Ballmer admits Vista is a half-baked turd.

http://www.cio.com/artic..._is_a_Work_in_Progress_

Perhaps they could re-market it as "Lame Duck"? Couldn't possibly be worse than the penguin.

New OS's should never be installed on old machines! On a new PC, vista is an improvement over XP. It's that simple.

A-and "monolithic?" Only 'nixs are multilithic. I used to have a lot of respect for Gartner, but they've become as bad as politicians; a lot of hot air!

if 7 does go the modular route i hope the core module will be writting to have nothing todo with backwards compatibility. And if you wanted to run some "legacy" apps you would then install a module for that which would be sorta like vm to run old apps. wishful thinking.

I am using vista, and i don't want to back to xp. It's the same thing like some years ago people can't decide with os to use - win 98se or 2000:)

I like Vista. I'm OK with it going away for Windows 7. But what makes you anti-Vista people think the next Windows won't need an Intel Duo 2, 2-4 gigs ram and good video card? You are going to have to spend a little money or basically be stuck with a 10 year old OS. So why not spend money now, enjoy a fast system (with XP or Vista).

DEAD AS DEAD CAN BE!

Vista = the most worthless OS EVER.

Thank God for you Trolls.

If it weren't for you, this topic would have like...5 posts in it.

Sorry,

Vista is the finest O/S money can buy. Too bad the low IQ'ers just don't get it.

Old news and now boring, lets move on, all the talk on this forum will not make one bit of difference to Microsoft. If you like Vista then so be it, if you do not then so be it, in all actuality no one cares.

That is true (as I sit here playing Crysis with DirectX 10) :)

No you don't.

You sit there playing Crysis with the high settings unlocked.

Contrary to false marketing, Crysis is not a DX10 game, as proven by running it in "DX10 mode" in Windows XP using DX9. (The two are completely incompatible...hence the need to have DX9 libraries installed to play DX9 games in Vista)

Any game that claims to be DX10 and runs in XP is either flat-out lying, or supports *both* DX versions. The fact that Crysis DX10 mode works in XP proves it's not actually DX10, just a marketing ploy.

But hey...decent game anyway, so...

Think you are wrong man. 1. I don't have DirectX 9 installed (I did for a few older games, but just did a clean install 3 weeks ago with SP1).

Go here http://webpages.charter.net/bliss/

If it was just marketing - show me a link to the class action lawsuit, as their would be one. And two - I have played Crysis XP and Vista. Now, I'll be honest, with the same settings, the only thing I could see improved was water, and smoke.

But maybe I should have said BioShock :)

A review of the differences between "very high" and "high" settings does not prove a thing, nor does the lack of a class action lawsuit.

DX10 does *not* work in XP. At All. Period. Crysis can run on the "DX10" setting in XP. Case closed.

As for the lack of lawsuit? Who cares? The case wouldn't win anyway. DX10 "required" could simply mean (to them) DX10 being installed allows the "very high" DX9 setting to function.

As for DX9 not being installed...you sure? Check the files Crysis installed. :)

First - your screen name is awesome.

I could only compare XP (DX9) to Vista (DX10). And not side by side, as it was the same computer (my main one). But if a game claims it is DX10 and isn't - it would be all over the gaming web.

I am OK upgrading my PC use Vista for Games - as I am a game player. If the games look even a little better I'm for it. But when the next Major Xbox ships, and it support a keyboard and mouse, I'll be done with PC gaming.

Didn't dis Vista for a moment, you seem to be under that impression, thought I'd clear that up for ya.

As for it being all over the gaming web...it was. Ars covered it briefly. No-one cared.

Hopefully games that actually *use* DX10, and use it well, will start coming out later this summer. Should be interesting to see.

Beta testers needed for iSnazzle P2p!

http://fileforum.betanew...le_Browser/1205369842/1

join up and help populate the network with mp3's and video!

IMO the main goal of MS when they created Vista was the fight against piracy, and that is also the reason for many of their present decisions. Maybe it is in absolute terms something impossible to reach. I would even say that without piracy MS would not have the worldwide presence that they enjoy today. In the other side are the interests of the "asian" hardware and drivers manufacturers: in the good old times manufacturers always stood by MS, but even when at first sight it seems that they have a common interest because you buy preinstalled Vista by default, it should not be forgotten that software piracy boosts hardware sales.

"Is Vista dead in the water?"

To all btu the most myopic or fanboi, the short answer is YES.

Old news - let's move on.

vista will turn out to be a disaster in history for microsoft.

to begin with microsoft waited too long for its' initial release, thus it lost 2 years of sales. and now with the recession, the next two years will be stagnent for it as well.

perhaps, microsoft will need to create a stimulus initiative if it wants its product to move off the dusty shelves of stores filled with chirping crickets instead of cash register ringing customers.

I really like that fantastic Aero thingy, this looks like the Star-Wars computers from euh 1960 but just more boring.

I said it a million times: Vista should've been 64bit ONLY.
By NOT doing so, MS set computing back a decade, just like when it didn't port to Risc years ago. And as well MS has left MacOs & Linux an opening...

Vista just oximoronically turned into a delayed rush job-- with other planned improvements / key elements removed.

What a shame...

Hahahahaha! A petition to save XP...
http://weblog.infoworld....04/save_windows_xp.html

Guys, life really is better on a Mac.

ya i agree, if you cant figure out how to use a pc

And if you want to give up a whole slew of familiar applications and replace them with "simple" apple ones that simply don't do much of anything except the basics.

How old are you? 12?

Not hardly. Mac's have their own share of problems.

You're giving him to much credit. I was going to say 9.

1995 called. it wants its line back

The younger you are, the higher is your value.

The ratio of actual Vista users who own it on a computer that was bult specifically for it, and hate it, is very small. The people who upgraded from XP on older computers are the ones having problems.

Selling Vista as an XP upgrade was a huge mistake. They should have only put it on new PC's and notebooks that could actually run it at full speed with all of the correct drivers installed.

Bingo.

Never should have even considered an upgrade SKU.

Not on an 6+ year jump. That was bone-headed of them.

And Acer selling Vista Home Premium systems with 1GB of RAM is a joke. Vista MCE realistically requires 2GB, and any system with shared memory (all Acer laptops) definitely need 2GB if Aero is enabled.

Personally I would never install Vista on any system that doesn't have at least 4GB of RAM, a dual-core CPU, and a 512MB PCI-e video card.

Vista loves power and despite the trolls, *does* put it to better use than XP.

Agreed, although one of my laptops only has 2gb of ram and still fairs out nicely.

2GB being the absolute minimum Vista should ever be sold with.

Lets face it, it runs decent on 2GB, but less than that and it's a dog, more than that and it flies.

The biggest problem that I have seen with Vista is the people that upgraded an already slow crapware filled PC then upgraded it. People seem to believe that an upgrade will magically clean their infected PC to a new state.

I agree.

From what I have seen the upgrades have been the biggest problem. Start with a trashed Windows load to start with, upgrade and expect miracles.

they should call that the vista "ram tax"

Call it whatever you want. 2GB of RAM is not an absurd amount, and it is not out of line with past jumps in OS driven upgrade reqs.

98 would run fine on 64MB of RAM. XP *required* double that to run, and realistically needed at least 8 times that amount (512MB) to run decently.

RAM is cheap. It's damn near a crime that these resellers are selling Windows systems with less. Just as it was prior to Vista.

People seem to believe that an upgrade will magically clean their infected PC to a new state.

I agree.

Heh...

Well, I'm guessing *that* didn't come out right. :p

The broken Vista PC's that I have seen are upgraded XP machines that were full of spyware and adware. The MS seminar that I went to said that an upgrade should be installed on a clean XP load. Who is going to reformat their PC install XP then install Vista. To many people thought that installing Vista on top of their already slow XP machine would make everything good again.

Well, i have a Athlon 64 3000+ CPU (not dual-core) with 2 GB of RAM and Vista x64 Business and with a modest Nvidia GeForce 8400GS PCIx video card with only 256 RAM, and Vista smokes on it.
Yes, Vista does put more power to better use, but 4 GB of RAM isn't that necessary. And it's somewhat foolish if you're running 32-bit Windows.

Ah, did I fail to mention the uselessness of the whole 32-bit thing?

I am sure Vista runs fin for ya. When you get 4GB in there and a faster dual core (you didn't specify) CPU, that's when it starts to kick XP's a** in performance. Never said it wouldn't be "good enough" on less horsepower. I was merely giving the reqs for the best experience.

As they always have.

The entire upgrade SKU for Vista is a joke and should never have been done.

What I though was funny about what I quoted is that, by the wording, you stated that you agreed with those who thought it would clean their system :p

I love how people complain about Vista using too much ram when 4gb of ram nowadays is cheaper than 16mb way back when. And I agree, it is a crime to ship ANY pc with less than 4gb these days.

...or an onboard display adapter

...or an onboard display adapter

Meh...

On brand-name PC's, I would tend to agree. For a BYO, I gladly went that route. For MCE it's excellent, and for systems that have a PCI-e X16 slot for a future upgrade (if you don't want to spend the extra $200 right away), it's decent option.

lol i still remember when it was such a big deal to spend like 300 bucks on 36 mb simms.

Vista realistically requires 4Gb and at least a 3Ghz dual core to be useful - claims of 2Gb are a joke and a bad one. Even then it is markedly slower than XP, 32 or 64bit.

You want a fast Vista? Run Server 2008 with the desktop features enabled. But wait, you say,that's actually Vista with SP1 slipstrreamed in.

Why yes.

But it also has a CRAPLOAD of performance tuning done and a much smaller supported device footprint which make a LOT of difference. Sources inside M$ tell me that this performance tuning will eventually make its way down to Vista. I find that amusing in light of the fact that SP1 was just released - and that information came to me when I asked over the last few days. Clearly, the tuning hasn't been done yet (it was a design engineer I spoke to)and one has to wonder why - the OS so desperately needs it.

And even then it's slower than Server 2003 configured the same way.

So I'll stick to XP / XP64. XP64 gives me speed, power, rock solid stability - and NONE of the Vista disadvantages. I don't need the retroactive abortion known as Aero (flippy windows are pretty juvenile, especially in the face of Beryl), I've got ASIO so I don't need the new audio API and my AM2 6000+ with 4Gb (obviously Vista ready - just not wasted on it) flies.

It'll do until Windows 7 comes along.

Vista32 runs in 2Gb the way XP32 does in 512Mb. I find that particularly amusing in light of my previous posting.

Not sure which posting you are referring to, but you're dead on.

XP will run decently enough with *zero* crapware and one, maybe two apps open at 512MB. it really takes off after you hit the 1.5GB mark.

Vista will run decently on 2GB without crapware and only a few apps, but really takes off with 4GB.

I'd be really interested in hearing what problems you had on that system with Vista SP1(64bit) installed.

...ya know, if you could do it without using the flippy 3D bit. :p (I've had Vista installed for weeks and have used the "flippy 3D" bit a grand total of once)

Vista/Server 2008 is a far superior OS to Windows XP no one who has done their research can dispute that, at least from a technical point of view. Fair enough it need more on the hardware front but so did XP over 2000 and 95 over 3.1. I have never really understood why people have been surprised by this. You can pickup a dual/quad core machine with 4GB RAM for peanuts now anyway and vista works fine with 1GB.

From the Enterprise side (which is where I am mainly concerned) Vista/2008 is just starting to come in to itls own. The new MSAT and Group policy extensions, which are also backward compatible to XP :-), are a HUGE improvement over XP/2003's offerings.

Vista is very much here to stay. I don't see the point is complaining about it now. From a business perspective which is the focus of this article, advising upgrades at the start of a new hardware cycle is hardly a new idea or particularly newsworthy!

They could have done a better headline:

Vista = Windows ME 2.0

nuff said.

Would have had about the same effect on the quality and quantity of comments....

Is it really enough said? I mean comparing vista to me is like comparing OSX to OS9.

Wow. It is so easy to increase page views nowadays. Just put anything Microsoft or anything Apple in the title and *boom*!

Ask a leading, loaded question to boot and you've got 200+ comments easy. I would love to see a hit counter on this page.

Talk about bringing home the bacon, eh?

I write this (half) tongue-in-cheek, but just for fun, open Fonts in Vista's control panel, and select "Install New Font" from the File menu. Now do the same in Windows 3.1. It's the same friggin dialog interface. Now tell me Windows hasn't been a steadily-growing monster that's blossomed into it's current lethargic self. I mean they just keep piling on. It's time for some house cleaning and an end to the new crap like the heavy DRM they hang around our willing necks.

hear, hear ;-)

If it ain't broke, don't fix it?

