its about time microsoft admits that vista was a lame duck. microsoft should just offer every one that made the mistake of getting vista a free up grade to xp.

Vista - sucks much? ^^

ROFL

Why would anyone want Vista on a new computer, it has nothing major to offer. It's just a Beta Test for the consumers to pay for and not MS-R&D.

Damn right MS. Give us people options. We will decide if your Vista sucks or not. Do not force us to use your new product just because you can.

Same..Stuff, different year.
This is exactly the same sentiments you all had when XP came out, so you can politely shut your traps.

Do people really have memories this short?
Seriously... It was the exact same crap being said about XP, when it came out: "Holy crap it's too resource-hungry." "I'll upgrade when you pry Win98 from my cold dead fingers." "Nothing is compatible and nothing ever will be."

Failure to be able to use vista is proof positive that you don't really know what you're doing with your computer and basically just know how to follow routine.
Vista is ridiculously easy to use, and our company has had no problems, save for a single scanner that does not (yet) have a vista x64 driver.

Instead of expecting Vista to be XP: Reloaded, why don't you just sit down for a minute and learn to use it.
Moving to Linux wouldn't help you, either, becuase it's just as different.

In summary:
Shut up. It's old. It was old seven years ago. It's still old now.

/steps off of soapbox

Dell has been offering this for a while. Got a laptop from them a few months ago and bought it with XP, had to pay extra but it was worth not dealing with Vista

Go to dell.com, if you click on "Small & Medium Business" you get options for XP still. You don't get that option for Home / Home Office though.

IT managers, consider this alternative: upgrade, when necessary, to Intel-Macs. As most documents in your company are MS Office-files, everything will run smoothly. In those exceptional cases, simply switch the Mac's to Windows OS. In a couple of years, you have transcended to an all Mac environment, with less hassles concerning virus-pollution. You'll be the hero of your CEO, CFO and colleagues: you turned your company into a modern one with a beautiful array of nice, smooth machines.

So, if XP is now 6 years old (come 10/25) and Vista has had 8 months in the market place, does this mean customers are finally fed up with Microsoft? While I doubt that, they are certainly out on Vista. What a colossal failure this product will be, once the OEM licenses for XP are officially killed in January.

The issue is that not all software is VISTA compatible. As a result, many people cannot use it. The silliness came in the fact that MS tried to force the hardware vendors to shove Vista down people's throats. It's a nice OS if all your hardware and software are new. But Vista is not the best MS OS for everyone.

If VISTA were totally compatible with XP then we are just going in circles the people who want a more secure and stable system should understand that backwards compatible is what usually starts the problems

I have been using VISTA for quite a while and no problems that could not be worked out

One poster had it right people don’t like change. I embrace it basically if you don’t like learning new things (other operating systems as well for when the need is there) you might have picked the wrong career

I've come across numerous software packages in a business setting that, due to their age or due to lazy developers, still don't work on Vista. That's the main reason for it; note that you don't see downgrades from the Home versions.

For 99.99% of what consumers are doing anymore, they'll be hard-pressed to see a performance difference between XP and Vista, so long as they have a discrete graphics card and at least 1GB of RAM (or 2GB for Vista x64).

This coming from somebody who has used Vista as their primary OS since Beta 2.

The individual who mentioned that the same things were said about XP is absolutely correct. When XP first came out nothing was compatible with it and it had bugs left and right. It wasn't until SP1 came out that I considered XP even usable.

The same can be said for Vista. Microsoft for better or worse likes to use customers as guinea pigs. The release software that isn't ready yet and allow us to find the problems so they don't have to. This is a bad way of doing things in my opinion, bur reality is what it is. When the first service pack for Vista comes out I will reevaluate using Vista as an operating system. Until that time I will stick with XP just like I stuck with 98 until XP SP1 came out.

Just don't judge things to quickly, remember we are only 8 months into a product cycle that, if it goes the way of XP, could be the standard PC OS for the next 5 years.

In a couple years XP will be gone and dead (it already is dead, just not gone yet).
You can say Vista blows and whatever (no point in arguing with somebody who never tried Vista or does not have appropriate hardware to run it) but that is a given – XP will be gone and dead just like 2000 (also considered to be "much better" than XP at the same point in OS lifetime – go read 6 years old posts) is gone and dead.

At that time can you get Vista back (since nothing would run on XP anymore) or your license is gone and you have to purchase a retail copy of Vista?

I don't want to hate Apple but when you get the moronic mac loving fools just blowing themselves for using a mac it just makes me sick.

I've used just about every OS made in the last 10 years (Unix, Linux (many different builds), BeOS, Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista (x86, x64), windows server 2000/2003, Mac OS X) and everyone has it's own set of problems. None and I mean none of them are perfect. My least favorite for a desktop is linux it's just too much work for a desktop OS. However for a server I will take linux over Windows or Mac OS server any day.

As for macs there great if you want to surf the web all day but outside they aren't much. The development tools that exist for mac outside of Java are terrible at best and the hardware is severely over priced. $600 for a mac mini with 2 year old hardware is hardly a good deal. Sadly in the desktop space M$ is still the best choice. However I will say if M$ doesn't watch it they could get beat by a linux variant that isn't so manual labor intensive and/or Apple gets some developers on board.

Oh and one last note for mac lovers, a complete OS lockup is no better then the BSOD.

If you have a fast enough computer, Vista is great, and I've been impressed with it. For the software I use, and the machine I have (2 years old), Vista runs faster and more reliably than XP ever did. I have complaints, of course, but I also had complaints on XP.

Are you really that upset because some people don't like a product that you do? Or that others have general appathy towards it? Your accusation that people who can't/don't use Vista don't know what they are doing is condesending at best. (Not to mention blatantly wrong in most cases) The reason that some people (like me) have not upgraded to Vista is because there is no compelling reason to do so. There is not yet a single application that I need or want to run that I can't use with XP. When there is, then I'll consider upgrading. Until then, those people who want to use it and pay MS for the privledge of working out all the bugs and playing with all the new bells and whistles can do so. I enjoyed playing that role back when Win95 was new. But I've "done that/been there". I expect more from a new OS release from Microsoft now.

I will add that Vista works far better at its release then XP did.

Same thing for Excel 2007. Everyone here hated it, now everyone here loves it.

They are only offering this downgrade on Vista Business and Ultimate, not Home Premium or Basic. Most people that are buying a new computer are going to be getting Home Premium.
Although, this is a great thing for many businesses that still need XP to run the LOB applications that aren't Vista compatable yet. But businesses buying their computer products should be getting them from Best Buy for Business. That way they can order business grade computers with XP without any issues.

Pierre, IT managers have more worries than just the format of MS Office files. Entire organizations run on Outlook, MS IIS, and tons of MS-only-compatible software so your idea that there is Mac alternative for IT managers, I disagree with.

I must admit I am reluctant to use Vista, but i am waiting for the bugs to be worked out first. As Opie said, this is the same stuff everyone was saying about XP when it first came out. I was a die hard Win 2000 man, why fix what is not broken right?

We will all be praising Vista in a few years when Microsoft ships a new, even buggier OS to us. But for right now give me my XP!!!

Thank you for saying that so I didnt have 2. I am not sure how people dont realise this. I promise all of you people who hate vista that after a service pack is released, and drivers catch up then vista will be a MUCH better OS. I have a dual boot and I love vista when it works. It has so many more features which I love such as when you run windows update it actually searchs for updates for your hardware as well.

As with all new OS's you will not be as familier with it. This does not mean that it is evil, but better yet it just new. Be patient and learn what it has to offer.

The more people jump on board the more support for a better OS we will get. Just watch...all of you will be singing a different tune in about a year or so.

Best,

Vista has a few bells and whistles and that's it. XP PRO runs much better than Vista Ultimate 64bit. I thought I had to toss my DVD and CD burners but as it turns out, Microsoft has filters that prevent hardware from being able to be used. After calling in 5 times, I finally got someone that would show me where I can delete the filters and boom my hardware became usable. If you have software that runs fine under XP it should run fine under Vista. Call Microsoft and demand they remove filters from the software or pay you the replacement costs. Microsoft, you should be ashamed of yourselves. How do you spell Class-Action Lawsuit?

Microsoft 'quietly begins to offer'?

I will buy my computer with any operating system I choose. I have not yet met a hardware dealer who will not give me what I want if I ask for it, maybe the US market is different?

