If you're buying a brand new computer for personal (non business) use, you'd have to be an idiot not to want Vista. Vista has significantly improved graphics quality for games (just check out MS Flight Simulator X to get a taste of the improvements). Better yet, if a program crashes the graphics driver Vista can fix the problem without rebooting. The screen will go blank briefly and then Vista will give you a message stating it had to restart the graphics driver. If this happened in Windows XP or 2000 Professional you would get a BSOD and your computer would reboot. Vista also has UAC to drastically increase security. Any "problems" with UAC are not Microsoft's fault. If a program can run under a Limited user account with Windows XP it will run under Vista with no UAC prompts.

If a program can run under a Limited user account with Windows XP it will run under Vista with no UAC prompts.

It's amazing how many people don't realize this.

If the programs had been written properly in XP, they'd work fine in Vista. The problem lies in the fact that virtually no-one did. It will take time to patch / rewrite all that crap.

A $400 PC from Dell only costs $100 (inc packaging). How low can you go?
Is Dell still using below average parts with "old" drivers?

I was really disappointed when I bought my new Vista Basic laptop with 512 MB ram. They really shouldn't sell them with 512 MB and Vista. I was ready to reformat to XP. I bought a 1 Gig bar of ram and reinstalled Vista to give it a chance. Runs pretty darn good on 1.5 Gig of ram. The one great thing I noticed on Vista it recognizes all the hardware. Even my wireless router was a snap. The down side....a lot of programs are not Vista compatible. You can mess with the compatibility settings in properties and get most to run. (Remember OS/2?). My advice go for more ram in the beginning at least a GIG.

They really shouldn't sell them with 512 MB and Vista.

They shouldn't have sold XP on laptops with 256MB...but they did. And they'll cut corners on Vista machines too. Thank God it's not toop incredibly hard to upgrade the RAM in a laptop.

Thanks, Dell. I hope I may buy next year my new Dell notebook leaving to me the decision of what to install or not to install in it without suffering the Vista syndrome. Wow!!!

Vista is not some locked down O/S that shuts down a any hint or pirated software. I can assure you it is better than XP (with my experience so far) in every way.

People are afraid of Vista for some reason, I only use it because I didnt have a choice with my newest notebook. I will never go back to XP.

Doesn't surprise me one bit. There are quite a lot things wrong with Vista (excessive Drm and other anti-piracy crap deeply rooted in the system to shut off/lock down anything at the smallest hint of suspicion, some half-assed and bungled pseudo-security features which annoy more than they help, lots of things arbitrarily changed for no good reason ...), the application and driver support is still pitiful (you'll often have to upgrade to the newest version of programs and new hardware for Vista compatibility, if there is any in the first place), and there is practically nothing that makes it worth migrating to Vista (You can get 64bit support from XP64, and Vista's bling-bling features only impress dimwits - Aero and Flip3D might be nice to look at, but are practically useless).

As such, only simple-minded folk that is easy to impress is using Vista, while more practical people with at least half a clue prefer alternatives like XP, XP64 or Linux.
Thus, Dell has to offer alternatives to Vista if they don't want to lose lots of customers.

You apparently have never tried it otherwise you wouldn't have wrote such inaccuracies. Vista has DRM SUPPORT, it causes no issues with any software that has no drm in it. Linux and Mac will have to do the same thing if they want to be able to use the media.

You cannot fault MS for the driver support thats up to the companies making the drivers, MS gave them plenty of time.

My 4 yr old machine runs vista fine, so again more garbage.

New things vista has, vista utilizes your graphics card for the "bling bling effects" thus not hindering speed.

IE7 runs in a protected mode to prevent damage to the OS.

Speedboost being able to supplement usb jump drives for ram.

Windows Mail is a much improved version of OE.

When sending photos it automatically compresses it into the size you would like granted not revolutionary but still a nice feature.

Vista runs faster then XP on the same machine.

WMP is a lot smoother on Vista then XP

UAC yes it has its issues but its a start, I am sure it will be improved upon.

Is it a must have upgrade, no but XP wasn't either, its the same situation and the same people that complained about XP are complaining about Vista.

Ill switch to Vista when ive actually have a reason to. For now i will give myself a break by not doing so, yet, let others find the crap so i dont have to.

Any Vista user here able to actually give some real reasons for this "upgrade"? I mean, theyve spent supposedly years and "tons" of money. There has to be something besides "Aero" or that it doesnt crash, most of the time...

There has to be something besides "Aero" or that it doesnt crash, most of the time...

Stability of the OS isn't a major improvement? lots of folks would be happy to disagree with that.