Really...how much more functionality do you need for installing fonts? Do ya think they might have better fish to fry?

Love how people whine about how much changed in Vista...and then about what is and has been visually the same since WFW. Can you say Catch-22?

windows 3.11, lol came on like 12 floppies.....lol... if it managed to work on my new box it would be so fast it would go back in time due to special relativity.

I don't even think it would run, seriously. Timing issues and such.

It would be amusing though.

I may have to try throwing my WFW 3.11 CD in a VM, just for grins. Maybe even install win32 and see what happens.

The only thing that pissed me off about Vista was it's inability to keep USB peripherals installed.

I bought a desktop replacement laptop and when its not on my lap, i plug a keyboard and mouse into it on a desk but unfortunately for me, Vista forgot that i've already installed these devices before and demands i install them every time i connect them back in or they don't work, has this been fixed in SP1 does anyone know?

go over here and get this:
http://www.softwarepatch...ta-usb-error-patch.html

Service Pack 1 addresses a lot of Vista errors/problems so you should install it anyway there are a lot of "Roll ups", in it. It doesn't really add significant performance but it does add functionality /stability.
Good luck bye.

I don't care what anybody says, Vista is the next generation Windows Millenium Edition. It's a flawed "crossover" OS and Windows 7 will probably be a more reliable and faster OS--at least equally the same speed as Windows XP. Lol but seriously.

I'm know I'm right. Who agrees with that?

I have had a very pleasurable experience with Vista and I remember Windows ME. I strongly disagree.

I know you're wrong. Vista is not the next generation Millenium Edition; that was a piece of junk built on the 95/98 kernel. Vista is completely new from the ground up. And elaborate on how it's flawed? I work with it every day and have no problems at all.

ME wasn't even a failure, all said. It sold well enough. Sure, we know it sucked due to memory leaks and the sheer inability to run it for more than a few hours without it bogging completely down (Something XP only partially fixed).

That said, Vista has none of those issues. It has been running on my home machine now for several weeks without a reboot and it has not slowed down at all, in fact, apps are loading faster than they were the first week.

Windows 7 will have the same or larger reqs than Vista. Guaranteed. You really need to stop fooling yourself.

"....Windows 7 will have the same or larger reqs than Vista. Guaranteed...." humm, you don' know and no one knows that. And that I can guarantee!

Don't be an idiot.

Name a single OS revision that has required *less* resources than it's predecessor.

I do not appreciate being called an idiot. And to answer your question, what I am saying is that maybe it's time to change all that. Surely you can't deny that technology as significantly evolved over the passed few years. Look what Apple did with the iPhone; that thing is a work of art, packed with incredible features & it blows away the competition. Now imagine Microsoft (or any other company, for that matter) introducing an OS so revolutionary, stable, fast, secure, and requiring a quarter of the hardware power and energy of today's computer and still able to run apps at the same speed as a monster quad-core with 4 Gigs of ram! Imagine starting this thing up in a matter of 1 or 2 seconds? Ultra-portable, smart and powerful. You see, that is why I think there is so much bad press and dissatisfied Vista users out there; it is time for a change and I think now is the time for Microsoft to step up or someone else just might.

Vista isn't anywhere near being a lame duck. In fact, it is an awesome operating system that is more secure than XP.

It IS a lot more memory hungry than XP, but I can let that go considering that XP runs best with 4GB of memory, and with that amount, Vista runs quite close to as fast, if not FASTER in some aspects (i.e. it boots up 4 times as fast as XP Media Center Edition did on the same PC).

Billweh also has a point in that most of the 'bloat' of Microsoft's operating systems dates back to support for legacy systems. Drivers, drivers and more drivers, for printers that NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND is using anymore, old USB hubs, etc.

The thing, my friend, is that Microsoft is asking for huge hardware upgrade, to do something other OSes can do with a much more modest configuration. I have an old Mac Cube (450Mhz + 512Mb of RAM) running Tiger just fine. In that config which, by the way, isn't as slow as one would expect a machine that old to be - I have most of the features MS is offering as an improvement for Vista. Does this mean OSX is light years ahead? Hardly. It simply shows that Windows has indeed become a dinosaur. MS needs some serious code revisioning and letting go of a ton of legacy code to get Windows back to being lightweight and effective. Gartner is right about that.

On further analysis this is where the credibility went down the drain: "I have an old Mac Cube (450Mhz + 512Mb of RAM) running Tiger just fine."

Right now is a good time for the Mac OS to move into the market.

Only if Apple will unlock OSX to run on all Intel Machines. I'm not spending 1500 dollars on an Apple just for email, internet, IM, photos, movies and music.

It would certainly be insteresting if the machines would be more up to par on the hardware side and not just look pretty.

Apple will NEVER... I repeat.... NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER... unlock it's OS to be installed on any WinTel box.

Their touted "security" and "stability" would fly right out the (pardon the pun) window, and the whole Reality Distortion Field would "collapse under it's own weight".

Never gonna happen until they give it up and allow (Legally) to be installed on non Apple Hardware.

Umm, do you even know what you are talking about? The reason that OSX is so "secure" is because there are not enough people dissecting it yet.

It has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the hardware.

It's also funny how they made the switch to Intel branded processors a good while ago. Are you aware of this.

Humm...did you look at the specs for the Mac Pro? 2X Quad Core Intel Xeon...I don't think that's a problem anymore.

I guess the have some nice 'desktop' systems but I don't do those except as intranet servers these days - and that will certainly not be a Mac.

Show me a decent Mac laptop that has the flexibility of an UltraBay (flip out the optical drive for another hard for speed and reliability) or UWXGA+ displays (two (2) notches up from the max Apple can do). I don't want to take my fingers off the keyboard while typing and don't buy laptops without a TrackPoint (or similar) device.

Unfortunately the Mac notebook failed the comparison on every level. With money being no limiting factor Win gives a choice of systems outside of uncle Steves limited consumer vision.

*laughs*

Re-read his post. The ability of OSX to run on *any* wintel hardware would effectivly boost it's market share to the point where it would then become a tasty target in the eyes of spammers and bot-net controllers.

That's what he meant.

Windows Vista = Windows Millenium Edition (Me)

Since Windows 7 is also Vista/Me, there's not much to look forward to.

Long Live XP!

God help us if XP is it for the next 10 years.

I think that one of MS's problems is that they do try too hard to support legacy systems.

I understand that too, if I was a business and knew that I had to buy all brand new versions of my applications because they would cease to function under the new OS - it would make me think long and hard and be awefully hard to justify the expense. (Think thousands of PCs across an enterprise that need to be upgraded - not to mention the expense of actually doing the upgrade on each and every machine).

But - let's say MS tells everyone, OK - here's the new OS - any .NET apps from 1.1+ will run without having to recompile, if you are using MS Office - we will give you a FREE upgrade to the new version of Office for each license you currently own.

That *might* start getting it rolled out to some desktops and quite possibly new desktops.

But even still, there are so many internal apps that would still have to be run, and unless they could show that these apps would run in a Virtual machine, it could be the deal killer.

I remember when Windows 95 was released, we still had users that were using an old DOS based program to get to our VAX for accessing the publishing program that the company had been using for years. It would not run under Windows 95 no matter what.

So we had to stick an extra PC on each users desk that needed access to this app. Fortunately it wasn't many - maybe 20-30 people, but that's still an extra expense the company had to make for all of those people.

This is a big reason why the MAC still hasn't made as large a foothold as it could. Because there are too many apps in existence that would have to be re-written.

Sure - you could run parallels (an extra expense for EVERY user that needs it), not to mention that now you need to have a license for Windows XP (or whatever flavor of Windows you're using) on top of the expense of the MAC software.

I've been using Vista for about five months now and I think it's great. I've had no problems with it, everything but one app (and old command prompt based tool 4NT and it's an older version 5.x that I have) gives me problems when I try to pipe output to the List command. Other than that - Vista is stable and works just as advertised.

I got my wife a PC with Vista on it and each time she uses it, she finds another thing that she likes about the OS.

Our IT team likes it because it's easier to deploy and "lock down" so that they aren't bombarded with support problems because some person decided that the latest version of "crack-me-up game" was going to be a good thing to install on their work PC and it hosed have of their install.

Maybe it doesn't play games. I wouldn't know- I don't use my PC for playing games beyond things like Mahjongg or any of PopCap's games. But for what I do use it for; email, office 2007 and development work, it is fantastic.

If you have money buy a mac. Sure they cost a good deal more. And they can't play games. But they surf the web just fine.

If you don't wanna spend that much money goto walmart and buy a 500 pc. Cause it will surf the web just perfect.

You get what you pay for based apon what you wanna do. If you want a walmart pc to play Crisis then you're out of your mind. Try and play Crisis on a mac. LOL you can't even try cause they dont make it for a mac.

So yeah if you dont want Vista cause you don't wanna upgrade apperently you have your options. A good computer is a costly item. Surf the net on your windows 95 machine and stop b****in. If you want cutting edge games you need vista. Cause guess what, Microsoft isn't going back to XP. It's just life, you have to at some point move on. It's painfull at first buy you will get used to it. My Vista pc doesnt crash and doesnt slow down. It plays crisis in all it's glory. And if that doesnt matter to you stick with XP. Cause no one is holding a gun to your head saying you need to buy every new OS that comes out. If all i did was surf the net i most likely would still be useing windows 95. But i dont.

Just get vista basic...

*cough* vista basic.. isnt that the version that support only 8 Gb ram ?? :(

So if you eventually feel like uprading to 8 Gb it will be 8Gb minus your video ram, hdd caches, soundcard memory and other things.. stupid move of Ms to make this kind of limitation..

they should have never launched vista basic, I think it was only made for Ms to be able to claim vista compatible or vista ready to cheap computers with hardware not up to the vista requirements.

All 32 bit versions of Windows only supports 4 Gig of RAM minus your Vid card memory. Get 64 bit OS if you want 8 Gigs.

You sure sound like you know what you are talking about...

Why not a mac? I bought a used mac g5 for around $1000. Used my existing LCD monitor and keyboard/mouse combo. Never looked back. Heck, I get annoyed by my work (Vista) laptop now. I really do not want to use it. Sure it was a bit of a learning curve, but now that I have done it, I couldn't be happier. I just wish linux was as user friendly.

Heres my specs.
OSX 10.5
Dual 2.0 ghz G5
500 gig hdd
External 500 gig hdd
8.5 gigs ram

Hooked to a dell w2600 LCDTV with a BENQ 19 inch LCD as my secondary monitor.

Why not a mac? First they aren't Mac's anymore, they are Apple computers :) And if you are going to spend 1000, you can get a pretty kick a** pc with a gaming video card for that price (if not less). Learning curve from XP to Vista is much less then XP to OSX. Top that off, for the average user (like Mom), she picked up Vista in minutes (as really the colors are different and the start button doesn't say start). For IT troubleshooting, and setup, has changed.

Oh OK, thank you so much for correcting me ::rolls eyes::
I don't play games, so I could care less about kick a** video cards.
If I did, I can always flash a nice card with a mac, err apple rom.

I had some major problems with Vista where applications I had been using for quite a while just refused to work. I do a lot of studio recording work, and the last thing I needed to do was reinvest in new applications because MS changed their OS. However, I was able to migrate to the mac, err apple.. and use GarageBand with no problems whatsoever. For superficial crap like email and web surfing thats fine, but spend a week trying to figure out why the heck your midi controller suddenly got a bunch of latency, only to find out that it was due to Vista's "Improvements".

You should have been on a Mac from day one :) But the improvement you are talkinga about is true. They took the sound engine from the kernal (same as graphics). This can break stuff, but it truely makes a more stable OS once all the vendors put out new drivers and update their code. But really - for what you are doing, you should love the Mac (apple computer).

LOL!

Yeah, for $1000 you can get a "kick @ss" PC with an absolutely dynamite video card!

My @ss! ...Unless you are still playing Frogger!

But you see folks, what is really important here is that the teenagers here are reviewing Vista adoption on its ability to PLAY GAMES! - you know - the predominant activity that drives Enterprise adoption!!

