Gamers aside (and gamers have always been aside), Vista really has been an awesome OS. A new kernel and new security layer are pretty much synonymous with drastic changes in hardware and software. Why this is still a shock to industry insiders is beyond me.

I've transitioned a few customers to Vista now without substantial problems. I don't remember the switch being any easier for XP, or less we forget XP pre-SP2.

Still, from a business side I think MS should learn from the experience and offer at least an 18-month planned transition phase where new systems are available in both flavors. Generally speaking, the new OS should offer advantages on mid- to high-end hardware, so for many customers that would offer an appeal to the transition. I think ultimately that approach would leave consumers feeling like the change was consumer-driven rather than forced.

First off I would like to say that Vista is not a bad OS...some good stuff and some bad... not nearly as bad as WinME.

I believe the "sales" of vista could be 140 million. But, as the article suggests, nearly all if not all new systems have vista pre-installed or the downgrade option rates as a vista sale. In effect a forced migration to vista.
Now we need to find vista "usage" figures. How many people bought a new system with vista pre-installed and downgraded to XP (legal or illegal copy) on their own or swapped to a Linux distro. How many discrete retail boxed sales and volume licences to businesses? Then we can say how popular the OS is.
How many downloads of Vista SP1? This may give us a clue.
I don't know about anybody else but I build systems and I struggle to sell Vista pre-installed. Most opt for the XP and a some to Ubuntu.

I work for a large whitebox builder, and since Vista's release over a year ago, we're still only seeing under 5% of desktop systems we ship with Vista actually installed and running. The vast majority of Vista licenses we sell are for downgrades. There was almost an identical downgrade program in place for WinXP/2000, but it was nearly as popular. I'm guessing many of these Vista "sales" are actually just sales to VARs, not end users. There is simply no demand for Vista.

But being currupt as Mexico.
"Windows Tijuana"

Dagan - "Vista really has been an awesome OS"

Some how "Awesome" and microfluff's Steve Ballmer labels Vista as “work in progress” just doesn't seem to fit.

www.tgdaily.com/content/view/37020/140/

LOL care to remove those many many hot fixes?

This part is too funny, because I always read a post where someone gives vista credit for being awesome without needing a service pack. Yet when I mention what about the CRAP LOAD of hot fixes that microfluff has been doing? one fix was even force upon its customers

- "A new kernel and new security layer are pretty much synonymous with drastic changes in hardware and software."

It's from server 2003 code base the same as XP X64/x64.

Dagan - "I think MS should learn from the experience and offer at least an 18-month planned"

Huge problem 18 months eats up the life span of vista AKA ME2. Windows 7 is set to be much better and have a "real" new kernel and not a 2003 based one that you guys keep posting as "vista and the new kernel"

Dagan - "the new OS should offer advantages on mid- to high-end hardware"

Okay Dagan... Your turn give it a try...
"Read these two links, keeping in mind that XP64/x64 is a re-write and was created while they was stripping longhorn down to vista.

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

Now please post 10 new features of the OS that is better in vista than XP64/x64 that you honestly feel make it worth up to $399 to have."

Before you start saying I don't know what i'm talking about, let me tell you, that I have been using Vista at work, since it was released (legally). Although SP has fixed some of the big issues in Vista, at home i still have XP, and just updated to SP3. Being an IT company, a lot of new PC-s go trough my hand every day, and I'd like to tell you, that at least in a Domain controller enveiroment, we only had a few laptops with Vista, that i later downgraded to XP. I clearly remember the transition from 2000 to XP, and not until SP2 was everything OK. Now, what i'm trying to say is not that Vista sux, but that it's still an immature OS, full of bugs, and shortcommings, that will probably (hopefully) mature in time. The worst part in my opinion is, that even after all the time Vista has been released, I have yet to see a PC or especially a Notebook that runs Vista smoothly. I think Vista will be a viable OS around SP2 and when finally hardware catches up with software, although I recently read somewhere something that really put a lot of thing in perspective, and maybe you should think about it. It goes something like: " do we really need MHz, or just better programmers". Think about it.

Within the past 6 months I have purchased 4 computers. 3 are PC's with XP Pro and the 4th is a Mac. I only purchased the PC's from companies that would load the XP Pro and not Vista.

Long story short....I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot poll.

Within the past 6 months I have purchsed 4 computers. One was a Mac. The other 3 were PC's with XP-Pro loaded. I purchased those from companies that would offer XP-Pro instead of Vista. Thanks but no thanks MS. I'll just run these XP based rigs until MS gets Windows 7 figured out.

Being a gamer I feel forced to run XP until this system garners greater support, and it isn't some crazy paranoia. I got my first real computer(not a hand-me-down) a month after XP hit, and it was an infomercial PC, so I had problems, but I found myself unable to play certain games, and among other things, incredible instability.

In my opinion XP didn't fully stabilize until Service Pack 2, and I strongly dislike the idea of needing another Windows every few years after the massive success of XP. XP garnered lots of attention, lots of support, and became a super reliable OS, if Microsoft would just develop an OS that looks to the future, they could literally pull an XP again and leave it up and running for many years without falling too far behind.

Vista does that in quite a few ways, the pretty graphics disinterest me, but the advancements that many competitors saw after XP are finally in the product, and to hear Microsoft might try returning to the old strategy makes me worry that it's pulling a Sony and not paying attention to the present. As Sony has clearly shown, that is a most damaging point of view to take, and for a company with as much "bad mojo" from the geek community as Microsoft, it isn't needed either.