Why is everyone acting like Microsoft has a say in this? As long as you play by their rules, then they win. When I buy a computer I will not be told what shall be on it. Then I will rather choose to have no OS installed, and if that raises costs, then I go to another company. "oooh, it's not our fault, it's the licensing agreements" they whine... Fine I say and look until I find someone who does not crumble under Microsoft's play rules.

And Pierre Nobs; Then the CFO will kill you for the increased cost in buying Mac gear... All I'm saying...

People said the same thing about XP when it replaced 2000

Actually, when XP came out the big issue was that this was the first NT based engine for everyone's Windows....and so coming from 98SE did make a big difference and with enough advantages that blew 98SE out of the water and made the upgrade a worthwhile necessicity.

XP (NT 5.1) is now almost flawless and would need a Windows version that had many more 'important' advantages to merit the change.

If you need large amounts of RAM (over 3GB) you can just go over to XP x64.

And hardware-wise it just does not make any sense at all to move to Vista (NT 6) until all motherboards (even the low end) are at least quadcores and true 64 bit, that can address at least 16 GB RAM.

All applications and drivers out there will have to follow and become true 64 bit clean and fully multi-threaded.

At that point it will make sense to move up to Vista (by then Vienna or whatever Microsoft chooses to call it).

Cheers

to step back to XP. i don't think they gave that option when XP was release. i think Vista is cool but i wont upgrade to it until one of three things happen;

1)SP 1 comes out and fixes the BIG problems.
2)all games/software i want to use is Vista only.
3)upgrade my computer hardware (probably as result of #2)

Your CEO won't be very happy when everyone who enters into your company has to be trained on new a new OS, and that you paid a ton more for hardware that could be had much cheaper.

If you're going to offer an alternative, it would be Linux, because if you're going to retrain you might as well not pay a lot extra for "style", as that really won't do you a lot of good.

I agree with the Vista isn't that bad, it might have a larger footprint but it's not nearly as bad when put to actual use... I don't think I'll upgrade any of my old machines where it would matter, but on a new machine purchased now it isn't an issue.

Is Vista that bad or am I crazy to think that it is a great OS? Maybe I am lucky, but I have had no problem at all with the OS. I remember the bitching about XP, but I upgraded anyway, then I purchase a new PC with media center and no problem there. The only OS, I an issue with was windows ME. It's nice that MS is giving an option to switch to XP, but I think they made the wrong choice by blinking. Who else is on the market that will take MS business? Linux, Mac OS? Those have yet to catch on is such a large scale that it would truly affect MS. I say, quit the bitching and look at the OS objectively. If you don't like it, so be it, but quit with the senseless bashing, because it is not at all a bad OS.

I just got a laptop with Vista...the real question is why Vista? At least you can say that XP was an improvement over W2000 or W98, but this thing is a total resource hog and I fail to see what benefit there is to the users in Vista. New menus?? Whoopie! Pseudo security so I can have a false sense of security??? WOW!

We use a POS Application that runs very well under Windows-XP Home (5 User). It does NOT run under Windows-Vista Business nor Ultimate yet. Each PC has a copy of XP-Home running on it and a copy of the POS Application. If I need to purchase a NEW PC and it only comes with Vista Business or Ultimate and I only need XP-Home, do I then purchase a copy of XP Home to replace Vista? Do I discard the POS Application that runs fine under XP-Home and purchase a new one? Do I convert all of our Stores to: new PC's that run Vista and look for a POS Application that runs under Vista? Why? To enrich Bill? If it's not broken, destroy it and start again! MS will make some additional dollars and the User really has no choice in the matter. Right?

I think MS is obligated if they want to keep their customers.

Why people are so happy to upgrade Mac OSX EVERYTIME a new version comes out? That crap is the most ridiculous crap I've ever used.

and Whenever Windows comes out, people will bash it whenever they have a chance, oh yes Windows is evil because most dumbasses are too dumb to use it.

Im not saying that I disagree with you... I do think Microsoft is obligated to give the customers a choice. But, I cannot agree with the "keeping customers" argument. They have what, 98% of all computers running thier OS? Or close to it... They dont "have" do to anything as far as they can see. They say something and bam, it happens... They force people to upgrade because then it makes them money and helps future compatability. Now, do I agree with it, no way... But, how else are they going to get everything to work together eh?
My biggest problem is the lack of drivers for older hardware, or even some newer hardware. I'll elaborate, I have a soundcard for one of my computers, all the drivers work for XP, but they will not work for Vista, nor will the company or microsoft ever make the drivers compatable. Its a soundcard people... I shouldnt have to buy a new one to make it work, I shouldnt have to upgrade a perfectly good system to use Vista either. Just because a computer is slow or old doesnt mean that it should completely lack support and drivers. Oh, and might I also mention how much HP needs to grow up. A 1 year old laptop SHOULD have support for the touchpad drivers in Vista. Nope... Sorry, your SOL sir. That is mostly HP's problem and not related to Vista... But lets see... Wasted my money to buy Vista and I dont have support for my mouse?!?! It was even "supposedly" on the Hardware Compatability List.
And Vista does use too many resources for my liking. My laptop was using very little memory and cpu power to run XP, once I put vista on it... well... 38% was the minimum. And considering the fact I had to use an external USB mouse to use it... Well, it just wasnt for me. Coulda used the money for plenty of other things besides a Vista "upgrade". 2 systems down, dont feel the need to chance it on my main computer.

And I'll be happy.


"If you need large amounts of RAM (over 3GB) you can just go over to XP x64."

Have two copies of XP Pro x64, but only one in use with 4GB's ram. I can run just about everything, and most of the time I don't have any issues. If you want x64 bit computing I'd recommend giving XP Pro x64 a try. If you need DX10 unfortunately you'll have to buy Vista. I also must say that so far I hate Office 2007. Is it more intuitive? Yes, but why do Universities and businesses make the switch? Why can't we just use both, at least until we get more comfortable with it? Small changes are better M$. Make fewer changes more frequently and sell the new versions for less. The idea here is fewer bugs for IT to deal with, more time for software writers to catch up, and time for us to ease into new software. We LIKE good changes and updates, but we hate having to relearn. Small adjustments are much easier.

Neither one for me. Try Ubuntu linux. www.ubuntu.com. Free of any charges for this OS!

Why do you think terrorists attacked the World Trade Towers instead of a McDonalds? The same reasoning applies to virus writers and computer hackers.

If Mac products were to actually become more popular beyond their 5.6% market share they would be facing the same problems and issues MS faces. No programmer at Apple can outsmart millions of hackers and virus writers.

I honestly hope apple brings the competition so MS can be downgraded from a legal monopoly and actually operate as a company. 700 Million Euro fines for windows media player, having to get rid of I.E. on some versions of windows, being forced to include google desktop search, etc.

If MS actally had complete freedom over their OS to write whatever they wanted they could and WOULD blow apple out of the water. Just like they proved in the 90's.

xp was such a huge improvement over me and 98 because it was actually stable.

Vista doesnt have the benifit of fixing something so glaring. But it does offer a ton of improvements over xp.

And with the right hardware, vista is very fast.
Same with xp. When it came out, system builders were trying to pass it off with 128 mb or less ram. Anyone who has ever messed with early xp PC's know what kind of hassle that was.

With a cheap procc, anywhere from a 2400 to a pentium dual core 1.6ghz, with 2 gig of ram, which currently costs me 60 bucks, vista is very quick.
PC manufacturers will take hold of cheap ram prices, and start offering a gig or more ram in their entry level machines, and vista will run as fast as, and faster than xp did.
(Computer technology has ALWAYS worked like this)

I haven't used Vista to any significant degree yet, so I'm not going to say a word about that, but I seriously don't recall MS having to release a utility that downgraded XP Pro users to Win2K/98.