If ONLY the debate was Windows versus Mac! If ONLY! Unfortunately its not for quite a few reasons! ...Predominantly Job's and Apple's elitist vision of their products that very adeptly avoids positioning the Mac as a successful enterprise product. Oh, it may gain traction, and it offers many strategic advantages - but it won't be because of an adept Apple strategy. It will be IN SPITE of Apple! Apple continues to be the Mac's biggest obstacle.

And for all the Mac lovers, liking the Mac is not enough of a reason for the Enterprise to adopt them. Before that will ever happen, Apple must get it's corporate head out of its posterior and provide meaningful Enterprise support. And unfortunately, Apple eschews that potential for Job's elitist (gee, what's Bono using) image that has utterly abandoned the "computer for the rest of us" legacy for a "computer for the beautiful people" image.

Apple, for all its cutesy commercials, still has NOT defused the bogus perception that the Mac "is not a PC" and "its more expensive and incompatible" image of 15 years ago! But why should they address this issue? Why indeed! Why should they actually educate the buying public - let alone the professional IT community that remains Still largely oblivious!

But in defense of the Mac; for the folks a few post ago who decry OSX - yeah, UNIX is SO lacking and unstable compared to Windows! NONSENSE! Spoken like a true Windows user who has never worked on other platforms. Yup, I have always heard that larger the UNIXes like AIX and HPUX and Solaris are unstable. ROFLMAO!

Here so many are oblivious to OSX's ability to natively talk and host the 64bit UNIX backend apps as well as to talk to (without terminal emulation!) and administer both Windows and Mac desktops - and ALL WITHOUT LICENSING COSTS!

But then, MOST here (Windows AND Mac users) are focused on whether their 'beasty' computer can play a game! Yup, we are sure focused on doing serious business here! LOL!

Unfortunately, neither camp here seems to have much of a grasp regarding what contributes to the real issues surrounding enterprise adoption. And even fewer are aware of the comparison and contrast between the two OS platforms in this regard.

And no one has addressed why FEW in the workplace need a dual or quad core platform to perform the lowly word processing, database query functions, and email perusing functions that most enterprise users require for a desktop - you know, those who are not Too busy playing games!

The enterprise hasn't had a reason to upgrade hardware in a long time based upon application demands! And now the hardware demands upgrading due to the resident OS?! The fact is, more would be gained in terms of admin, support, security and ROI by simply providing the majority of enterprise users with terminals.

Your argument is irrational, illogical and emotional. You stated, "Apple continues to be the Mac's biggest obstacle." ROFL. Apparently you have absolutely no clue as to the massive gains that the Mac market share has experienced very recently do you? (Google is your friend) I guess all of this is just blind chance in-spite of Apple rather than BECAUSE of Apple right? LOL. Nice try though and next time write a book and not a post...

You can get a good Intel Duo 2, 2 gigs Ram PC for 550-600 and just add your 250 dollar Nvidia 8800 GT. It plays BioShock, Call of Duty 4 and so on Great.

PC's have always been less then Apples, and slower when comparing dollar to dollar (tomshardware backs that up). Either way, OSX isn't bad. But I do agree, not enough for IT support in corporate America. That wasn't their target (yet).

"But you see folks, what is really important here is that the teenagers here are reviewing Vista adoption on its ability to PLAY GAMES! - you know - the predominant activity that drives Enterprise adoption"

Games have pushed PC technology faster then anything over the past 20 years (started with Doom). Still don't get your point. As for Enterprise adoption, I never said there was a reason for companies to go to Vista yet. But at your logic, why not just say on XP, on a 500 Mhz PC, with 512 Megs RAM for every. As for most business programs (word processing), it is enough. As an Intel Duo 2 isn't going to make you type faster.

I hope OSX does get going though. But wait, why are we talking about OSX, this was is Vista Dead. I say no, it will be here for 3-4 years, supported for 5 more. That's almost a decade. That just seems like normal cycle to me.

LOL!

Yeah, for $1000 you can get a "kick @ss" PC with an absolutely dynamite video card!

My @ss! ...Unless you are still playing Frogger!

Barebones with 2GB of RAM: $300

(2)250GB Sata HDD's: $150 (much lower if you shop online)

Ati 2900 HD XT: $300 if you shop online.

Total: $750. Use your existing monitor. Throw Vista Ultimate OEM on there for another $189 and you are *still* under $1000 with a PC that can easily handle Crysis, Oblivion, The Witcher, etc.

As for corporate adoption, it's pretty much complete BS when you figure the corporate foothold Windows 2000 still has. Corporations have always been and always will be the slowest to adopt.

You should know that.

Really.

We already addressed the notion of generally available off the shelf computers - not the exceptional whitebox or home brew which is NOT the majority market - and that is what this article addresses! And fundamental to the success of Vista IS enterprise adoption!

And like it or not, enterprise purchases are a SIGNIFICANT share of the market! So if we are talking about the widespread adoption of an OS, the Enterprise is crucial to the discussion!

Whether you buy a machine to run your erudite GAME or your mom buys one for her recipes (or whatever cliche image of a mom we want to abuse here...)...the enterprise does not generally build their own whiteboxes and assume all in house service and support! SMBs certainly don't do this! (Although they may very well source them from a VAR who does assume such responsibility for whiteboxes that THEY outfit - and before anyone cites this, it not the same thing!)

So the exception of a minimally resourced homebrew box that barely squeaks in under ~$1000 for a marginal market has little to do with the larger market acceptance of the OS!

And that is exactly the point! And YOU should know that.

Bottomline, Vista requires that most who were happy with XP to upgrade their desktops and certainly their legacy laptops with a MAX 512 or 1MB RAM.

The enterprise, for all of their security demands, still finds it hard to justify the expense of replacing their desktops that are used primarily for low processing power word processing, database lookups and email - they simply do not need the enhanced hardware & processing power requirements simply to run some purty interface that adds little to productivity!

The problem is that the perceived improvements do not justify the costs associated with change management, application compliance testing, new hardware, re-training, support and peripheral issues that come with the magical new release.

And add to that, many individual users feel the same way.

And THAT is what is dragging Vista down - despite the amazingly rosy propaganda that MS would like all to believe.

MS problem is that they do NOT have a homogeneous market where most are at XP simply waiting to upgrade! Their critical problem is that they still have significant portions of their market scattered all through the various legacy OSes - and that prevents them from pushing their new Office cash cow as well! They have real fundamental market fragmentation problems.

And we can listen to everyone mention their little feature that they like or don't like - and there is no sense debating that with lots of folks lining up to say they like it or they don't - as such threads always seem to do.

The problem is that Vista has not presented a COMPELLING reason for all to upgrade - neither for home users nor for enterprise environments.

And THAT is the REAL problem!
And the fact that we are even debating this issue should indicate real problems.

And YOU should know that! (Actually, I think you do, but Why should that prevent you from posting to the contrary here!? ;-))

-----------------------

And besides, if I were to advise someone regarding an upgrade today, I would buy a Mac simply to have the advantage of of running BOTH UNIX based OSX AND Windows (and Linux if they choose) and anything else you would like! And someone could do this on a desktop MacPro with 2 quad-core XEONS for ~$2800.

And while that does not necessarily hurt Windows, it does offer another very viable option that presents potential problems for future MS specific SW product upgrades as there are simply more attractive and viable options.

ROFLMAO!

Yup, Apple refuses to develop any semblance of a coherent enterprise solution despite producing the XServe. In fact, they say they have no plan to do so!

Apple tells the users what they want instead of listening to them!

Many of us NEED a true desktop replacement laptop to run VM images with multiple environments - yet Apple spends its time developing trendy thin laptops without Ethernet connectivity (regardless of how much you may like wireless!)

But Apple has completely avoided the high end power laptop environment - including graphics cards!

And support? Yup! When you void a warranty id you dare install a wireless card into the computer! Yup enterprises, don't dare touch them! And who in their right mind would buy ANY Apple memory, be it a hard drive upgrade or RAM? At those obscene prices!?!?!?! ROFLMAO! Not even a fanatic Mac user would! - you just hang onto the original RAM and HD in case there is a problem!

And I don't care if battery life is less than an hour or that it weighs 7 pounds - many NEED a robust desktop replacement that they can take with them - a luggable despite all the wimps for whom 7-8 pounds simply causes them to collapse in exhaustion.

Apple did this in the 90's by telling the scientific application folks that they were supposed to be using the Mac for desktop publishing.

The fact is that we have tried to use the Macs in academia and the enterprise - and Apple is their own worst enemy! Try calling Apple to get support at that level- just try!
And that is after Apple destroyed the VAR market of independent integrators who drove the adoption and integration of Apple into the scientific, SMB and enterprise markets - in fact Google the number of suits by them still pending against Apple! oops! those damned facts...

Bottomline, despite InforWorld's proselytizing, and many others, Macs are not gaining the inroads into Enterprise use that they could if Apple had any kind of strategy. Instead of enabling users, Jobs is an elitist control freak afraid of losing control of their baby - you know, the same genius who got thrown out the first time for refusing to open the Mac to expansion slots with the Mac2 and who abandoned CHRP preventing the Mac from running other OSes after his return (a feature integral allowing other OSes to run on the Mac to the platform from IBM - but I guess you are oblivious to this fact!), and the same one afraid to release unsupported copies of OSX to run on non-Mac boxes and thus acting as a Linux killer for those PC users who will Never buy a Mac just to try OSX! Poor Steve is terrified of gaining market share a the expense of losing total control as they evidently fear their machines are not compelling reasons to buy a Mac!

Add to that the FACT that their trendy hip ads have still FAILED to dispel and explain the 15 year old perception that the Mac incompatible (heck, most here don't even know the Mac is just a PC!) and that it is not only not more expensive, but that it is competitively priced with other off the shelf computers! Even IT professionals have no clue regarding this! I hear it almost everytime the subject comes up!

And the list goes on!

It was always easy to debate the Mac versus the PC. But if you wanted to hear the real gripes about Apple, all you have ever had to do is get the Mac users together who have an idea of the larger world!

You obviously have not been around the enterprise nor the Mac for very long.

And moving a few percentage points in market share has not changed the overall OS market. And their change in penetration in the enterprise is unfortunately MUCH worse. Even those of use who LIKE the Mac have trouble presenting a coherent case for Enterprise adoption that lacks any kind of support from Apple and without independent VAR support. So we are left to fend for ourselves despite the many tools that exist in a fragmented and unsupported Apple enterprise landscape.

So much for Apple leveraging an opportunity with the lack of a compelling reason by many to upgrade to Vista - despite their many advantages. Just another blown chance in the continuing legacy...

Bottomline, Vista requires that most who were happy with XP to upgrade their desktops and certainly their legacy laptops with a MAX 512 or 1MB RAM.

The enterprise, for all of their security demands, still finds it hard to justify the expense of replacing their desktops that are used primarily for low processing power word processing, database lookups and email - they simply do not need the enhanced hardware & processing power requirements simply to run some purty interface that adds little to productivity!

Good god...another one who thinks Vista is just a "purty interface".

..and here I thought you had some computer knowledge. Apparently it's just in relation to BSing about enterprise markets.

FYI: *all* of our computers in house have 2GB of RAM or more. We probably could have bought systems with integrated graphics cards that wouldn't support Aero, but we'd have had to work at it.

Point being: I could upgrade our company right *now* and the hardware would handle it. Our software would still glitch a bit, but we're working on that.

We're not the only one's.

I really don't know what companies you've worked for, but we and most companies we deal with replace their units every 3 to 5 years, with *current* hardware, just like we do.

The enterprise will move to Vista as they replace units. Some sooner than others, but they will. You can bet on it.

You can keep railing that Vista offers nothing, but those of us who've actually done the research and *ran* it know better. "Based on a server core", if you understand what that means, is plenty itself. Add to that the more stable driver model, "protected mode" browser, and getting the UI off the CPU and even you should start seeing benefits.

The "resource" issue is balls and you know it. Just because we haven't had to deal with OS-driven computer upgrades for 8 years doesn't mean it's not still the same necessary evil it was back in the WFW->95->98->XP days.

May be the "Windows 7" code name is just Vista SP2? Is there any reason or need to create yet another Windows while Vista is not yet fully stabilized?

just buy a Mac with Leopard... life will be fine :)

I use a mac os x 10.3. And when I do tech work I use an XP machine. I won't even touch a Vista Machine. I think yes vista is dead in the water. And for Microsoft to say that in 2009 or 10 there will be Windows 7. They need to rethink what they are doing and get rid of Steve Balmer. Bill needs to take back over.

I remember when XP was first released and all the problems I had with the lack of driver support from other vendors. It took quite a while to get everything up to date and running smoothly.