How about the driver model? Pretty major change there. Driver crashes? No biggie. It'll restart the driver, not the OS. No more driver BSODs.

Completely redone audio, from the low-level stuff to the visible interface. Adjusting sound levels on a per-app basis is now possible. Want you music loud and your burner's "finished" chimes low? No problem, no you won't be blown out of your chair when the job's done.

I won't go into the kernel...or the memory subsystem (handeling large heaps, etc). Readyboost, superfetch, Image-based backup, UAC (love it or hate it), DX10, moving the interface from the CPU to the GPU...

There's a lot there...but all you see is Aero if you're not using Vista. The rest you don't get until you start using Vista.

I started slow, with XP and Vista Ultimate both on my machine because I couldn't get a few programs working in Vista. It took about 3 weeks for me to wipe the drive and install Vista only.

Never going back...

The only thing this means is, they are selling stock they still have, and want to make a profit on it.

Vista might be alot of things, I have no problems with it, but thats just one person right. Windows XP provides a sense of security, because its familar, and Dell knows that means people will buy a computer with Windows XP that otherwise they would have waited to buy.

Guess what happens in 6 months when that computer you bought is to old to use, you remember that good experience and buy another Dell computer with Vista SP1.

To be honest this just sounds like the old Dell, common sense when you sell products people will buy.

FUD. Time to move on. The same people who complain about having to deal with Vista are the ones that complained XP has been around too long. Can't have it both ways. Software, computers in general, comprise the world of "technology", which thrives on "change" and "upgrades". If you want to stay on outdated software, fine. Don't complain about it anymore though. Otherwise, find another alternative and be happy. I have Vista running on about a dozen various computers, laptops and desktops. Works great. NOT ONE CRASH for me since installed. Maybe I'm lucky, but it's the only evidence I have to go on, so I'll stick with that.

having a choice is good and i agree with this Dell step but from what i seen vista is not that bad. i do software QA and we test our product across alot of platforms and have several vista machines. so far it is looking not bad at all. i mean it does crash sometimes but so does even the bulletproof iMac.

Hmm, obviously enough consumers are hacked off with Vista's problems, for Dell to offer XP..

Not good news for Microsoft..

There is also no Service Pack on the horizon, as that would imply that Vista is flawed, and Microsoft wouldn't want that...

Being able to have XP media centre on my new Dell was definetly a plus, but the upgrade disc to Vista premium was a handy extra I have yet to fell the need to use.

I think Vista has plenty of kinks to iron out and the level of support re drivers etc is worrying - especially as I would like to move to 64bit computing (something which supposedly happened ages ago in XP days but which again has been let down by a lack of support and sheer 'product' out there).

For a business which claims to be so rapidly evolving this is anything but, even if many of the reasons are perfectly understandable.

Good move.

I think this is a fantastic development. Give customers the choice that Microsoft would have taken away.

I wonder what Dell is going to do when Microsoft forbids XP bundling in the new year.

"I wonder what Dell is going to do when Microsoft forbids XP bundling in the new year." - If you allow me it, I would make some remarks about this. I believe Dell is right in this decision. Many users are fed up with the pressure to upgrade to Vista and would rather keep using what they know the best. BTW in my particular case at home I'm happy using my simple and easygoing 9 years old Windows 98 SE: no remote access or games, but I get a relax instead: no viruses, no patches, no upgrades, no updates and no need to pay attention to MS. "No news good news". I believe that one way or another at the end each one will run what he or she really prefers, be it Vista or XP or Linux or even the oldie Windows 98 SE. IMHO it is not in the hands of MS to forbid the use of any of their abandoned but good OS, even when MS would presumably wish to wipe all them off and away from the face of the Earth.

Good move, now you will get my order for 5 PCs.

yeah, here in Japan, it's actually pretty hard to find top level computers in vista.

Give it another 6-12 months: when Vista has finally caught up in compatibility then they can pull XP from the shelves. At the moment XP is the stable choice, Vista is the pretty one.

Vista doesn't need to catch up. Hardware and software makers need to. It was the same with Xp, it will be the same with Vienna.

The problem is that hardware/software makers do not all have the time and money to create completely NEW drivers and have them verified through M$...

Verification isn't always needed. There are plenty of drivers for XP and Vista that aren't "digitally signed" and work flawlessly. It just means they didn't want to shell out the cash to MS.

They've had plenty of time. If the money is that much of an issue, how well can the company in question really be doing? Would you really want to buy hardware from a company that can't fork over $500 to be Vista certified?