Did anything like that happen? If not, I'd say that whether or not Vista sucks as much/less than/more than XP's initial release, Joe Consumer's and OEM dealers' *sentiments* towards MS sure has changed.

everyone keeps talking about the noumerous bugs and issues in vista.. what bugs exactly? and by bug i mean actuall bug in the os it self and not applications that have yet to be compatible with vista.. it always amazes me how little these people that clam "they know computers" actually know.. xp had several problems with secutiry when it came out.. (mostly due to ie6) this is not so with vista. nearly all problems with vista that people are havign seem mostly to due to driver problems. MICROSOFT DOES NOT WRITE THESE DRIVERS. and you all of you that are now thinking "well the vendors did not have time to fix their drivers" oh yes they did. vista was in beta for a long time before release and the wddm model was spec-ed out long before that.
as for the "many bugs", ive been using vista since beta1 and as a primary os seince beta2. aside from driver issues (that again, is not microsofts fault) ive had no major problems with vista. it even boots faster than xp on my machine (singlecore 3600 XP athlon, 2 gb ram). and those of you saying vista is just a prettied up version of xp are just plain ignorant.. educate your selves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...dows_Vista (note the other 5 wikipedia pages of details on the right)

This thing always happened with Microsoft, they release an OS that it is fully operative in 3 years from now... in the meantime, this is causing headaches and $$$$ to people specially the ones that are not computer savvy... I use PC which I love and I use Mac which I love even more! and also, I don't even have an antivirus on my mac and never had a popup ad EVER.
So, for the users that need a computer or looking for a change, I would suggest not to go for vista or microsoft at all. There are more life other than Microsoft/PCs out there...

@ SSDY.
The whining back in the 2000/Xp transitional period was a lot less pronounced than it is now. I remember those days. See I had little problem moving to XP but i have even a bigger problem moving to Vista from XP. The reason i have is this; The minimum memory requirement did not change between the 2000, and XP releases which was 64 MB. Could you install the os on that? yeah but you really wouldn't want to.

The memory requirement jumped drastically (8 times the memory required for an XP install), and yet you still do not want to run the OS on the base memory requirement.

So whether or not you want to beleive it is just innefficient or you want to just claim memory to be so cheap its negligible is up to you. I for one will be waiting at least till SP1 or later.

Let me share my experience. I am Certified in MSFT technologies, among others and I am currently an internet sofware application developer. Over the years I have spent hundreds of dollars on all manner of secirity applications, system utilites etc. to protect myself from Virus's and to fix ( some would say speed-up ) my machine. After years of frustration with security inadequacies, registry problems, software incompatabilites etc. I figured I would get a Mac to see what the hub-ub is all about ( This is about the time the iMac first came out so there was a lot of hub-ub ). It has been quite a few years now that I got an iMac.

Let me tell everyone that if they use their computer the same way as I do at home Mac is the way to go. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that I create Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations ( rarely ), Email, track my expenses, online banking, Internet surfing, Chat, Manage website & blog, edit & create graphics, edit & create movies, edit & create music ( clips for site ) etc.

I know what most people are thinking. All I do is email, internet and create/read the occasional document/pdf and come to think of it why didn't he mention games? Truth is I like the simplicity of console games. Put in the disk/cartrige and play even if it does cost me more money in the long run. I don't like having to check for hardware requirements and video drivers and disk space etc. and I sure as heck am not getting a new computer just to play a new game.

So if you do the same stuff I do ditch Windows now. You will be surprised at how easy it is to learn how to use a Mac.

If your thinking, I manage mail servers, DB servers etc. and need to be able to tell the mail server to ask the DB server for information you are the exception and need to remember that most people don't do that stuff so anything development environment related generally does not apply.

I've never needed to defrag a hard drive on my Mac, I've never had someone tell me my installation ( Registry ) was corrupted and I would need to reinstall the OS. In order to uninstall an application I drag it from the applications folder and drop it into the trash and it is gone along will all traces of the application except the data that I created with it. Which means that I've never had an application tell me it can't be uninstalled because it is missing a config file. I have never had a bloated registry because the operating system doesn't know that the program installed a bunch of stuff in the registry and simply didn't remove it. IN fact in almost 10 years of using a Mac ( several different varieties now ) I have only had it lock up on me maybe a dozen times and most likely less because while I know it has happened I can't remember the last time it happened.

When the PC market was created people used their PC's at home to get more work done so they could get that promotion and since IBM used MSFT that meant that the consumer needed to use it as well because Apple and IBM didn't play together. This is no longer the case. The market and technology have evolved to the point that most of the stuff that people do at work can be done on a variety of operating systems.

oh and another thing.. claiming that its only neccecary to upgrade when all mobos support 16 gb of ram is just plain wrong..
the hard limit of 4 gb has to do with Adressing space not physical ram.. (and this is true for all 32bit os's)this adressing space is given to every process. the amount of physical ram only determines the perfrmance.. nothing else.

The Macintosh was based on software purchased from Xerox. Actually MSFT stoled the technology from Apple and came up with Windows 3.1 which was not better. I bet you didn't know that Apple created the first PDA in 1985 did you? Apple's only mistake was putting the Mac in schools instead of businesses.

Opie is right. I upgraded to XP Home when it first came out and it was laggy and very crappy. Then once SP2 hit and I upgraded to Pro I loved it. It is my faveorite OS at the moment. The same thing will go for Vista. I am sure once lazy software vendors start to code it on the Vista Kernal we will all see it run smoother and even better than XP.

Chase is right too. The EU is trying to make Windows a blank page. They stated that the argument that MS incorporates media player into its OS is sound. Its not sound its the dumbest crap I have ever heard. Every OS(including Linux) has some form of media player, web browser and other functions in it.

If Macs were to get popular you would see viruses and so on for it. Reason they aren't there as much is cuz they have little market share. 90% viruses are made by anti virus companies trying to sell their products and it wouldn't get them enough money doing it to Macs/Linux.

I have also uses Unix/Linux OS's and unless you know what you are doing they aren't for you. Same goes for Macs. They are made for power users and I for one was not impressed. It felt too needy like I had to do everything for it instead of pluging something in and letting it go on its own.

Either way I see Vista as a nice OS. I already know that once the software/driver vendors build on the Vista Kernal it will probably be just as great.

I think ppl just like to complain.

Being a daily megapoweruser of Linux2000XPVista and OSX-Mac... I've come to realize that when it comes to the day-to-day experience of "getting things done", the Apple hardwaresoftware combo truly is a cut or two above. I have Vista & OSX 10.4 running on a MacBookPro and, while both OS's work as expected, I find myself now 9 times out of 10 booting to OSX and truly "enjoying" using a computer and feeling more "creative" as well. For someone who spends a great deal of his life on computers, OSX-Mac has mad a tangible difference in the quality of my here-and-now. In the end, I believe one could make a strong argument that this is the only thing that really matters.

The mayor issues with Vista is that most new & old softwares and hardware won't work quite well. At least in XP you can still get software and hardware drivers support from most manufacturers. You can compare Vista with SUN Solaris. It only works well with theirs own hardware list and a few software choices compatibles. They don't have much else to offer. Vista aeros.. Big deal! Nice colors and interface, but then there is nothing interesting that Vista can offer.

25 dells in my office, running XP pro and Vista biz, they all seem fine. I just make sure that when i order the new ones running vista, they get 2 gigs of ram...

and you apple naysayers -- screw the 5% BS -- if i was hacker and wanted some fame i would spend all day and night trying to hack OS X. wouldnt you?

cause the first "real" hack of OSX that actually brings down a mac (or even better a bunch of macs) will give the hacker some real "fame"

but so far -- nada, nuthing -- just some BS about the "potential" -- sigh

Agreed that many Linux distributions are difficult to use for the average person to a point. For web browsing and whatnot they're certainly easy to use, but for most things any more advanced than that, they quickly become much more difficult for the average user.
I think that most computer-savvy people really do overestimate the general populace's ability to assimilate information on the screen and understand the implications of what they are doing or how to accomplish even mildly "difficult" tasks, on the computer. Anyone who has worked in a tech support position of any kind will know what I mean. ALL of the horror stories about stupid users are true (yes, even the CD tray as a cupholder one).

I'm not quite so sure I'd agree about the Mac, though. The Mac is ridiculously easy to use, if it's your first computer. It's designed with that in mind, and I believe it does a pretty good job at it. Consequently, however, users more accustomed to other operating systems may find many things Macs do rather unintuitive and "dumbed down." Savvy Mac users, of course, will argue tooth and nail against that, since they know how to use it just as well as you know how to use Windows.

The people who REALLY know what they're doing with computers can switch between a Mac, some *nix system, and Windows (pick your flavor) in the same day and never miss a beat.
Those who can do so and not post things like "LOLOLOL WIND0ZE $UX!!1!one!" possess maturity and real computer savvy.

I don't personally see what all the fuss is about... just built my new PC and I'm absolutely delighted with Vista... it's been much better than XP for me, but then again, people love to hate microsoft

Vista and Office 2007's validation process is what stops me from wanting these. I like to tinker, sometimes I decide that i've stuffed the computer setup up enough, and i want to go back to a clean install. Can't do that with these softwares - not unless you de-register the instance of them running on the computer before. No, not worth it, overpriced. If it was cheaper, maybe.