The worst thing about Vista is all the bad information being spewed out by the Media. I guess there isn't enough crap taking place in Hollywood with all the stars so the press has to take it out on Microsoft.

For all the MAC lovers out there.....you can keep that crappy OS I will take Microsoft any day. People that say they have no problems with their MAC's are obivously not using them because I have gone into the MAC environments and wittnessed many problems that don't make it to the press like all the complaints about Microsoft. Like I say its the press and the foolish people that didn't read the requirements that seem to have all the bad things to say about Microsoft. Those are the reasons we have to place warning lablels on things like buckets and plastic bags " Do not place over head"

If you hate Microsoft so much.....stop using their product and go to a MAC or Linux and have Fun Fun Fun!

Latest News : Vista has been the most sold OS on earth. expectations say Vista will quadruple the total XP sales at the end of 2008 !

That article is a little misleading. It's the most sold, but they also counted pre-installed. Either way the number is huge. Currently around 15% of the market and by the end of this your 30%, and so on.

If that is actaually true, the negative comments here are even funnier. Miscrosoft wants to get rid of XP by June or July this year I heard.

And that's different to the way XP has been counted how exactly?

XP is well more pirated world wide.

Yes. end of story. But I do like it. I run 32 and 64 on my various computers.

Like a few posts below this one, I too like Vista very much and it definitely does NOT have the problems the idiots seem to think it does. Its just the same group of anti-Vista bashers who have nothing else to do.

Yes its still overpriced, but its definitely stable and works with every single piece of hardware I have... something I can't say about the x64 version of XP. I run Vista x64.

"Its still overpriced, but its definitely stable and works with every single piece of hardware I have". I remember these are the same words that we said in 1999 about Win98SE. When hardware providers decided to stop delivering drivers they killed it in a short term. They may do it again. You can't be sure of anything at all.

I have been using Vista since its release on a now three-year old computer, and with 1 gig of RAM and Intel Core Duo Processor with Aero. Works and runs like a charm. My father's business has over ten Vista computers, none with problems.

Yet, everyone seems to put down Vista and its problems? Why?

Most people don't upgrade to Vista because they hear of the all the people with problems. Like this forum, for instance. But usually the only people that bother to say something about Vista are the people who have problems with it. This is exactly like News reporters dont say how many soldiers are alive in Iraq, but they always say how many were killed. Think of how many people even today are using Vista, and I guarentee, a small percentage are having problems.

Some say it is bloatware, well, that's not Microsoft's fault. PC companies always jam in useless "bloatware" because it keeps their costs down. I have purchased Vista seperately and it is not bloated at all.

And in that part, Mac has the advantage, for it makes it own computers and doesn't need to deal with this. Great? Yes! Maybe Microsoft should do the same, but if it did, competition would decrease and prices would increase to the expensive Mac prices of today.

One could argue that Mac is constantly up to date, with five versions coming out in the time where Microsoft released two. Yes, but if each 10.x costs $129 and one wants to be up to date, they would have to pay that amount five times, and with relatively no new features each time. Microsoft's answer, besides for the Media Center Edition, Tablet Edition, and numerous other "updates" is SP1 and SP2. Then it releases Vista, a very MAJOR release, that after paying for five versions of Mac 10.x, is cheaper.

Security. The number of Mac viruses are indeed less than Windows. Why? Because Mac users are less than 8% of computer users. As a virus creator, you would always shoot for the big kill. As stated in this article: http://www.macworld.com/...16/2007/04/daizovi.html Vista is found to actually be more secure than Macs. Mac users are gaining popularity, fast, thanks to Vista-hating users, Mac fanboys, and those under the control of Steve Job's somehow godly powers. With this, more viruses are headed to the Mac users, and frankly I don't think its as prepared.

But I can't deny it, Macs are gaining momentum. Which is good, I love Macs, (although I prefer Windows), I think they work great, are easy to use, and are very cool to look at. But will it replace Windows, not even close. I believe they will always be rivals, at worst a 49/49 split (2% to Linux). Just like Windows, the larger Macs become, the more problems and viruses will be greatly exposed to the general public, and this will cause the forever flux between the two OSes.

a rare piece of comment that really make sense

"And in that part, Mac has the advantage, for it makes it own computers and doesn't need to deal with this. Great? Yes! Maybe Microsoft should do the same, but if it did, competition would decrease and prices would increase to the expensive Mac prices of today."

Amazing how discussions of Visa market penetration run to worry about te Mac. You know, the OS that no Windows user cares about? LOL!

But what remains fascinating is the continuing outdated nonsense from someone who obviously is oblivious that the Mac is simply the latest incarnation of the Intel roadmap. But this guy still thinks its somehow different from a PC! As after all, Apple controls the x86 Intel roadmap! ROFLMAO!

And the idea that the Macs are not competitive with other non-whitebox mainstream PCs in price is also ludicrous? Price another dual quad core Xeon priced for less than $2800 like the Mac Pro!

But like so many others, this guy is still simply parrots the 15 year old mantra of Macs being incompatible (because they went with TCP/IP in '93) and more expensive (when they included integrated SCSI, graphics and audio for ~$300 more). Well, Macs are simply PCs now.

Only the TCM 'prevents' OSX from running natively on non-macs without a bit of hacking. (And Jobs should quite being paranoid and release it unsupported for PCs - its a great Linux killer that also has applications!) And only Apple's going with the newer Intel 64 bit EFI BIOS prevents Windows (which still doesn't support it in just one of the myriad features cut from Vista!) as Apple doesn't need to worry about all of the legacy Windows versions out there! But a 32 bit BIOS is bundled with the various versions of Parallels and VMware, etc. for exactly that purpose of running Windows...

And regarding security, obviously you are not familiar with the fundamental and integral use of 'sandboxing' inherited from the UNIX heritage of OSX.

So it you are going to ramble on about the Mac and the PC, at least get your facts straight. And if only OSX was the main reason that Vista is facing such stiff resistance from so many - especially in the enterprise realm!

And Vista isn't bloated? LOL! Is that ONLY because hard drive capacities are greater? The problem is that much of Vista is simply 'purty'.

The fact is, so many here who talk to the adoption of platforms are students and only run a PC to play games on and don't even have a job! They aren't even aware of the complexities of, nor do they address enterprise change management issues.

The Mac has LITTLE to do with Vista's implementations in the enterprise arena! ...Regardless of how much some Mac fans may wish that to be so!

And to listen to the other posted quote statements that Vista will have outsold XP 4 to 1 is simply fantastic when referenced to the enterprise world.

MS wishes that were true!

I know the Vista "upgraders" are the most bitter because thier four year old printer may not work or even have drivers available, I get it.

All three of our Vista machines were bought with it pre-installed. One is my notebook, one is my wifes tower, and the other is a shared / family tower that my daughters use for school.

I would never pay the money to try and upgrade on of our older PC's with XP. This is where the negativity began in the first place.

I agree, Vista isn't perfect, but for me it has been.

MS shot Vista in the leg by announcing XP SP3. Why on Earth did they do that? Every single customer I deal with read that as yet another reason to stick with XP and put off Vista. Then comes word of W7 and now they're all convinced Vista is just a stop-gap that's not worth their time. Dumb for Microsoft to do that. Just plain stupid-dumb.

I agree with you. If people where that happy with XP SP2, then let it be. If Vista was schedule 1-2 more years from now, I can see it. Then again, it does show that Microsoft does care.

Perhaps MS can make XP SP3 suck, so customers will grab for Vista ?

I think it's great that they're putting out XP SP3. For one, it helps a bunch to not really have to download updates separately. For the most part, SP3 will be a giant rollup of updates released since SP2. Secondly, it shows that they havent forgotten everyone, while some people who know what they're doing have successfully installed Vista on 'low power' PCs, those that realize their hardware isn't up to snuff or can't afford Vista or new hardware at the moment at least are getting this update. Makes it a helluva' lot easier to do a clean install.

Why don't all you useless ****s put up a list of everything to specifically hate about Vista? Oh thats right, you can't because you don't own it.

You just jumped on the "Vista sucks" bandwagon to try and fit in. You are all pathetic and useless. Most people who actually own it would never go back to XP, unless they own a Dell, in which case, you are double ****ed.

Uh, hardware requirements, driver issues, reduced gaming performance,cost. Nothing makes me "happier" than buying a vid card that performs like the card below it on the ladder JUST because Vista is running. So why don't you stfu up fanboy and drink the KOOL-AID your common law boyfriend is making for you. You sir, are the one that is f*****.

Hardware Requirements - RAM is cheap. Go back to 98SE.
Driver Issues - Not really much in the last 6 months, but the first six, I'll give it to you. Then again, has everyone forgotten the first six months when XP came out.
Gaming Performance - again 5-10% slower as they took the graphics stuff out of the Kernal, it's all on the driver now. Can you say stable.

hardware requirements? am i the only person that laughed when i read that? i was running vista great with a a p4 and 1gig of ram.. but i upgraded cause ram is cheap as hell now.. i mean if your computer is 5 or 6 years old, what did you expect would happen trying to run a brand new os? maybe it's time you trash that win98 box and get a new one.. dell has cheap deals all the time for decent computers for like $400.. it's people who stick by 10 year old hardware and software that are slowing everything down and f***ing up progress..

oerlandpark4me,

LMAO!

Just as I thought, you don't own it and you can come up with a specific gripe. Moron.

Go graze with the other sheep who don't know s*** about Vista. Who the hell buys high end video cards other than lame asses who play WoW and Everquest? The same idiots who think PC gaming is cool.

If you want faster gaming performance then buy Vista Home Basic. This is the only edition of Vista that uses the same graphics driver architecture as Windows XP. This means that if the graphics driver crashes for any reason under Vista Basic you get a BSOD. Under any other edition of Vista the graphics driver itself simply gets restarted without losing any unsaved data.

So in short your pissed cos you can't run it on your 5 year old PC very well which is the only way you could have a valid point because it runs perfectly fine on new machines and comes pre-installed so you don't have to buy it...

Who the hell buys high end video cards other than lame asses who play WoW and Everquest? The same idiots who think PC gaming is cool.

Idiots, eh?

Dude, put your beer down. I think you're about to fall off your stool.

1- lightweight,3- backward compatible and 4- easy to use.

These three things are one of those things that fight against each other.

In order to make it lightweight you need to lose some backward compatible which makes it harder to use because of the lack of support.

There is no reason the OS released 20+ years after the first version of Windows has nearly the same files at times from previous versions.

If they cut support for all computers without a dual core I suspect they would be ok.

I am not saying get rid of code that works, but there is code that is unsecured and flawed and they can't "fix" it because the code works and 10 year old hardware woudl stop working...

Yes it's true they do fight against each other but look what Apple did with Rosetta. Microsoft could address backward compatibility problems in a similar way. (http://www.apple.com/rosetta)

Apple didn't use Rosetta to run Mac OS 9 applications under Mac OS X. They used it to run programs designed for the PowerPC processor on an Intel x86 processor.

In order to maintain backwards compatibility with previous Windows applications Microsoft would have to run a previous version of Windows in a virtual machine similar to how Apple included the full Mac OS 9 operating system in the PowerPC version of Mac OS X.

That virtual machine to run OS 9 apps sucked to. I was at a magazine company (over 110 PC's, mostly editors and graphic artist...yes, I was a Mac fan). Let me correct myself, it worked OK, but added a huge amount of time to open the first OS 9 app, as it really had to open the OS first, and then a memory hog and slower.

Exactly.

Want backwards compatibility?

VirtualBox.

Problem solved.

No real news here.

Until the advent of ME I looked forward to each release of Windows. I started with 1.0 and couldn't wait for a new wersion of Windows since each version and updates were well thought out and they would not release a version until it was really ready. I have worked with Vista enough to know that I don't want to leave XP when it works so damn well. Some of the features are great but I find it very uncomfortable to use. Really don't know why they didn't just release a good really hyped update to XP and better serve the purpose with less work.

I love everything about Vista including UAC.
No way I would go back to stale generic XP.
I waited a year before I upgraded to Vista becuase of all the bad news spewed from the know it alls. I decided to go ahead and give it a try. Now I feel like a idiot for listening to all the liars and cry babies.
I own Vista now so I know the truth. Never again will I feel able to trust reviewers.

Astroturf much?

I basically thought the same thing when it was time to replace my Toshiba with Windows Molasses, I mean XP.

