprit amongst India’s youngest citizens. These are the people who see the possibilities of the future, and aren’t beholden by the caustic Nehruvian Socialism that plagued India for half a century [Could anyone have imagined taking a course on Venture Capital in India a decade ago?!]. India is changing at an elemental level, and the best way to see that is to observe the real elements of change first hand.

We are also exploring the possibility of moving to India. It has been a long term plan for us, and the timing seems right to seriously consider a move. This will certainly add an additional wrinkle to the trip.

I’ll be blogging extensively throughout the trip, and if I get gallery module to work correctly on WordPress, uploading tons of pictures of the adventure.

…stay tuned…