Windows Vienna is to be released in 09. A true 64 bit OS with no 32 bit version and hopefully without all the overhead we've had with Vista.

Considering XP will still work most stuff in two years, I am ok for now.

Vista is just fine for an OS, unless you're an idiot who doesn't know how to use a computer anyway. Or afraid of change, and like to hide under a rock. LOL!

since I Upgraded I had only 1 problmes that was a small hardware problem that was Fix for using Windows Update.Vista is cool but I reqries lots of hardware to run with out problems. Microsoft is lessoning to consumers and so they release a Downgrade version of Windows Vista to XP.

I bought a couple of new PCs (adding to the dozen or so XP machines we have at the office). I can honestly say that it's unbelievable how bad it is. I've seen the blue screen of death (on two different machines) more times in the last three months on the Vista machines than I EVER saw on the XPs. File operations are abysmal, software isn't compatible (PDF Creator, older versions of Dreamweaver, etc.) and I can find not a single reason to use it.

For those saying that you've just got to give it a chance, I'm all for that, but there has to be an IMPROVEMENT. What's better in Vista?

well, while i agree with some points, there are quite a bit i don't agree.

besides the simple things that you do everyday, how about watching a dvd with surround sound? where's that option on the mac?

to me, mac is good, less the expansion when you need it. i also agree with "mac guys" Action Jackson, the hardware is overpriced for obsolete stuffs. not only applies to the mini but also the mac pro. just take a look at the specs of their pro line, its a rip off for that kind of specs.

Insider

Of all the PC operating systems I have used since 1990, Vista 64-bit has been the most stable by far. The problem begins when a great percentage of users do not want to let go of legacy software and hardware. Stay with XP then I say--but if you are going for Vista make a clean break and go with 64-bit. If you are not willing to do that stay with XP. Heck, I never did get XP for my own systems--I stayed with W2K and still use it too sometimes.

simon: "Vista and Office 2007's validation process is what stops me from wanting these."

Hmmm? I don't know about Office's validation process (I don't use it), but Windows XP has a validation process.



simon: "I like to tinker, sometimes I decide that i've stuffed the computer setup up enough, and i want to go back to a clean install."

So do I... Which is precisely why I don't like the validation process either, but it becomes apparent you don't tinker as much as I do, since I've had XP stop me and I know a number of other people who have had XP's validation process stop them too.

Which is why I'm a little confused here... I don't really know if Vista's is worse than XP yet, since I didn't look into it honestly and everything has gone as smooth as silk so far.

Anyway... One thing I can suggest, is going through the validation process right after installing Vista (or XP or Office) and then backing up the whole computer before doing anything else. Then when you want to do a fresh install, wipe the computer and restore off the backup. I found that this is a lot faster than doing a reinstall. (On my computer restoring off the backup just takes a couple or so minutes.)

JohnDoe: "Have two copies of XP Pro x64, but only one in use with 4GB's ram. I can run just about everything, and most of the time I don't have any issues. If you want x64 bit computing I'd recommend giving XP Pro x64 a try."

Personally... I prefer Vista x64 over XP x64, since XP x64 has most of the same compatibility problems (no 16-bit apps, all low-level code needs to go to 64-bit, etc) and has no real future. (It's replacement Vista x64 came out about 1 year later and almost no one uses XP x64 to start with. Even Microsoft doesn't support XP x64 most of the time. For example, look up Windows Home Server on Wikipedia and check compatibility.)

Though... I do think it's better in general to perform "one jump rather than two". Meaning... I think it's easier if people either go to Vista 32-bit or XP x64 at this time, because Vista x64 has the combined compatibility problems of both. Infact, I think this explains a lot of people's problems with Vista, from my experience most "experts" are trying to run the 64-bit version and think their experience applies to the 32-bit one as well. (In a nutshell, 64-bit Windows XP and Vista have next to no support right now.)

Anyway... If anyone who is reading this does want to try out XP x64, there is a trial download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/trial.mspx

Cromag: "Did anything like that happen? If not, I'd say that whether or not Vista sucks as much/less than/more than XP's initial release, Joe Consumer's and OEM dealers' *sentiments* towards MS sure has changed."

Yes, things have changed quite a bit. First of all, most people were on 9X when XP came out. In comparison 2000/XP were a major improvements. Truth is, most people are comfortable with 2000/XP, so getting them to move will require alot.

Second of all, anti-MS sentiment is a lot higher now. This is blantly obvious. As a personal example, I have an Xbox with some Mech games on it and I know quite a few people who love Mech games. When I first showed them the system and games, they thought it was sweet, then when they found out it came from Microsoft, many of them said it sucked.

As a professional example, just look at the recent incident between OSI and Microsoft. Last time I checked, even many "anti-MS" people were having trouble swallowing the whole thing. I could go on and on... But in short, it seems like people constantly dump on Microsoft irregardless of what they do and they couldn't care less what everyone else is doing.''

(Hint... Like how people are upset that Vista has game exclusives, yet the Intel Macs have exclusives too and it costs more to upgrade to an Intel Mac, than costs to update to Vista. In short, every new platform has exclusives.)

supadupanerd: "The whining back in the 2000/Xp transitional period was a lot less pronounced than it is now. I remember those days. See I had little problem moving to XP but i have even a bigger problem moving to Vista from XP. The reason i have is this; The minimum memory requirement did not change between the 2000, and XP releases which was 64 MB. Could you install the os on that? yeah but you really wouldn't want to. "

Well... The transition to XP was more about moving the people who used 9X off onto the "NT kernel" more than anything else. Hence the transition was much worse for them. (For example, for my gaming computers numerous programs and pieces of hardware "broke" during the transition. For my professional computers (which were on 2000 or NT 4), the transition was as smooth as silk.)

In fact... I know some people who would argue that the only change between XP and 2000 was that you had to activate XP. Heh.

"backwards compatible is what usually starts the problems"

This statement is truth. The only thing Microsoft really dropped in Vista from XP (I haven't had any games that work on XP not work on Vista) was support for real-mode games, which I support them with because real-mode = troubles.

Also, I haven't really seen any 'problems' with Vista. My Vista Notebook PC runs about as fast as my parents HP Media Center PC in their bedroom. Now, some people would say "It's got better hardware, it should run faster!"

Not really. I've benchmarked and compared all the parts in my notebook to my parents Media Center PC, and the only things it beats my notebook on: video card/processor and processor. Everything else is pretty much...... the same, so I'm not expecting a big difference.

As to the video card thing..... I was absolutely STUPID to get an Intel graphic processor in my notebook, cause it BITES ASS! That's where I'm losing most of my performance from, the CPU is having to do graphics stuff and it's just not good at doing that.

I forgot something...

Since the jump between Windows 2000 and XP was "small". Generally, if a game or app worked for one, it would work for the other. (Was the same thing true for drivers? I can't remember now. Anyway...) The point is there was already some support in place for XP, because of 2000.

Additionally... Things weren't as complicated as they are now... We have Vista x64 (which has the worst compatibility problems) and Vista 32-bit. The difference between those two is MUCH more severe than the diffference between XP Pro and XP Home. As a result, if a game, app, or driver worked for XP Pro or Home, then it would work for the other. The same is not true of Vista x64 and Vista 32-bit. In my opinion, considering the level of support, Microsoft should not be pushing the 64-bit version at this time and should even to some extent "hide it". Most people should be completely unaware that it exists. It gives them more bad press than it helps. (Especially, since even they don't really support it! For example: Look up Windows Home Server on wikipedia and check compatibility.)

What is this crap about viruses? I don't get any viruses, trojans, adware, spyware or anything of the like on my PCs. After years of running my home and work PCs without a format/reinstall, I got curious to see what I picked up. Scans with Norton 360, F-Prot, AntiVIR, superantispyware, ad aware and spybot picked up NOTHING but tracking cookies....

Oh yeah wait... I don't share cracked software via P2P, don't go to websites where I don't reconize the address, share programs over chat and email, download "free" programs to give me more smileys, speed up my computer or "protect" my machine or toolbars to make searching faster....

Looks like people don't need a MAC or UAC in Vista, they just need some common sense and then the ability to teach their kids...

What do you mean by "obsolete"? Just because the hardware is a few months old or even two (which Apple rarely is), doesn't mean it's "obsolete" at all. I have a gaming PC with parts four years old that still run games at max settings. Is that what obsolete is? 'Cause I sure don't think so.