About two days into Vista, I was hooked. I was expecting all the problems that everyone was talking about like a bunch of stay at home moms who spend every minute on the phone gossiping about anything that comes to mind.

Basically, a few bad news stories came out when Vista was launched, probably started by Apple, and the dumb a** public ran with it because they have nothing better to do than pretend to be experts about things they have no clue about, Vista got a bad rap.

My dumb a** brother says the same thing, "I'll never use Vista, it sucks". My reply was "Have you ever tried it?". The answer was "......Ummm....No". I called him a moron and told him to get his head out of his a** just like most of you fat clowns should do.

This is what makes you all a bunch of DaveBG's. You don't even own the very products you are complaining about. Just like him stuck in his little, pathetic PS3 world.

IMHO none of the MS OS is dead but in the measure that you try to find drivers and spare parts and you can't find them any more, and not for the lack of support of Microsoft. If you don't grow any more it doesn't mean that you are dead, but rather that you are an adult person. The not supported any more operative systems of Microsoft are not corpses but living options for as long as you are able to keep them running. Your copy of a Win9x product i.e. is alive for as long as you consider it convenient for your interest to keep using it and you find spare parts of hardware and their drivers, and none of both is in the hands of Microsoft. The danger: 85% of our hardware comes from asian countries with no mandatory quality control and not subject to american laws and tribunals, and they are able to use unethical practices to increase sales with no control at all. They were the real killers of Win9x (they simply stopped providing drivers) and they may also be the killers of Vista, or XP, or any other future OS by using the same method. They may also be behind many of the virus invasions to force many users to buy a new comp every 3 years by dispair and not for pleasure.

I've got news for you. Vista comes from Asia as well.

Hmmm...

I just realized something. When I had said that there were other better OSes than Vista out there some on here actually thought that I had meant other versions of Windows. [smiles] Are they that limited in their thinking and that well conditioned by M$?

We are one....We will all be one....I am Microsoft. [smiles]

I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g'joob.

I personally "like" Vista as many people do, however, I'm using XPSP3 now. The question that did it for me was:

What would I miss about Vista if I rolled back to XP?

And that's why I'm using XP again. Even on a state-of-the-art machine that had flying colors with Vista, I'm noticing that my computer is much faster and I'm finding the 'lighter' operating system more functional for my purposes.

I'm looking forward to a 'new' Windows in the sense that I like the Windows interface and the software support that it gets from vendors. I would love for Windows 7 to follow OSX in cutting off any backwards compatibility and being a totally new platform. I agree with this article in that the only way for Windows to not remain getting larger and more convoluted, is to turn a new page and have faith that the industry will follow based on the benefits. Vista offers no benefits, thus the industry is only apathetically following in both adopting and supporting Vista.

You failed to mention how XP turns to slugde after about two months after it's installed for no reason. Wait, there's a reason, XP can't even detect when malware is being installed and keys are being changed because it sucks a fat ass.

XP let's any program install away and change / corrupt your registry at any time. With Vista, you get a nice warning screen, "so and so is trying to install on your computer, cancel or allow".

Yes, what a crappy feature and great protection Vista has. I bought my notebook over a year ago ..... malware detected / installed ..... zero ......spyware......zero

Speed.....As fast as the day I bought it. Yes, my Vista experience has been a real pain. Dumb asses.

Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.

Maybe you need to stop opening everything in your mailbox with a file attachment and stop blaming the OS for your reckless clicking.

I run XP.
I haven't had to reformat my install in two years.
It's just as fast as day one.
The only Anti-Virus/Spyware/Malware protection I have and will ever need is FireFox + Adblock + NoScript And I have never had problems.

Mike,

I have never opened an attachment via email unless I knew the sender and it was business related. We use an Exchange Server to transfer and store files. Sending files via email is ghetto.

Only people in my contacts list can even send me email so don't tell me that it's crap I am opening and downloading.

I knew someone would come up with that lame a** answer. You are completely full of crap if you expect me to think your beloved XP is still running just as fast after two years.

I went through at least seven or eight computer with XP since it came out and every one did the same exact thing. Even my grandparents, who don't even have internet service have a PC with XP. It takes no less than five minutes just to boot up and the only software installed is a three in one printer.

XP has been nothing but a cancerous O/S that turns to s*** for no reason on every computer I have ever seen it on. Are you saying I am the unluckiest person on Eath with XP but the luckiest with Vista?

Even I can plainly see Vista is better in every way, including running just as fast as when it was first installed.

All it takes is simple maintenance to keep it as fast as new.

I just run bootvis, chkdisk, defrag.
Then for clean up of programs uninstalled I use CCleaner.
I also keep startup programs to a bare minimum.
At the moment It's just RocketDock and WindowBlinds.

And yes I firmly believe some people have bad luck with computers. I have witnessed some of my relatives managing to crash a stable system (such as my own) within minutes of use. It can also be OS specific as I have absolutely the worst luck when it comes to Linux (but that might just be the learning curve).

As for vista. I haven't had any problems at all with it but as a gamer I can't recommend it to any one with out a DX10 capable video card (I fall into this category).

For all those saying bad things about it such as speed, have probably had it pre-installed with the manufacture bonus of bloatware or don't care to take the time to slim it down.

You proved my point exactly, I haven't run a single spyware check, anti-virus or a defrag in over a year. Windows Defender gets rid of anything before it becomes a problem.

XP is very high maintenance. You obviously know about computers and hot to maintain a HDD properly but most people don't.

"I have never opened an attachment via email unless I knew the sender and it was business related. We use an Exchange Server to transfer and store files. Sending files via email is ghetto."

uhhhhhh... an Exchange server IS an email server.

No files are sent as an email attachnent is what I meant. They all go to the SharePoint server with a record of who modified the file last, who it is currently checked out to etc...

OK - to stay on topic - Vista is Dead. OK- it came in 2007, next Windows is 2010-2011. So Vista will be 4 years old. Historically they support it for about 5 years when a new Windows comes out (not just Microsoft but vendors too). So Vista will be around 9 years. Bascillay a decade. How is that considered Dead - it just seems like a normal life cycle to me. Then again, 95, 98, ME, 2000, 3.1, NT, and soon XP are all dead too. Stupid title, All OS are dead sooner or later.

You only wish Vista was dead. Its' on more computers than XP right now.

Personally, I like Vista. There were a few problems for me initially but those are squared away for the most part. Some complain about UAC...Disable it,which is easy enough to do. Some say it's clunky and slow. Perhaps it's your system and it needs some more RAM or should never have had Vista to begin with. I find the OS remarkably intuitive and very easy to use. Sorry to hear that some don't. Be sure to have at least two gigs of RAM and preferably a duo core processer to get the best bang for your buck.

UAC...Disable it...
I agree. With it off, my view points of Vista started to change for the better. With SP1 and the latest Nvidia and Creative drivers. I'm golden.

That's right. Disable UAC and just give everybody that uses the computer Administrator access. Real smart.

Just because you disable UAC doesn't me I am Admin. But even then you are correct, if everyone did what that were told to do from NT on. Setup two accounts, one admin, one limited. Run daily in limited. Never happened though.

That's because there were very few programs that could run in a Limited user account on Windows XP and earlier.

What you said.

For me Vista has been great. It has some default features like UAC and the sidebar that I disabled (easy enough), but there are plenty of great improvements over XP. Of course MS was too busy touting the eye candy instead of the many steps forward that it takes.

That being said, it is undeniably a bit of a bear when it comes to required resources. This probably wouldn't have been such a big deal if MS hadn't caved to Intel by lowering its Vista "Capable" requirements to far below what is required. I got stuck with one of these incapable system at one point at the office and it was a painful experience.

Though not entirely the fault of MS, it should have encouraged the big hardware manufactures to develop stronger driver support right off the bat. Some of these companies still suck at it with even their new hardware. For old hardware, it's difficult for them to justify the expense of supporting the old stuff or do not want to bother with the hassle of extending support even further.

Would I encourage people to upgrade? Not if they're happy with XP. There are great improvements in Vista, but the expense isn't justifiable to the average user. For Media Center users, it is a must though. For those getting a decent system with it packaged in, then cool.

Bottom line: aren't most of these complaints being brought against Vista the very same issues that we all dealt with when moving from 98 to XP? For that matter any major OS upgrade (MS or otherwise)?

I agree on Media Center, skapig, I find the Vista version much improved over the XP MCE release.
That, along with improved task swapping stability, was more than enough to make it worth my upgrade investment to Vista Home Premium.
I do wish that Vista Media Center didn't capture the mouse cursor when running fullscreen though... it prevents me from using the cursor on my primary monitor while watching a DVD movie on my secondary. But, neither did MCE Media Center. So if I do want to multitask, I either use the second HTPC that also shares the HDTV monitor I watch movies on or I use Windows Media Player. Media Player doesn't capture the mouse.

Installing Windows 7 at release would probably create just as much heartache as 95, 98, XP and Vista did. Every new incarnation of Windows comes out somewhat buggy and takes about 6-12 months to stablize with an SP1 release. During this time there is much complaining and gnashing of teeth, along with other OS fans being more than happy to sling stones and arrows in Windows' general direction. Complaints fly about the new OS being a resource hog and horror stories are traded about compatibility woes. Many question the wisdom of even bothering to upgrade to the new OS at all, and claim that the previous OS is the best ever released. The only time I have seen this different was with WinME.
After 6 months experience poking around in Vista I have finally gained enough confidence that it isn't another WinME and have installed it at home on my Home Theater and Multimedia PC. It has definitely improved my experience for this application. I'm happy, and I guess that is all that really matters at the end of the day.

"...Installing Windows 7 at release would probably create just as much heartache as 95, 98, XP and Vista did. ..." Yep, and that is why Microsoft as to break free from this bad reputation they brought to themselves! That is why, as I wrote below, they need to come up with something totally fresh, revolutionary (not evolutionary) but yet backward compatible and speedy without the need to spend hundreds of dollars on new hardware. Something that will make us go "Wow! I need this”. And I think the answer lies at the core of the OS...not the freakin' GUI.

come up with something totally fresh, revolutionary (not evolutionary) but yet backward compatible and speedy

You have no concept of coding, software development, or system resource usage. Why not ask for the ability to read minds as well?

I hate everything about Vista. AWFUL user interface - clunky, non-intuitive and utterly useless. New "features" that absolutely nobody wants or needs but cannot be easily disabled and consume resources. SLOW. UAC is the devil incarnate and adds almost no security whatsover (search it, I'm not bothering with links). Hates every single game I've installed on it, even ones released in the last six months. Driver support is a JOKE, which admittedly is as much the vendor's fault as Microsoft's. SLOW. Difficult to tweak in any way without basically gutting it with something like Nlite. Drive thrashing the likes of which even God has never seen. SLOW. I wouldn't run Pista again if it was the last PC operating system on Earth..I'd go back to an Atari 800XL first.

I had the opposite experience gaming.
The rig I play games on is just a plain-jane HP Pavilion Media Center PC running a 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 CPU, 2GB RAM, a 300GB drive and an nVidia 8600GT 512MB RAM PCI-E vidcard pushing a 19" Flatron and a 37" HP LCD flatscreen display as multi-desktop. While not a slouch, it is certainly not the end all for gaming.
After upgrading this machine from XP MCE to Vista Home Premium I have noticed no decrease in performance in any area.
Games installed and playing currently:
EverQuest 2
Lord of the Rings Online
Enemy Territories - Quake Wars
Fantasy Wars
Gears of War
Neverwinter Nights 2
Age of Empires III
The Witcher
Crysis
Bioshock

I just uninstalled Bioshock and Crysis after completing them... I uninstalled The Witcher because I didn't like the user interface of the game... but every one of these games run perfectly on this rig.

Lord of the Rings Online runs better framerates and now suffers no loss in framerate when running in windowed-mode... I suspect this is due to it using DirectX 10 now that I have Vista installed. The game supports both 9 and 10.

I did have problems with a v1.20 demo of Spellforce 2. It refused to load because it couldn't find the files to install something it needed for Starforce copy protection. Rather than sort it out, I just uninstalled it.
Not stripping the copy protection code from a demo release just struck me as less than impressive.

As shown, I would say that this is a fairly good cross-section of popular game titles on a fairly middle of the road gaming rig.

I must be candid psycros, I find it hard to relate to how incredibly bad your experience has been with Vista unless there was something at the base hardware level that was totally at odds with the OS.

I agree with gaming. No problem after Nvidia and Creative Labs worked out their drivers.

