Critique in Tietokone about my recent Vista article

In the April issue of the Finnish Tietokone magazine, "JK" sent feedback about my recent Windows Vista tips article. His painpoints seemed to be that I was not able to deliver eight proper tips (gaming is not a proper tip) and I worst of all, I happened to suggest trying out XPS, when everybody else uses PDF. Let's take the case of XPS first.

The state of things today is that you can't create PDF files with Windows itself. To be able to do that, you will need either Office 2007 from Microsoft, of any of the available third-party applications. Adobe, Jaws, Nuance, etc. Even though it would be great if Vista could be able to print PDF files out of the box, it just won't. PDF is the current industry standard, but I fail to understand why a little competition from Microsoft would do harm -- especially when PDF and XPS are different in both aim and functionality. When sending documents to a friend/colleague, it is still better to send XPS files than the original Word or Excel documents, if the idea is that the receiver doesn't need to modify the document.

Yes, I am for standards (what would be the Internet for example without TCP/IP?), but JK's letter gives the impression that if it's a Microsoft invention, it must be bad -- if it is by Adobe or anybody else, it's always good. And, if I happen to like a Microsoft feature, I must be a sales guy. Hmm.

As far as technology goes, PDF is far from perfect, and since I have a programming background, I do like XPS because of its power, conceptual simplicity (XML+ZIP) and because it can be quite easily created from applications. PDF was never that, and most probably won't. Like many of Adobe's creations, PDF is nice and pretty, but not easy to use/create/automate (pick your poison) in the enterprise. In short, the XPS Writer virtual printer just happens to be part of Vista, and it is not my interest to keep quiet of the feature just because some people don't like it.

Finally, the letter mentioned wasting space to mention Chess and Mahjong in Vista as a power user tip. Well, unlike JK said, there never was Mahjong in Windows, until now with Vista. And since we IT professionals/developers use our computers thousands of hours yearly, it is only clever to chill out sometimes -- even in front of that same PC.