"Obsolete" is when is doesn't work and/or exist at all anymore. I have Pentium II's running on 64mb of RAM still up and humming, doing what they were bought to do since day one. As for watching DVDs with surround sound? My home theater Mac Pro does that just fine. Sony 7.1 DDSS.

This is funny. The people who are singing praises about WinXP compared to vista are probably the same ones who complained about the win98 to WinXP. When it first launched Winxp was a mess, and many people did not want to give up on win98. Like anything else early adopters always have pain in the beginning. Vista is still to new and people don't like change. When the next operating system comes people will praise how good vista is and not want to change all over again. Funny world we live in.

I LOVE XP Pro, have had it since prior to Gateway's first home systems to ship with it, due to my ability to grab a few copies of the OS install CD's form training rooms. Never used 2k on personal systems, but have used at schools and they worked quite well. Loved 98 prior to XP, and would not touch a system with ME installed, such that you would think that the Black Death (bubonic plague) would be transferred to all that touched or even looked upon it.

I have had MANY upsets with XP, such as the "Unmountable Boot Volume" among other things, but carried on due to my abilities to troubleshoot an issue, and not lose a single thing. I NEVER installed SP1, I have been using SP0 since day one, and had NEVER used microsoft update. This went on until I received a new system with several newer BUS schemes, that were only supported in SP2. I upgraded, and had LOADS of issues. I created a streamlined SP2 install CD, and reinstalled, and it has run PERFECTLY. Even more than a "properly" configured, and thoroughly customized 98 used to.

I am not knocking Vista, but come on an installation that is nearly 3X the HDD space, as well as the increase in minimum RAM needed.

I have run XP Pro on a system with 32MB ram, 200MHz Processor, and a 10GB HDD (1GB devoted to swap), and could blow some 1GHz systems out of the water with the speed I could do things in.

Another example is at the release of XP, my friend bought the TOP OF THE LINE $3000 system, monitor, XP Home, Top of the line NVIDIA card, the works. I ran my 433MHz E-Machines with 128MB RAM, 15GB HDD, and an 8MB Vid card, versus his system, and could play Everquest 1 with EVERY graphical feature enabled, yet if he had ANY spell effects, dynamic lighting, or pixel shading enabled (mine supported 1.0) it would lag the system where the mouse would literally take 2 minutes to cross corner to corner diagonally on screen, or he would just see the BSOD.

I think that the ability to use a NEW OS on older hardware, even if below minimum specs should be a REQUIREMENT by law that it even shows a "desktop" of sorts, who cares if it runs "fast" but that it runs at all. That is why I will NEVER get Vista, not cause it is not compatible with so many things, the fact that it will NEVER be compatible with them.

Now listen up. I guess the time always comes at the days end, thrown aback without fortune nor consideration, all of the traits that were originally discussed. This seems to happen more and more often, and I think it does need discussion and a certain degree of clarification. this I am a fan of, descrete, destinct and well explained. Need I say more?

@Rolf, I don't see the point of making a clean break and then using Vista 64... A lot of hardware / connectivity wil not work (due to DRM), and a *LOT* of processing power is lost to all the cryptografy used (ONLY for DRM, as other more confidential data will not be crypted). This radical move of MS to allow downgrading is clearly showing that they released a product that does not satisfy their customers.

Man, this is disapointing. It's articles like this that give me no justification for buying Vista. I'm still running xp-mce. I love it, it's fantastically fast but I'm a gamer. With crysis around the corner I was in full swing to purchase a few dx10 cards and vista but it just doesn't seem worth it. Not with news like this.

just give us happy xp owners directx9.e (directx 10). Charge $50.00 for the patch and recoup your losses.

I prefer eComStation. http://www.ecomstation.com One can still run older software for OS/2, DOS and Win3.1 on it as well as newer software for eCS.

I am hoping for the future versions of ReactOS to run Win software. http://www.reactos.org It is a free open source clone of WinNT/plus.

just wait for Vista SP1 to be released. it really installs Windows XP SP3.

I have a new HP machine, Vista factory-installed. Have a litany of problems with pre-installed software and Vista in particular. I'm a pretty advanced user, but can hardly resolve many of these problems, and can't find good help for them! Have spent hours on help calls with HP and other vendors, to no avail.

So I think one major problem with Vista is that it's too new, and there is precious little online information about the problems I have.

If anyone has good resources, please email me direct:
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
(this is a disposable address, use the whole string, but if you spam it I'm going to delete it)

Problems I've had:
- Windows Defender (packaged with Vista) blocks me from downloading legit files with MS Internet Explorer 7.x. No error message, browser dialog just freezes without explanation or warning. Disabled WD, and this problem went away.
- Vista won't shut down properly, often. Hangs up on splash screen, can't do anything but power down manually. HP told me to unload the "ACPI Fixed Feature Button" in device manager, and then restart. This fixes the problem temporarily, but then it comes back again without warning.
- Norton Internet Security hangs up during scheduled deep scan, freezes, and won't recover or quit. Norton can't explain it or resolve it. Sometimes the scan works, sometimes not. No idea.

etc.

it doesnt matter what you read the truth is Apple stole the GUI from Xerox. even Steve Jobs himself nearly admits that. watch this video the words from Steve jobs himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x76RKoxKEvs

Some of the follow up commentary regarding your post only added to my frustration in what you are saying. But, one of those makes point:

"Thank you for saying that so I didnt have 2. I am not sure how people dont realise this. I promise all of you people who hate vista that after a service pack is released, and drivers catch up then vista will be a MUCH better OS. I have a dual boot and I love vista when it works. It has so many more features which I love such as when you run windows update it actually searchs for updates for your hardware as well."

So...I am going to spend $200 so I can get my hardware updated AT THE SAME TIME?! Wow! How'd I live without that?!

Meh...If every one of you here actually spent $ to get this OS, I'd be impressed with your opinions, but until you actually spend money on this OS...not included in the price of a new PC, but outright, and you are HAPPY with your purchase, then you can make that statement...but, I don't see any features out-of-the-box that makes me want to spend $200 in order to have it.

Oh, and go see Tom's hardware for performance benchmarks between Vista and XP. Surprisingly, Vista is 2% behind XP. I somehow expected Vista to be at least /as/ fast as XP in terms of code optimization.

I have read the comments from others and basically there is a huge lack of understanding. I have been trying to incorporate Vista machines into our enterprise, and it is not easy. Please read on if you would like to understand.

For anyone who uses Vista in a small business or personal environment (home/laptop) it is a fine operating system. These user cannot understand issues that the enterpise has with it.

There are many legacy active-x (not converted to .net) software packages that do not operate under IE-7. Can you install IE-6 on Vista? There are security patches for XP, that we cannot install because it breaks vendor software. Upgrade vendor software you say. We waited 12 months for Siemens to come up with a fix. The cost to us, $40k, plus the upgrade causes other problems. So we still have XP issues.

Have you compared running OpenGL on Vista versus XP? If you do not have a video card with hardware OpenGL and Vista drivers, you have a 4:1 loss of performance from XP to Vista.

Have you integrated Vista machines into an Active Directory Domain with large amounts of group policy objects? The defaults for many 2003 Server group policy objects modify the Vista security objects, such that when a Vista machine that is not properly prepared, is added to a secure domain. The result is the Vista machine locks you out of many security settings. The only solution is to wipe an reload Vista. Removing from domain does not work, since the underlying defaults for Vista have been overriden. BTW, starting over, (the reformat and reload of the OS) comes from Microsoft.

These are just some of the headaches that corporations do not want to spend the time dealing with. The same thing happened with XP. Until 2003 Server came out, there huge difficulties with XP in the enterprise. When MS releases 2008 Server, the majority issues will go away. But it will take a year to merge 2008 Server into the enterprise.

Microsoft has always released the desktop OS one-two years prior to the equivalent server release. The problem is that Microsoft forces the new desktop OS on corporations without the server enhancements or time for large software packages to be modified and regression tested for the new OS.

The advantage of the downgrade license is that we can buy a machine today with Vista licensing, reformat the disk, install XP and not be charged additional fees. When we are ready, we can reinstall Vista.

I hope I have clarified some of the issues. Starting in 2009, you will start seeing more enterprise acceptance of Vista.