Playing Assassing Creed now. Also play Metal of Honor (the first and seoncd one), World in Conflict, Call of Duty 2, and must more. No issues.

I'm calling BS on this psycros. All the caps say your frustrated about something. Probably the fact that you can't afford it nor a computer that can run it.

The Witcher

Good game. Can't wait for the "Enhanced Edition". Finally get to see what it should have been.

I have a hunch that 90% of users who report Vista to be SLOW are running an Athlon 1800 or a weak P4, and an Nvidia MX440 or similar video card. Hint: You need hardware manufactured in this millennium...preferably mid-decade or better.

While I agree that MS screwed up big time with Vista, I find some of Gartner's arguments puzzling and uninformed.

For example, the OS X on iPhone vs Windows Mobile argument ("iPhone's version of OS X is closer to the desktop version of the Mac OS than Windows Mobile is to Vista"). Windows Mobile shares a lot of similar APIs with its desktop counterpart. Even the registry entries are similar. Let's also not forget .NET Compact Framework and SQL Server CE.

Why when people say they had luck with Vista. All the trolls say - "you are one of the few". And for the Linux people - give up. This page is for Vista is dead? Not well you come over to Linux as it's free. If I'm going to make that drastic of a change, I'll go back to OSX. Which in theroy should be the winner. If Apple would get out of the hardware and let their OS run on all intel boxes (wait they can't, they would have no conrol, serious driver problems and there is simply too much stuff out there).

The truth is that only are very few have had any "luck" with Vista and its not being a troll to state that, crow. (Crows are easily impressed by shinny things.)

I am a crow :) I like new toys. Then again, people at Betanews and sites like this, aren't what I would call normal users (like mom). I'm sure they did have problems as we push systems. Then again I can push any OS to hard....ohhh shinney thing, got to go.

And I would say that very few are having problems with Vista. The problem is not Vista as much as it is the theatre and drama media and the uninformed.

Here's where I think Microsoft gone wrong with Vista: Messing around with the GUI. I mean they made changes to the GUI which all it did was confusing users. And when Microsoft tries to innovate they simply suck at it. Result: One big bloated OS that requires top hardware in order to run smoothly. But most folks don't want to buy a new computer. They just want a faster, secure and more stable OS! Vista should have been all that and it's not; except maybe for the stable part. I think Microsoft needs to come up with an OS that is, 1- lightweight, 2- secure, 3- backward compatible and 4- easy to use. And there’s only place to go if they want to be able to achieve this: The system core. I mean let’s face it, Vista is just “Windows 95 Service Pack 19.” They need to rethink and redesign the system core and I sure hope for them that is what Windows 7 will bring.

You are correct - most people don't want any change. The GUI changed, apps loook different. But then that is also sad to think that XP is it..done. I was dying for an OS that the GUI uses my video card. I got it. I just wish they allowed people to make themes (yes you can hack it).

But on your logic, why XP. Why not, start this with Vista and just contiue to do service packs. XP would never have been "safer" as the graphics and sound where part of the Kernal.

I think their problem wasn't the OS. It was the drivers (mainly nvidia, ati and creative). They didn't work with these companies at the level they should. And they should have known better to work with Apple on iTunes as most people use their PC for internet, email, IM, music and pictures.

I agree. Let's hope they also see something so evident as your accurate 4 points in a new lightweight, secure, backward compatible and easy to use system. I would include a 5th one: adaptable to the final user needs, allowing him to be so autonomous as Linux users actually are by only running that part of network software which they really wish or need, by eliminating any unwanted backdoor control.

I know 3 computer repair shop owners and they are all running Windows XP. They believe that Windows 7 is coming to the rescue. I don't believe their optimism is justified. I will probably be running 'nix by the time Windows 7 arrives.

I know many peopel in this industry. What I have noticed is that the ones with shops that were good a long time ago are just tired of learning something new. I'll be honest, when Vista came out, I was going the same way, didn't even really give Vista a chance. Still different enough to trouble shoot when needed.

Then again, any good shop should push the latest and greatest. They sell problems, and upgrades, that is how you stay in business. If the OS is perfect, you aren't going to stay in business just on repairs. As PCs start to hit 200-300 dollars, it will be like a TV.

Well, it's really simple. If you're interested in making money, you'll push Vista. If you are interesting in serving the customer, you'll push whatever is best suited for him, which is probably not Vista.

People are in business to make money. But really, if it's a company - I'll push XP. I'll tell them to buy their new PC's with Vista Business, as it gives them a license. When SP2 or SP3 comes out for Vista and more of their PC's can handle it, go for. Same thing happened with XP. Mosts big (1000+ PCs) waited for SP1 or even SP2 for XP before taking the plung. For home users buying a new PC, go Vista.

A tall, hairy, slumped shouldered apelike being was thought to have been seen with the code for what some have identified as Windows 7, somewhere in the woods of the Pacific North West.

As it turns out, they were only “upgrades”, not to software mind you, but to his shack in the woods.

People, THERE IS NO WINDOWS 7! Get over it, stop dreaming!

VEESTA, BUILT BY H1-B WORKERS...

WTF are you talking about, yes there is going to be another Windows release after Vista and it's being worked on right now. Several early builds have already been reviewed. It's code name is, Windows 7.

I hope a MS puts out a new OS comes out every 2 years. I like it that way, it also appears from below the average person just can't handle to many new/improved items at once. I like XP, I like Vista. But Windows 7 has to give me more then Vista or I'll skip it (if it's just lower resources, I am really not worried). Also it's sad that people complain that Vista likes 2 gigs of ram (or even 4). I have 16 gigs on my keychain. Memory is cheap.

Things I like with Vista.

1 - It never crashes. I have it on 4 PC's (2 of them are media centers, 1 laptop)

Aero - Plain and simple, XP looks old.
Graphics engine seperate from the Kernal (yes, causes about 5-10% less frames, but also makes Vista more stable)
I love the new Event Viewer
New kick a** task mananger (although I use process explorer, it would confuse most users...Mom).
Better Wireless support (and doesn't ask for the stupid network key twice)
ReadyBoost (slap a 4 gig thumb drive 30 dollars - and have fun)
More control with the new power management
New Start Menu Kicks Ass
New Desktop Search (awesome)
Live Taskbar thumbnails (I know, but I like it)
Even Alt-Tab with Thumbnails.
For a fere photo organizer - Windows Photo Gallery (handles my needs, mainly it passes the Mom test)
Better 64 bit support (give up XP)

Just smart little things:
Renameing the main files to Users, Computer, Documents, also better organized under your username.
Windows Sidebar - although the tool is nice, I'm still waiting for a great gadget :)

OH to get real simple.
The thumbnails icons of the item.
Breadcrumbs
When you copy a file in the same folder, in Vista it sorts correctly now.
When you make a new file or folder in Vista it doesn't put it at the buttom - it shorts correctly.

the list goes on. And yes, most of this you can add to XP....but isn't that sad that all the Vista haters just want to make their XP have the then they say they don't care about in Vista..and still with less features.

Edit - and hands down, Vista is the easies OS to install. It ask for your name, pc name and time zone. It's almost too easy.

I am also noticing that people people most likely tried Vista, but have they put a clean copy of Vista with SP1 on their system in the last coulple weeks (as SP1 just came out).

Ubuntu Linux puts out a new version every 6 months. The next one is due out later this mount in fact.

BTW, SP1 of Vista is causing many of its own problems as well.

I like Ubuntu alot. But really, they are moving to slow too. The every six months is more of bugs and exploit fixes and the latest version of the best of the best opensource software (such as openoffice). Which also is sad, becuase almost all the great free programs on Linux are also free on Windows. So really, get XP (80 bucks on newegg) and enjoy all the free stuff you want, but with the luxuary of knowing you can run all the great Windows stuff you can get at Best Buy (including all the games) but mostly thinking hardware.

You seem to forget that Ubuntu is free and I can run all of my favorite Windows programs with WINE. If I were interested in games I would get a console, but as it is I can still play many of the favorite games as well under WINE, and WINE is improving all of the time.

BTW, I do have a legit copy of XP but M$ kept deactivating it whenever I updated software and this also the last straw with Vista as well. I have too much self-respect to keep calling up India to beg to continue using my system.

After dropping Vista I did go back to XP and then I started to dual boot with Ubuntu and very soon I realized that I was using XP less and less and spending the majority of my time under Ubuntu instead so I decided to get rid of XP all together.

"You seem to forget that Ubuntu is free "

I really don't mind paying 100 dollars for an OS, that works with most hardware, has some great software (I'm OK with OpenOffice, but I still love Outlook 2003), I can run almost all the great free stuff, and plays games (I love BioShock and Team Fortress 2). Not to mention Media Center is our life.

Yes, but emulating an OS to run programs has it's share of problems (ok VMware kicks ass). But seriously, we all know Ubuntu is getting respect, but it has already lost to OSX, XP and Vista. But 20 years from now - who knows. Then again, I can see Windows OS free in 10. And then they will charge you for other items...and some of those items should be very cool. Then again if Apple would just unlock OSX to run on any Intel Box. Put the CD in every PC magazine, it could be interesting. But this isn't about which is better - it's about if Vista is dead. And I don't think so, nor do I tihnk it should be. It the next level of OS, Windows 7 will be better, Windows 8 and so on. Then again, if you don't play games, and mostly just do Internet, email, IM, music and photos, they are all stable, fast, and good in those areas (and on that..then Ubuntu could be ready for mainstream).

As for the - if I was a game player I would get a console. I really don't want one. For the price I can get a kick as video card. The games are better lookign on the PC (higher resolution and stuff). And I am a third-person fan. So I need my keyboard and mouse. Once they have a real keyboard and mouse for Xbox or Playstation, I might consider it.

WINE Is Not an Emulator.

Some people just have money to throw away.....

You are right, not an emulator in standard sense, but does have add a new layer and interpret API and DLL – even their web site says it runs slower. But then again, it's purpose to to keep you on Linux and have access to those few must have windows programs. And it does it well. As for throwing money away, I disagree. 100 dollars is nothing today (I can just bring my lunch to work for a month). Then again, I make 100 an hour doing house visits :) But even then, time is more important to me, and Vista just gets up and works with all my hardware faster - saving me time....

$100 for something that just takes a few click s to get working perfectly.

or

$0 for something that requires hours of configuring and console/browser dancing to get to work decently.

WINE still has a bit to go.

The thing is this. Whether VISTA is good or not makes really no diferrence now that we know Windows 7 is coming out in less than two years and that the fact is, Microsoft said they would support WindowsXP (whether anyone likes it or not, WindowsXp in my estimation is the better OS) till 2014, why would you need to buy VISTA to begin with?

Now, if Microsoft knew they had another new OS to go out in such a short period of time, what was the hurry for VISTA and all its mistakes? Yes, VISTA works on most machines with enough memory etc..I know, I have used it. but it is NOT compatible with all things whether you wish to believe that or not.

There has been more trouble with VISTA than most VISTA users will ever admit to. Now this is a very typical attitude anyway, that also happend with WindowsXP so no news there.

Simply put, unless you have no choice in the matter (and some of you forget, this is about choice, as we still have that freedom whether some of you like that or not)do not buy Vista, as there is no reason too in all reality. If you do buy Vista, that is OK too, but in two years or less, be prepaid to waste your money again for yet another Microsoft OS Called (well right now at least) Windows 7.

Which makes one wonder, why a new one in such a short period of time, is Microsoft trying to say, VISTA is more trouble than it is worth, so we will hurry but yet another OS out on the Market?

Folks the thing is this, some people just simply have to have the newest in everything and then say it is the best because it is new. Do not try to keep up with the jones, it is expensive and simply not worth it. Sometimes waiting is in your best interest....

So all you VISTA users who insist VISTA is the very best, be prepared to buy the New Windows 7 at the moment it comes out, do not want you to loose that attitude now *smile*....

MS always has an OS out every 3 years. xp is the exception.

but it is NOT compatible with all things whether you wish to believe that or not.

That's the dumbest complaint about vista I have heard yet. Gratz. Nothing is compatible with all things. Hate to burst your bubble, but Windows 7 will support even less old crap than Vista does. :) Backwards compatibility drags the system down.