Vista is fine, its the driver/software/hardware manufactures that needs to catch up. And they never had more time than with vista to do so, yet, there are still some problems. May I remind all of you, when was it that Vista first was made available to developers as Beta 1 and Beta 2?

It was available to devs even before beta1...

Not only did they have plenty of time, they were strongly advised by MS to at least sign their friggin drivers back when XP was released. Most ignored that so XP had to downgrade driver signing security to cope with their lack of concern for customers. Now Vista is putting the heat back on them to code properly. MS has always provided an over-abundance of guidance, resources and assistance to vendors when it comes to hardware and software drivers. The ones crying about this being "all of a sudden" are ignorant or just plain stupid.

Definitely a good move especially for those "Vista Capable" PC's that really didn't include a lot of what made Vista Vista, so why not stick with XP a little while longer.

My HP is killer with Vista. My XP 3Ghz P4 cant hold a candle to this notebook. The clock speed is 2/3rd as much as my old one.

XP seems to really drag the longer you use it. Vista rocks, people are just retarded.

it rocks but at the same time it doesnt have a such great compativily with current programs

Imagine that...

Thats because you probably haven't cleaned out your temp files or have done a defrag of your hard drive in a long time.

I thought about that, but that computer is for work only and stays off the "grid". Which means no email, no web surfing, no networks.

Strictly for graphics work and it still seems to bog down exponentially as time goes on.

I dont get it but XP seems so s***ty to me now after a couple months of Vista and a free email client (Windows Mail) that hasnt let a single bit of spam in yet.

You can use compatibility mode for stubborn programs, it's forked every time for me.

I am tired of people using the word retarded. I have a severe, chronic mental disorder accompanied by frontal lobe brain damage. I have kept XP on my systems because it's very difficult for people like myself to deal with changes. I have run a large home server system for the last year, but I don't know how much longer I'll be able to do so.

If you had to live inside my head for one day, you would be looking for a tall building from which to leap.

I bought an HP laptop and it runs Vista quite well, Once they have suitable audio drivers for my delta 66 card and usb interface I'll upgrade my other pc.

Its not a must have OS but it does things in a simpler method (IMO) and a lot of bugs that still exist in xp no longer exist in Vista.

Agreed. As well as the fact that if people and hardware/software devs hang on to XP, there will be no 'moving forward' concerning drivers and Vista versions. I remember when XP came out it was the same thing, thousands complained about how resource hungry it was, all the bugs it had, how much better 2000 was and within a year or 2, everyone embraced it and learned to use it, and use it well - ofcourse, many still complain, but bah...people will always find something to complain about. The fact is that the sooner Vista flows through the mainstream, the sooner we'll begin to see 'older hardware' drivers supporting it and software being redesigned for use on it and voila, machines that you'd think would never run Vista WILL run it (with a bit more Ram, mind you).

Duh?

I bought a Toshiba laptop for my cousin, and out of my believe, it only support Vista. The laptop is a celeron with 512 in ram. XP cannot install on it because there is no SATA hdd driver for XP.

I added another 512 and removed a lot of crap, and it's only barely acceptable. WTF Toshiba thinking?

No SATA HDD drivers for XP???? Um... wtf? Try driverguide,com if you really can't seem to find XP drivers for the SATA controller. SATA was built on XP!

don't get it the wrong way but - you still need to do a lot of learning to be a succsesfull PC technitian... a lot.

I remember that article about installing Linux on Dell machines and I said, "this is one of those things that a few thousand want but no one is really gonna use it". Now THIS move is a good move by Dell and I'm sure many people are going to take advantage of this offer.

Bob, I agree with you. I, as well as other members on BN have said, have no need to make the jump on my PC just yet. I can wait another year, perhaps, until they iron it out more.

Quite frankly I have not seen anything yet in Vista that makes say to myself "I need that" or even "I want that".

Given the specs of those machines vs. Vista, it's actually a good idea.

After all, it seems consumer voice can be heard

I hope they 'hear' the consumer voice when MS stops supporting XP and Dell receives a flood of support calls for XP related issues.

In case you didn't notice... the OEM supports the OS, not Microsoft, so Dell would be supporting them either way...

=/\=

Hmm, sure is a lotta bashing goin on in this thread. Giving the customer more options for an OS was a smart move by Dell. With all the Vista bashing going on Im sure their sales will increase a bit after giving this option back to the consumer. And I also agree that software/driver/ect writers had enough time. If we all wanted to stay in our "comfort zone" with pc's we would all still be on win 98. Not everyone is a techie when it comes to pc's so the soccer moms and keep their xp and the die hard comp geeks can press forward and pave the way for the future soccer moms. Fact is that now the consumer can make their own choice in the matter.