Vista isn't so bad, there are really lots of nice options, search, file sorting/handling way quicker, quick launch (together with quick search), and a lots of little very pleasant things... Sad to say but this is enough for me to get stuck to it, even if i have to bear a little blue screen sometimes. (which i hope will be fixed soon)

What makes you think that those of us who have posted about it haven't purchased it and are currently happily using it?
It would be pretty difficult for most of our claims to be made without having bought and used it.

I, for one, have been using it for months, now, and have completely adjusted to the new environment.

About the "2%" difference you mentioned, that's well within statistical error, and will easily be taken care of with continued improvement of drivers, optimization of software for Vista, and SP1, which is supposed to include numerous performance improvements/fixes.

I have been using Vista for 2 months. I don't really appreciate Vista very much.

From Win 98 to XP, it's a big leap: very stable since it was built on Win NT/2000 core unlike Win 98 which you need to restart your computer after a while. The interface is beautiful and my first impression is Windows XP is faster although it's rather sluggish on old machine.

The same thing cannot be said for Vista, I don't really see much improvements from the lay man point of view. Instead, I found Vista is not very stable compare to XP. I agree that we should not blame Vista as it's a driver problem. However, my proud Creative sound card becomes a junk card -> is it stupid? And the interface, where is my up button?

They spend tons of marketing dollars on Halo 3 in order to downplay this little release... Notice the release dates were at the same time. GG good marketing.

My point wasn't that you hadn't used it. Obviously you have :) But, did you get it bundled, or did you buy the box off the shelf? You spent $200 for what? Did you think that the shiny baubles make a difference, or did you genuinely look into what the kernel space versus user space differences were? DRM? I find DRM an offense, personally. Why call me a thief just because the potential is there? Why lock my crap down, and make it more difficult for me to get things done legitimately because someone else does a bad thing? I am not a thief, and don't enjoy being called one simply because they can't manage digital rights without making the honest guy pay more in money, and time and complexity.

My point was more concern that everyone seems happy to continually roll over, and accept that MS makes "good" things. They market well, and concepts are there, but they don't seem to improve much from one build to the next. They change a few out of the box behaviors. Take MS Flight Sim as another example. Granted a very different group, but MS logo all the same. A few new air craft, some better textures, but the only innovation that costs me $100 is that I can connect with another pilots aircraft, and share the controls. Uh...there was a service online that already did that for MSFS2004. C'mon, MS! You make billions, and all you can come up with is a few graphical "oohs and ahhs"?

I find myself disappointed with lack of innovation from something as large as MicroSoft.

Don't get me wrong, an OS is an OS by and large. Though I'd still rather see MS get back to the basics, split off a kiosk division, and sell complete packages as one option, and sell bare bones OS with abilities to hook into, as another option.

MAC doesn't get it right simply because you can't walk into Wal-Mart in "PoDunk, USA" and pick up a copy of Quicken for MAC, but, at least they have a unix-esque base allowing for some more options once you have it installed and running... That will become more "soon", but, requires more people to buy it, and convince the gaming market to dev for it, which will sky rocket it into acceptability.


I have played with OS' since DOS2.0/AT&T UNIX 3.1 etc.

I like the option of things /not/ being there as much as option to have features there.

I don't mean whether I am allowed to make my start bar translucent. That's eye candy. Being able to select text "differently" when highlighting text. That's preference. Why not make the OS handle memory better? Why not make the OS more integrated into offload chips for simultaneous processing? GPU's, and Physix chips notwithstanding, go THAT WAY! *points the way of de-centralization* Or, why not leave it all alone, and stop making the OS, and your companies apps so integrated? Why not make the OS wide open, and get everyone to dev for it? Blow away any wedge of competition others have, and take the market share back to where it was when 95 took over the world by truly allowing a wide open OS for communities to dev for?

I cannot justify paying $200 to move to an OS that doesn't do anything extra for me. Yes, I am still bitter that Bill Gates made the world pay $100 for DOS6, and then turned around and charged $10-$30 for the fixes that prevented it from corrupting your data. That's /not/ good business. It left a bitter taste, and now I hold MS to the highest of standards, and they did not meet that bar with Vista.

An OS is a means to an end. I want to surf the web, check email, play a game, what have you, but I require an OS that allows me to get there. I don't like consoles, so that's not an option. I want one machine that does everything, but, I don't spend any time in my OS. I spend time in the applications that /run/ on the OS. Paying $200 for something that runs the applications doesn't make sense.

Yes yes...it bundles neat things in with it...but, I spend $2,000 on a new system, $200 more on a shiny OS, and I still have to pay for the applications to spite what's bundled, because I spent $200 on something that had apps bundled, but it turns out the app is watered down, and is only a taste of something I now need to spend another $200 to get "feature X".

What does the OS truly do that is wonderful innovation that is a selling point to the masses to convince average Joe that this is the one he wants, and not the other guys OS?

If Average Joe has to learn a new OS, he may as well learn Linux, at least if he doesn't like it, he didn't lose any money.

Maybe from your perspective it doesn't, but I would bet that most gamers think it blows. Look at some of the tests that have been run between the two OS's. In many cases, the fps dropped by nearly half. That's one helluva bargain as an "upgrade", especially after you dropped a few hundred on an 8800 card, only to have it perform like a 7x. I would bet that if you went over to the Valve/Steam site, there are less than 20 percent of their users who went Vista as an upgrade option. Why would you?

Well it doesn't help that most gamers have the attention span of a gnat, and are generally not smart enough to tie their own shoe laces without a detailed step by step chart.

Regardless, all the games I've run have run like a champ. Just as fast, just as stable (in some cases that means not stable at all, either on XP nor on Vista).

But hey, I know, all these "people" are saying that Vista "blows", they can't be wrong can they? If the answer is No, I have some stock tips about a company called SCO you might want to invest in.

Wow. Just wow. Can you possibly be more full of it?

Really. Let's share my experience with XP and Vista on their respective initial releases:

XP: For a year from the initial release, yes, a year, I could not run anything related to Direct 3D or OpenGL because of blue screens (IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL was the error, also known as the infinite loop of death). Oh and my sound card, forget it. In fact, up until SP1, there was nothing stable at all about XP. Malware, viruses, and my favorite, the return of WinNuke because of a vulnerability in DCOM. Seriously. It was just a bad year. But hey, those rose tinted glasses must make the world a better place, not to mention change the blue screen to a nice purplish color.

Vista: Since November. 1 blue screen because I tried do something rather tricky involving moving my vista install between two physical drives. So really, that was my fault. But that's the -only- blue screen I've seen. It's been rock solid for me. Sure, there are some bugs in explorer (by the way: these are NOT blue screens, but I've run into bugs in explorer since windows 95, it's nothing new to me). All my apps have run like a charm, I have no issues with games and hell some of them (like Half Life 2) even run better.

Seriously, you really should just stop taking what articles like these say as gosphel. Rarely do these people know what they're talking about.

XP = cost of either (Business or Ultimate ed.) cost of CD (handling & shipping = rip-off

Wise up ppl! Either way MS is making serious money.

What I would realy want to see, is MS letting us make a choice! I don't like change, so I don't want to do it until I'm sure I'm getting something good out of it! Personally I will postpone my Vista upgrade as much as possible. Hopefully by then it would be more reliable and who knows...maybe Vienna would be out! :)

why do people kept buying into the M$ bulls*&t. if they really wanted to they could program a stable and secure OS, but they won't because then they couldn't sell you all the other "required" software like antivirus and anti spy. come on and evolve to linux or osx, don't continue to devolve into the M$ primordial ooze.

Giro, for ordinary folks to whom I provide service in my work, Linux is an option they would not even consider. I have used quite a few flavors of Linux since the Redhat 5 days. I run Kubuntu and SLED alongside of Vista 64-bit and W2K. I am not an MS fanboi, however, I certainly want to dig into Vista in order to provide the best possible service to my customers. Linux is not necessarily the best choice for the bit & byte challenged.

I really dont get it. I hate Microshaft as much as the next geek, but I have had NO problems with Vista on 2 machines. Yes, I game! I dont see where it is a huge resource hog (anymore than anything MS makes!). Now, my Dad has an older machine that barely made spec...he has had trouble. I guess the trick is make sure you run Vista on an up-to-date box!

Was firing Steve Jobs and being without the visionary for the pivotal years of 1985 to 1998. This is the time most of us formed our first experiences, and established our "who's who" in technology and learned how to operate computers (an play video games on them).

I just want to clear that up and it's very unlikely that Apple will ever recover from it.

