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.