There has been more trouble with VISTA than most VISTA users will ever admit to

Most Vista "users" have had few troubles. Look at the folks here who actually *use* Vista, not the trolls who've never even touched it.

do not buy Vista, as there is no reason too in all reality

...so building a new system that will handle Vista better than XP isn't a valid reason? Test it yourself if you have the equipment: 4GB, Dual-core, 512MB discrete graphics. Vista will blow XP out of the water. (Keep in mind it takes a few boots over several hours once configured for Vista to optimize itself. Most trolls and reviewers don't bother, and thus do not give accurate results)

If you do buy Vista, that is OK too, but in two years or less, be prepaid to waste your money again for yet another Microsoft OS

This is no different than MacOS, or Windows before XP. So....?

Which makes one wonder, why a new one in such a short period of time, is Microsoft trying to say, VISTA is more trouble than it is worth, so we will hurry but yet another OS out on the Market?

Er...no, they're trying to get back to their standard release schedule that the XP>Vista release blew away. (And apparently caused everyone to forget that MSFT operating systems used to come pretty quick by comparison)

So all you VISTA users who insist VISTA is the very best, be prepared to buy the New Windows 7 at the moment it comes out, do not want you to loose that attitude now

*yawn* I suppose we should all just wait for Windows 8 then as well....or Windows 9. If you have the hardware and want to make decent use of it, you aren't going to want to wait. If you have a system that doesn't need an upgrade and you don't plan on needing anything more from it, then don't. Pretty simple stuff, slick.

Assuming the current growth rate remains the same or probably increases (for companies, once XP goes out of support), Vista is growing roughly with 1% marketshare increase every month (1% is not puny considering the total Windows install base). Till Windows 7 hits in Dec 2009/Jan 2010, there are 20 months so its share may increase by 20%. Adding that to the current 14%, we get 34%, while XP drops to 53% from 73%. I think then Vista is not a flop and the growth is normal. XP was there for 5 years and replaced 2-3 product lines (98, Me and 2000). Also, migration to XP was acclerated because the 9x line was unstable.

The growth rate although is also likely to slow down as Windows 7 nears.

P.S.Before the comments devour me, let me tell you I obtained the marketshare from Netapplications website and I'm not confirming its accuracy.

Your numbers are probably right. Then again it will be the XP to Vista thing all over. You will have people on Vista, saying why go to Windows 7.

Vista is ok and quite usable with the right system, but it REALLY is damn fat. There's no getting around it. I can't stand it's sluggishness compaired to XP.

I've always thought Windows (and most apps) should install as a very light skeleton, then you can add only the features, etc you want. This is exactly how Server 2008 is. (supposedly a workstation built around 2008 is 30% faster than Vista) If Windows 7 is similar to 2008, it's going to nail Vista's coffin in a hurry.

vista and server 2008 have the same kernal. and if speed is all that matters well yes xp is better then vista, and win 98 is better then xp... hell if you speed is all you care about win ME is even better then xp...

DOS flys on a Intel Duo 2 system :)

And it is also the last stable OS that Microsoft made as well. [smiles]

Yep, and Windows 3.0 and Windows 3.1 for Work Groups were lightening fast and very buggy. And at one Bill Gates said we'd never need more than 64 megabytes of RAM and a 100 megabyte hard drive. Times change, don't they?
And people adapt. Some get dragged into change kicking and screaming. Some do the "contempt prior to investigation",too. Change is inevitable. Progress,folks, cannot wait for acceptance by the common herd. Get used to it. Meanwhile, Vista is good; very good if you have the right configuration and hardware.

True :) Doom Never crashed :)

http://www.microsoft.com...pgrade/performance.mspx

Even Microsoft says that 98 is faster then ME and XP is faster then both. ME was a mistake and so is Vista. I will wait and let all the early adopters pay $399 to beta test Microsoft's new OS then if I see enough good features not applications then I will switch. If I didn't have so many programs that only ran on Widows I would use another OS. People stop being sheep, Microsoft does not put out a new OS because its better lol they put out a new OS to help their profits. All the fluff and flash that is in Vista like Aero Glass can be had for free or very little cost by 3rd part vendors, and they run faster and take up less resources.

As a ex-programmer(now write as a hobby)I know the more lines of code that is in something the more debugging that has to be done. It is allot easier to debug a few million lines of code then a few hundred million or a billion lines of code. All this extra stuff that Microsoft puts in Vista and there OSes just creates security holes and can cause stability problems and let in hackers and viruses. Microsoft needs to get back to making a OS and stop making applications and passing it off as a OS. What Microsoft needs to do is shrink their kernel(which they say they are doing with Windows 7)get rid of all the bloat and junk that just take up system resources. Remember people a OS is just a means to an end, it's meant to be something that lets you run the application that you really want to use like a web browser, office program, game etc...... All the resources that Vista takes up thats all that much less resources that the program you really want to run has to use, so then you have to get more memory and faster processor just to do the something.

The "common herd" never accepted ME either. Are you going to make the same argument about how we should have all walked that line too?

@xyzcb1 totaly agree!

All the cry babies here even didn't try Vista or have a machine that is too damn old. Any computer you purchase last 2 or 3 years should able to run it smoothly. If you don't have a separate video card, buy one for $50, and you will have a OS run faster than XP with better security.

If you need a computer, go to Dell. For around $600 included tax and shipping, you get a Q6600 (EZ OC to 3ghz) + 24in LCD. Then go to Newegg or Amazon and get yourself a 8800 for about $100 or less. For $700, you get a kick a** system that will be sufficient to run Windows 7 smoothly. This is just 1/3 the price of the Mac, and you get a much more powerful system. Also free services pack.

Wow so i have to pay $700 to run Vista? No wonder no one is using it.

So you're trying to say you're running some old a** computer?
you seriously need to upgrade or you're going to be left behind.

Idiot. It is lame to blame the hardware. Other OSes don't have nearly the problems that Vista is having and yet they still manage to stay modern and stable. Vista is not innovative, it is bloatware.

Remember, it is not what Vista can do for you but what you can buy for Vista.

BTW, I got a score of 5.9 (3.0 is needed as the minimum to run it "properly".) under Vista and I still had nothing but trouble with it for the 6 months I used it and I also have around 25 years experience in using Microsoft's OSes as well. There goes your lame excuse.

It's funny because I've not had one lick of problems except for an occasional hiccup for a few crappy coded programs.

"Vista is not innovative, it is bloatware."

This is the funny part, I bet people said the same about Windows 95 and Windows XP :-D

So the user interface now does not work without a *decent video card*... lol if that demand is to tough on you then by all means stay with XP/2000/98SE or whatever =)

That's bull. You cant run OSX on their old Macs. You can't run XP well on early PC's that shipped with 95 and 98. My god, this, I don't want to upgrade my hardware is bull. Go back to your DOS games on a 486 with 640k of RAM.

Another one. [rollseyes]

Have you ever heard of Linux? A system that is only a year or two old isn't that out of date, but it is on Vista. I can get many of the same features, and performance, as Vista on my system from 2006 using Linux as you can on the latest system under Vista. Do you buy a new car every year as well?

Vista is nothing but bloatware. For every person who has had little to no problems with Vista many more have had nothing but problems with it. Like it or not Vista DOES have many many many real problems for a vast majority of its users. Only a very small minority have had little to no problems with it. Vista is a consumer product that only works for a very few.

Not really since they actually were innovative for their time. 95 was a big improvement over 3.11, and XP was an even bigger improvement over that and the ones that came after 95. All Vista really is is cosmetics. Nothing that didn't already exist eleswhere.

You're in a very small minority.

This part I have to agree. Then again XP is bloatware. We all know they could do the same thing with half the code lines (do I dare say OSX). Then again, hard drive space is cheap, RAM is cheap. And really an OS isn't about it's footprint but more one what it can do for me.

>All the cry babies here even didn't try Vista or have a machine that is too damn old.

Wow. Condescend much?

>Any computer you purchase last 2 or 3 years should able to run it smoothly.

I call BS. I bought a low-end, but new laptop for my wife that came shackled with Vista. It was literally the slowest computer I've ever used, even after boosting the memory from 512MB to 1.5GB. And by slowest, I mean my floppy-based Amiga 500 from 20 years ago was faster.

Vista is nothing but a big boat anchor that may work, but doesn't offer anything new or useful to a knowledgeable user, and has far too many trade-off for those people who can benefit from its few actual improvements over XP.

By the way, my wife's machine runs Ubuntu and XP just fine, and doesn't feel any slower than my much faster laptop when not doing anything CPU-intensive. Vista is a total loss, and Gateway totally sabotaged a perfectly fine piece of hardware by caving to Microsoft's strongarming and shipping this turd on a machine that cannot even remotely handle it.

I suggest you go astroturf somewhere else.

Funny, I use old computers very productively with XP and Ubuntu. I don't let Microsoft force me to spend hundreds of dollars for _their_ benefit, not mine.

The purpose of a computer is to do work or have fun, not to be "ahead" of someone. You sound like a brain-washed consumer. I'm too busy doing productive and fun things on older hardware... and probably things that are far more advanced than anything you are doing.

That would be fine if the high hardware requirements were for something useful. Aero, or whatever it is called, is ugly, IMO, and not half as cool as what Linux with compiz can do on a 5-year-old machine. Microsoft lost again. They are incapable of writing good, advanced software any more.

So did SP2 with XP (as Im in IT) and so will SP3. Vista has problem, XP has thousands of web pages with problems. OSX has tons, Linux has tons. What is your point. They all have problems, maybe 20 years from now..

Any OS that slaps a GUI on it will have problems. Linux isn't the answer for mainstream. Lets see all the businesses test all their current apps and re-code of linux.

Then again, everyone knows that about linux. Yes it's nice, yes small footprint. Yes less then 6% of the world uses is, and less the .5 for house holds. Yes, one day Linux might be there. But then again, why not go OSX.

"Like it or not Vista DOES have many many many real problems for a vast majority of its users. Only a very small minority have had little to no problems with it."

Back that up. On news systems, clean install with SP1, back that up. I have put Vista on 80 home PC's new and old hardware (added 1 gig ram, new 50 dollar video card). Only had issues with out dated scanners, a few printers, and only 1 bluescreen (sadly that just happened, and that was with SP1). Vista has it's problems but not on this every 5 minutes crap everyones is saying (and Vista Media Center stomps on XP MCE as in stable).

I see that you don't read much news coverage about technology. [rollseyes]

SP1 is also causing its fair share of real problems as well.

My point is that even those other ones are still better than Vista, even with their problems. Something doesn't have to be perfect to be better than Vista, not by a long shot.

I had wanted to like Vista, I even bought a copy the day after it officially came out, but after 6 months of aggravation and nonsense I finally dumped the POS. My system even scored well for use under Vista at 5.9.

The problem with OSX is that you have to buy an expensive computer. With Linux you get to keep the system you already have. OSX is limited to just ONE manufacturer, Apple. The PC is not so limited. Plus, more and more software companies are starting to make stuff for Linux as well. Some are even porting over newer games.

So lets see by your figuring we should all go out and spend $1,300 for a OS hahahahaha I almost fell out of my chair when I read this. Do you even know what a OS is?

Basically a OS is a program that provides you access to your hardware and to provide a platform to run applications like Crysis, Quake, Office, Fire Fox etc...

lol Have fun keeping up with the Jone's and when you have to get a second job because you can't pay your bills because you had to buy a new computer every time Microsoft puts out a new OS.

I have personaly several systems I have gaming systems and I use older systems for every day use. I don't need a 3 GHz Quad-Core just to read a email or surf the web or all the other little bs that everyone does every day.

I guess I am the luckiest person on Earth with not one Vista issue in a years time and faster performance than any XP machine I have ever owned.

All Vista really is is cosmetics.

sjc001: Proving once again, he has no clue what he is talking about.

I love that line. "It's just XP+ Windowblinds."

Especially coming from people who are *supposedly* computer literate. You'd expect, sjc001, with all of you experience in Linux, that you'd be capable of looking past the "Ooh! Shiny".

So much for expectations.

SP1 is also causing its fair share of real problems as well.

Not for the majority of users.

I know you'd like to make people think that, but it just ain't true.

Another stupid comment for Wii boy who doesnt realize Vista is on more computers right now than XP.

I think your parents bought your beloved Wii and you come here just to annoy.

I'm right arent I?

Keep up with the Jones'? I am the Jones'.

No one in my subdivision buys as much unnecessary much crap as I do. I am always the first one to make foolish, wasteful purchases and watch these idiots try and match or out-do me.

So you expect to run a modern OS with the 286?

Or better yet, the model T should last through ages.

Gateway totally sabotaged a perfectly fine piece of hardware by caving to Microsoft's strongarming and shipping this turd on a machine that cannot even remotely handle it.