I have a hunch that on their death beds, when it comes to business issues... Bill Gates will be thankful he lived at the time of Steve Jobs and vice versa. Bill Gates is incredibly powerful, but I think he has a soft spot for Apple, I really do. (As well he should, Apple customers bring in just as much money to Microsoft through MS Office, or dual booting or whatever).

People have been dead wrong about Mac OS X, and they're now wrong about Vista.

Microsoft has absolutely nothing to apologize for (except for it should be obvious that google should be the default search b/c google is for googling).

It'll be weird when Leopard comes out and the little, quirky company, has the best OS on planet earth for a little a while again.

Bob,

I don't think Solitare counts. Owen is referring to the major games that the big boys play. Of the guys that I know that play those types of games, they're pretty intelligent. You seem too quick to judge other people - what does that say about you? :)

gr8kindofool, that was very well stated. Thank you. Viruses and other malware can happen to anyone at least once. I've gotten malware from simply visiting a web site that was listed in Google. Personally, I'm a Network System Administrator and I vary rarely get viruses and other malware on my personal computers.

You are correct in stating that one of the secrets is to NOT download software from P2P ("peer-to-peer" or computer-to-computer) software and web sites. It's best to not share/trade/accept software from chat and Email - even from friends that you know in person (they could have been fooled too). If you come across "free" software online, chances are there is a catch - not always, but most of the time. Too often the catch is spyware being included...or worse. I've found toolbars to be more of a problem than helpful - many of them (other than Yahoo and Google) have their own tricks - some even take over your Internet start page and will not allow you to change it back or fix it. Others take over your search features.

I do have one problem with your statement. You say "they just need some common sense." I've found that there really is not such thing as "common sense." Everything people refer to as "common sense" is simply a learned reaction - whether first-hand or otherwise. Yes, people need to stop and think about what their actions might lead them to.

Parents also need to watch their younger kids online (don't say you don't have time - would you let them run around the neighborhood without watching them? I would hope not.).

I recently switched from Windows 2000 to Vista Home Premium. I've have many blue screens. Sometimes I get back to my computer and realized it has rebooted. Vista sucks big time. I wish I'd gone with XP. Hopefully the Vista update in the spring will fix my problems.

He disagreed with me and posted a correction for me that e6300, e6400 and e6600 wasn't simply over clocked cpu manipulated by intel. He said they have transistor count differences.

"Look at the core specs between different processors... higher amounts of transistors would usually indicate that maybe two processors are not created equal." Bob

buh hahha ha aha hahahahaha

That was one of the funniest post I read all year.

And then when I responded with the facts...
"Low-cost processors have always lent themselves well to overclocking in the past. This is because all processors in a given family are created equal. Each wafer holds a few hundred processor dies, which, after going through functional tests, are turned into actual products. Whether a die becomes a Core 2 Duo E6500 or E6700 processor mostly depends on customer demand today. Since entry-level processors originate from the same source as that of high-end devices, they usually have the same overclocking potential as well.For entry-level Core 2 Duo devices with only 2-MB instead of 4-MB L2 cache, we might not be able to replace the missing cache, but we can certainly increase the clock rate."

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/10/10/cheap_thrills/index.html

He disappeared..

I'm glad you came out from the wood work Bob, prove that you are the one that's a dummy here. Please stop running and post that transistor count difference...

I stripped my vista down so much it looks and works like XP. at the time I bought this new comp, XP wasnt an option, one week later, it was.
the only thing i like is the font previewer (im a graphic designer, saves time)
havent had any problems with vista at all.
vista doesnt blow, its simply overkill. all the idiot graphics marketed towards joe and suzy web surfer are a waste for anyone that 'really uses' a computer, and if you do..you can strip all that wrapping and still have a decent OS.

With all the problems with XP, Microsoft has to be nuts to think I am going to spend about $300.00 to buy another program {Vista} to pad their bank account. Why don't they {Microsoft} finally make one operating system to work properly instead of inventing new OS's plagued with errors. My XP program has about 100 hot fixes and upgrades. How many program upgrades does one need to send a letter or view a photo? Enough is enough.

I am running Windows Vista Home Premium edition on my P.C with the following set-up.
AMD Athlon XP2000 , (32 bit chip)512 M.B Ram, Nvidia Ge Force MX.MX400 Video Card,31 Gig H.D;17" Dell Monitor with 1024x768 resolution with a 'Base score of 2.9' and it works perfectly; so what is all the 'hype' about that it sucks?

Anyone can see it for real if they doubt me!

I purchased vista 32bit for my two year old computer and vista 64bit for my new quad core computer. I had to remove vista 32bit on my two year old computer because of the driver problems I have been getting and how slow the system was with it. I reinstalled XP and was happy (XP sure takes forever to install). On my new system, Vista 64 bit works like a dream. It installed very fast. After a bit of a learning curve, I can do things faster with it and it is a lot more slicker. I love it. Bioshock is awesome on it. Vista is the future.

i was almost under the impression that everyone had forgotten what an OS is supposed to do.

LB makes the comment that all the pretty graphics are idiotic. i agree. sure, they're nice to look at, but i didn't hear anyone ever complain that windows 98 wasn't pretty enough. or XP, for that matter. so what are they? a waste of processing power.

in my opinion, the OS should be the most efficient and out-of-the-way piece of software on your machine. When i use my computer, i don't want to use the OS, i want to talk to my friends, or play a game, or make a website, or render a movie.

pretty OS graphics make things look cool, but i don't use my computer to play with the graphics. i want my computer to have power for the things i want to do on it. required RAM amounts and video card specs for an OS are ridiculous.

give me an OS that's efficient with my power from the bottom up.

With absolutely not one single change except installing Vista on a home built PC running Win2k before I now get BSOD every other day. So my hardware under Windows 2000, which ran fast and reliable, even when heavily OCd (i.e. I never, EVER had a BSOD) is now to blame? I don't think so. MS is to blame for their buggy OS. I like the look of Vista, I like how it's organized, I hate how it is so sloooooow (Vista home premium). I refuse to pay one penny for extra memory when all my apps run great in Win2k with 1GB. Here's a classic example. In ubuntu, google earth ran smooth and fast with integrated graphics and the 1 GB. In Vista, with an inexpensive dedicated graphics card, and readyboost google earth is unusable. So to use google earth, I now dual boot. What a great solution, MS. I followed some online instructions for disabling various Vista services. It has helped, things are a little smoother, but now I feel like I've turned off all the stuff I paid for. UAC is off, windows defender, etc. Still getting BSOD every couple days, even after turning off all overclocking. At least I only paid $78 for Vista (educators discount). My wife now says, "can we get a mac?, your computer is so slow". That pretty much says it all. My super slick super fast PC is now "can we get a mac".

The only blue screen of death was when you installed Vista on a old 2K machine. The least you could have done was your homework. Microsoft made every effort of warning you and others that it was not designed for legacy hardware. You are a MAC candidate for sure.

I am really enjoying my "NEW" fast Vista Ultimate 64-bit OS on a "NEW" computer I have built.

Seriously people again with this Vista debate... If you are running hardware over 3 years old run XP (this is the same debate when XP came out) or win2k. If you are running anything newer make sure there are Vista drivers for your hardware and you will have 0 problems. My biggest complaint of Vista so far has nothing to do with MS or Vista but more to do with Creative lack of investment in driver development.

Vista is better then XP at every step of the way and if you can run it with good hardware and you don't think so then you are uberlinuxdork/jobsfanboy/generaldouche.

"Vista is the future" - Jeff

I may be breaking the bad news to you but vista was released with a known 3 year shelf life. One of which is almost gone now. 2010 is the road map for the new OS. So you'll be forced yet again to switch.

"Vista is better then XP at every step of the way"

Okay blessman and any others...

I'll ask the same thing I asked in another post. Please do two things. First fully read keeping in mind XP64 is a re-write and was created along side of vista;

www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/top10.mspx
www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/facts/benefit.mspx

Now please post 10 things better in vista than XP64 that you honestly feel make it worth up to $399 to have.

Don't run like others... read compare and post...

you claim it's better than XP64 every step of the way so posting 10 for us should be a piece of cake for you and microfluff fanboys...

And after you post those answers then please read these two quotes

"Our hopes that Vista might be able to speed up applications are gone. First tests with 64-bit editions result in numbers similar to our 32-bit results, and we believe it's safe to say that users looking for more raw performance will be disappointed with Vista. Vista is the better Windows, because it behaves better, because it looks better and because it feels better. But it cannot perform better than Windows XP. Is this a K.O. for Windows Vista in the enthusiast space?"

"We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP."

www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page11.html#conclusion_ko_for_windows_vista

You fanboyz are too funny everything is equal my arse hahahahahahahaha

I wonder if the average Microsoft shareholder realises of how much money are they loosing by pushing the average user to go P2P in order to have an "operative" system on their newly bought machines.

two notebooks with Vista ....
Toshiba DVD /- R/RW drive stopped working ... Toshiba repair could not fix ... tell me they have to reinstall Vista ( reformatting the HD ) ..... necessitating reinstall of a dozen software programs ..... What a nightmare .... and Microsoft knew or should have known ......

I have the option of using Vista or XP now and I use Vista. With the right hardware I can't imagine why anyone but lazy IT managers would want to go back.

I don't like Vista.

It is way too slow even on a new machine. They killed performance big time on the expense of animation and "Aero" gui. More over they changed way user interracts with the PC in a way that is counter intuitive and less productive. For example resizing of the window takes 5 clicks and mouse moves instead of one. (Must click on the lowest right corner, wtf!@$!?). Start menu that continuously changes appearance? I want my icons allways in the same place. I want to be able to get to them in snap even blindfolded. Windows Explorer was hidden so well, it took me a while to find it. I just bought new laptop for my wife, and after week she said that's enough. format, install XP Pro and now it runs like a champ. Everyone is happy.

Disable the auto scan feature of windows defender in the control panel.
Found this after weeek of researching the issue when it was popping out...

I run a triple boot system with XP (32bit, XP x64 and Vista 64. XP is good and Vista isn't bad if you turn off the indexing/search tool but neither one compare well with XPx64.

I am still using Win 2K on my desktop and I really don't notice the difference between it and Vista on my daughter's laptop, except the laptop loses the wireless connection occasionally and needs to be rebooted.
Microsoft is a classic monopoly, all it does is stifle innovation and ship crap, while bribing politicians to look the other way.

I have used Windows 2000 from day one up until two months ago, but have now installed XP Pro. I tried XP Pro upon first release and had problems so I continued with 2000. Over the years I have found 2000 be very reliable and of the two I still think it the best.
I have just bought a laptop (Fujitsu.Siemens Amilo PI-2515) it came with Vista Home Premium, I have a spare Full version XP Pro, when I get the time that will replace Vista..

I can understand the need for a new OS to combat viruses and network intrusion and to take full advantage of new hardware like CPUs.

What I cannot understand is why MS is *requiring* a computer to have a mid-to-high-end graphics card... for what? Fancy Areo effects and slick graphical stuff that looks nice?

I've never used Vista. It took me forever to upgrade to XP. I like sticking with what works and I never buy the first version of anything. And based on what I'm reading here and elsewhere, it'll take me forever to upgrade to Vista...

"Windows Vista is the most secure version of Windows ever!" Riiiiiight... that's what you said about XP...

Security-wise, user programs should stay in userspace. Microsoft put Internet Explorer into kernelspace to make it faster, helping MS win the browser wars back in the day.^^ But this caused browser security issues to become operating system security issues, and is why IE security flaws were (are) so disastrous. With Vista, IE has been put back into userspace. Hooray!!

Vista is kinda slow on my new HP "Built for Vista" laptop, 1GB of RAM ain't getting it done. I score a 3.0 on the hardware test, pffft... And HP isn't making any effort to provide XP drivers. What did I buy, a notebook or a Vistabook? Makes Mongo mad.

My mom has Vista on her new desktop. She says it keeps saying it wasn't shut down properly, but that she hasn't done anything. Turns out Vista is not coming out of hibernation properly and bonks out. Next time I visit I'll be putting XP on there, I suppose.

james

^^To be fair, Netscape had morphed into Bloatscape but Microsoft still cheated because everybody else had to code in userspace (where MS should have stayed).

What about gateway and toshiba? dont we stand a chance to change? Vista is better at what?

As per the post, Internet Explorer security glitches in XP, etc. can bring down a whole system, in Vista it will zonk just the browser. Internally, IE now runs as a user program rather than as a system program, giving better damage control if (when) its security loopholes are found and exploited.

Otherwise, Vista is beta software that MS should offer at a discount until they can put out a service pack. And the significant increase in hardware requirements with little seeming benefit is discouraging as well. MS should offer coupons for RAM upgrades on new Vista machines, maybe then we wouldn't be so disappointed with their latest offering. For now it is a dud, sorry to say.

I do free-lance copy editing from my home. A few weeks ago, I got a Dell laptop installed with Vista. I didn't get XP because there was an additional fee.

I sent my first project done on Vista to a client. I am using MS Word--the 2002 version.

This has been a disaster. The margins look absolutely fine on my screen but my client says the margins are incorrect and the document "prints funny." I have done dozens of jobs using XP, both large and small, and have never had this problem.

I spent all day trying to fix these annoying glitches. Granted, I am no computer expert but in several years of sending Word files back and forth with various people, I have never had this problem.

Does anyone know what this might be?

Jessica

Isn't it just..in fact it's monumental. It's obvious that Vista had - and continues to have - major issues. Vista is nothing new, it's not really advanced at all..it's just bloated in order to keep sales of CPUs, hard drives and memory high. I hate using PCs because of lame software like this - it depletes creativity and you spend more time fixing bugs than actually doing anything productive with your talents. This would not have happened with an Amiga solution.

This goes out to all those pro-Vista floons. I'm so sorry to hear about your having been seduced by something flashier than XP, and let's face it, XP was flashy when it was new too.

XP, however, when brand new, did NOT refuse to connect to the internet due to the 5-year-old DSL/LAN router not being 'XP certified'. Nor did it reject the majority of existing hardware out of hand, drivers notwithstanding, due to the lack of 'XP compliance' of said hardware. The ONLY issues I picked up with XP when it was fresh and new were minor software compatibility problems, and with some hacking those problems are either alleviated or removed. Getting the first versions of XP up and running took a bit of work, but XP is basically a rehashed 2000 so it's issues were a repeat of 2000's. (2000 was also known internally as NT5, and XP as NT5.1. Interesting...)

However, MicroSoft (through Vista) has so far stolen well over a month's worth of hours from me, due to HARDWARE 'incompatibilities' - purely because said hardware lacks a little Vista logo on the box. This is pathetic and completely irrational, not to mention wantonly destructive and wasteful. This is NOT including the additional time I've wasted on Vista and it's SOFTWARE issues... most of which were simply a repeat performance of 2000 to XP, on steroids.

As for the person who suggested replacing the PCs with Macs and the idiots who responded negatively... frankly, brilliant suggestion. Replace a Vista PC with a Mac - much less trouble in the short term. Long term could be... interesting.

Also, has anyone noticed that the only people who loathe Vista are usually the poor suckers who have to do the support for it? Combine that with the usual run of semi-illiterate idiot clients and you've got a nice little party going.

Have a good one!

Vista is a sure FLOP like the Windows Me. We will have to wait another 5 or so years for Microsoft to eradicate all glitches in Vista.

I have never used such a poor operating system. It makes xp look like a product from the God's.

HERE ARE MY SPECS AMD 4000 X2 2 GB OF RAM SLI NVIDIA 7600 GS 800GB HARD DRIVE PRETTY GOOD SYSTEM WINDOWS EXP AT 5.0 I SHOULD BE FLYING SOMETIMES I DO SOMETIMES I DONT PLUS IT LOCKS ON ME SOMETIMES AS WELL I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S NVIDIA'S DRIVERS OR VISTA OR BOTH BUT VISTA HOME PREMIUM IS THE OS I GUESS I WILL HAVE TO BUY XP PRO AGAIN BECAUSE I DON'T FEEL LIKE WAITING FOR THEM TO FIX ALL OF THIS CRAP THERE IS ALOT TO FIX ABOUT A YEARS WORTH AT LEAST MS SHOULD WAIT NEXT TIME UNTIL IT'S FREAK N READY SHEESH....

my sony vaio n 37 came with preinstaaled vista basic. i need to dwngrade to xp but it isnt detected.i tried diff bootable cds,cheked in bios settings for cd rom booting preference,n even formatted my drive clean..still its not detectind .wat to do??

My father bought a pc, and could only get vista on it, and hes just to old and steady to deal with those problems.
I could deal with anything on that area, yet.
But he just wants something that works for now. not in 5 years.. Microsoft should be 5 year ahead of us.

what about xp to 2000, when will that be!