My turn to call BS.

Gateway could have shipped a system capable of handling it. You could have researched Vista's performance on that spec. Vista is a decent OS on a system that can handle it.

Here's the thing:

We used to have to upgrade every 2-3 years. A new OS would be released, we'd install it, deal with very minor performance issues and eventually upgrade parts here and there or buy a new system.

It's been 8+ years since we've had to do that.

This is backlash for that lag-time. If you look at most folks complaints, you'll notice most of it has to do with how XP can run their programs just fine.

Well...Hell, DOS could run WordPerfect just fine when WFW came out. Hell, WFW could run Netscape and Office just fine before WEin95 came out...and so on and so on.

The fun part is, DOS could run it better, WFW could run it better, and so on and so on.

Even better? The PC manufacturers got lazy and have been more than happy to keep selling laptops they could have sold 8 years ago without having to go into any major re-designs.

Every new major OS release comes with new overhead. Yes, even Mac and Linux. We were used to those increases being minor and closer together.

It's all a comfort thing. XP's had 8 years to become "comfortable". We've had 8 years to become resistant to change. We're not used to playing that game anymore.

Don't fall for the "Vista has nothing new" BS. That's the trolls and lazy dev's who can't get it geared up again like they used to be able to. Vista's got plenty to offer under the hood on machines built to handle it. (Not on laptops that could have been sold 8 years ago)

Wow so I have to pay $1500 for OSX? No wonder no one is using it.

rolling your eyes doesn't prove anything. Thanks for dodging his question.

And me too, on all four of my computers (3 desktops and one laptop).

As you can see bobthegoat2001, all of the haters are non Vista owners with nothing better to do than complain about imaginary problems.

Miserable sons-a-b****es that they are.

Like it or not Vista DOES have many many many real problems for a vast majority of its users.

Replace Vista with Linux and it works just as well, if not better, and the "vast majority" of Vista users are not having problems.

*yawn*

Vista has always worked perfectly for me, before and after i installed SP1, i've never had any problems with any software or hardware, drivers or anything like that.
I use it on my Laptop and my main PC. XP is still installed on my brothers PC though because i feel it isn't powerful enough for Vista.

hm i'm happy with my vista ... no problems at all ... since i've installed sp1 it works even better (and faster)!
the only downside: internet explorer still sux :) that's why i'm using opera as my primary browser :D
i like the new look and feel ... it does not crash every 5 fu**ing seconds (like winme did

Is Vista a lame duck? Yes it is. So what else is new?

But wait, just four months ago Gartner research vice president, Michael Silver, recommended that everyone upgrade to Vista as fast as possible and those using XP would be in peril!

Why would Silver recommend an OS that is in severe trouble?
Why am I still clicking Gartner stories at the age of 46?
Why is it not BetaNews policy to simply pretend there is no Gartner?
...Questions, questions....
________________________________________________
And yet GNU/Linux is updated constantly and freely downloadable. If for no other reason, it's really fun to sit back and read Windows news. No one is ever happy with the OS or the company for a different reason every day.

Is Vista dead? Certainly not! But you could say that "Windows" is broken — if you think it is — because of the kind of company Microsoft has become: huge, bureaucratic, choked by managerial rituals, bad coding throughout, and unresponsive to its customers or the marketplace. And if you do think that, then it's remarkable that the usual remedy has not been applied: a bold restructuring. Instead, we're offered the same old routine of high prices under the guise that every user is a pirate until proven otherwise, fronted by yesterday's leading man, Steve Ballmer. I don't see Microsoft changing much until a real, far-reaching shakeup happens.

Vista has been a painful, transitional OS that in many ways is as big a failure as MS-OOXML. Seriously — no user would ever think up UAC, Explorer's insane UI, WGA, or its anti-developer driver model. In the meantime, they seem to be selling themselves as a kind of public utiliity with the dirt-scraping stock performance to match. Forget the monopoly comparisons. When you take a look at Linux, you truly begin to see why Microsoft is freaked out over and racing to buy as many public Linux support companies as possible — Linux is released when it's finished and debugged; Microsoft released Vista just to get it out the door and make cash. Only with its 573-fix SP1 should Vista have been released, period

Well for one ZD is pro-Microsoft and always has been.

I am a IT manager for a fortune 500 company and we still use on some of are systems DOS with Windows for Workgroups, OS/2 and Windows 2000.

The reason why most companies like mine will not be switching anytime soon is because we have allot of in house programs that Vista just brake. All this code has to be rewritten and debugged this all takes time. Plus I as well as a team 200 IT personal beta tested Vista(Longhorn) and we didn't and still don't see the need to upgrade anytime soon. When we get new desktops or laptops and if they do have Vista on them we will put XP on them.

For most companies like mine things like Aero Glass and Gadgets are not needed and are just resource hogs, and take away memory and ram from are corporate programs. Companies need a stable reliable platform to run are applications on are systems. It cost money to have a systems down for even a hour. A home user can afford to have there system down for a day or two if we had are systems go down for that long we would lose millions. We if we do adopt a new OS will do after 3 or 4 years so we know that service patches and other updates.

www.tomshardware.com/200...on_ko_for_windows_vista

Go there and take a look at that and stop listen to people that really don't know technology. Paul S. Otellini is president and chief executive officer of Intel Corporation and if you were to ask him about how a CPU works I am sure he would not have a clue. Just because someone is a Vice President of a company does not mean they know more some executives are very stupid when it comes to things out side of business.

I agree with you. It's hard to justify Vista at a company - why spend the time testing and migration. But then again, this will be the same with every OS MS produces now. XP is good engough for business.

Then again, their bigest complaint is speed. And again, everyone knows that 98 was slower then 95, XP was slower then 98, and they are all slower then DOS. you can't compare two OS on the same hardware. If they din't add eye candy and all new features, it would be the same OS. I can't understand why people have a hard time with this logic.

"Vista has been a painful". I blame Nvidia and Creative Labs. If those drivers were great from day one, we wouldn't be here. Then again, any OS is only as good as it's drivers.

>If they din't add eye candy and all new features, it would be the same OS.

But that's all most people want. The same OS. Microsoft's biggest problem is that they essentially got it right with Windows 2000. From then on, the only things that really needed to be done was good support for new hardware and, obviously, bug and security fixes. XP was bloated compared to Windows 2000, which was usable (as long as you didn't load more than one or two large apps) in 64MB and 433MHz. XP was much larger, but still reasonable. Vista is a total boat anchor (i.e., unusably slow) on a 1.6GHz Celeron with 1.5GB of RAM. That's 5 times the processor and roughly 25 times the memory of a minimally usable Windows 2000 set up, and yet it's not usable. I know because I've done all those setups.

Good points throughout. I would agree with almost all of them except the "bad coding throughout". That's fair in some cases, but they do have some gems in isolated areas. The problems overall are pretty much as you describe them from what I've seen in Redmond. Ballmer is not the CEO they need to make things positive for them. They need to find someone else to take over this role.

You are right, there is no reason for an entire company to go to Vista. Same goes for the lame-asses who only use thier PC for watching YouTube videos, web surfing, and reading email.

The biggest complainers are the people who don't own it and know the least about it. They are jumping on the banwagon like 90% of the people here who feel left behind with XP. It's so obvious from the comments that none of you have legitimate, specific complaints. Just the same blanket statements that everyone uses.

Typical sheep behavior.

Linux is released when it's finished and debugged;

ROFLMAO!!

Sorry, couldn't resist. The number of seriously broken Linux kernel releases boggles the mind.

Of course, you could be talking about distributions, but even *I* don't think you're that stupid. No distribution is *ever* finished, whereas you can see definitive beginnings and endings of Windows platforms (DOS/WFW->Win95, Win95/98/ME->XP, and don't even get started on the Server versions...)


Why would Silver recommend an OS that is in severe trouble?

Because it's not.

Why am I still clicking Gartner stories at the age of 46?

At the age of 46, you still live in your mum's basement. Do you seriously need an answer to that?

Why is it not BetaNews policy to simply pretend there is no Gartner?

Hits. Hits. Hits. Same reason they'd post a story such as this whose only value is the hits generated by trolls and fanboys.

Wait!

Wasn't Windows 2000 good enough? Oh, right....it was. Funny how now they're all using XP and it's "Good Enough".

Yeah, that article is a year and half old, sp1 has improved overall performance on Vista for many things and I would like to see the same tests run now. For me though, Vista is faster as well as others. I don't need to read articles when I am comparing like machines and Vista is moving faster. then was accurate, today? would like to see new tests...

If you strip out the new features and then run the same benchmarks is Vista still slower? then you would have a case, but if you have new stuff added of course its going to be slower if you are using it.

Same goes for if you buy a store bought xp pc and leave everything on it including norton and try to run benchmarking tests.

For many years users always went wherever they wanted them to go. Maybe now the time has come when they'd rather go wherever users want. IMO they should first update their own minds and afterwards upgrade their own horizon.

Although for a long while I considered Vista to be crap, its growing on me. I have a dual boot rig XP/Vista, and have played with vista recently and frankly its not as bad as I thought. Only point really, those peeps who bought ultimate edition, I think thats a rip off. Microsoft promised loads of freebies, they never materialised.

Vista isn't bad in and of itself if you throw enough hardware at it, but for all the increased requirements there was not one feature that it had that was worth it over XP, in my opinion. Some minimal improvements (and for the record, I think Aero is ugly), but nothing worth paying hundreds of dollars for the OS and hundreds of dollars on better hardware.

Vista is much more superior in technology than any other OS, including Mac as well. Starting from .Net 3.5 to countless new API's for developing new user experiences....

The whole situation remind me Win95->XP transition. All that cry from stupid gamers.... guess what they come again :)))

Even in MS decide to move to Win7, it will be the SAME as Vista 90%. Simply because it future for industry. Win Server 2008, SQL 2005, virtualization products.... its all vista-family.

"Vista is much more superior in technology than any other OS, including Mac as well."

Superior at what?
Being superiorly slow?
Superiorly crashing?
Superiorly lacking of Driver support?
Superiorly being more expensive?

Not the sort of thing you want to be superior at

OSX and Vista are very compareble.
To be honest, OSX is slow too, unless you spend a lot on the hard ware (just go to tomshardware.com as he does the benchmarks).

OSX has it's share of crashing too, just search google. And for Driver support, everyone knows Windows has more drivers and support for hardware (they won that race). And I don't understand expensive, OEM Home Premium 110 bucks at newegg. OSX is about the same. Wait, they want your money every 2 years though.

pitdingo,

Another moron who's most advanced piece of equipment is a Nintendo Wii. I see you have nothing specific to complain about. Feeling left behind and upset because you will have to buy a new computer to fit in and be like everyone else?

When you purchase Vista you don't ONLY purchase vista. You have to, most likely against your will, upgrade a system that is already powerful enough to run any other operating system at a decent pace.

The most important factor in being able to use visa is graphics capability. No video grunt gives you s*** performance. What do I hear people say? Well just switch off the aero ui and the candy. If I do that what do I get? Something that looks like XP. So upgrading to a system that will need to be crippled on purpose to look like what you had in the first place is pointless. Which leads us to the main header of the article at hand which is a totally and undeniable YES! Vista is dead in the water. Ive tried it and well thats my opinion go with it or not...

you can buy gaming console like XBox360 or PS3...for gamers its just enough...

I like my keyboard and mouse for first peson games though. And the same first person game is 10 dollars mor on a console.

I just think that vista before SP1 is pretty bugged. It seemed like they were rushing and slammed together whatever beta version they had and called it a product. The worse thing was you're paying for it! SP1 improved the entire OS quite a bit but I seem to see a lot of feedback posted are the computer enthusiasts. Sure, it's great we have aero and all with the nice graphics and interface, but think about the less technologically inclined people. They just want to do simple things like surfing the web and checking email. Tell me why the hell do you need a Radeon x3600 or Nvidia G8X00 to check EMAIL or SURF THE WEB? It sounds like a marketing scheme targeting enthusiasts who want better stuff and making everyone pay a higher price for it. Hardware prices are falling but the fact that you need these power hungry machines just to use windows is ridiculous. For teenagers and youngsters who live with their parents, this is perfectly fine, but please think about those who have to pay their own electricity bills.

Most people are satisfied with what XP can do for them. In fact, the only reason (other than security improvements) you would want Vista is DX10. Again, this only affects gamers for the most part. People can play HD movies on their computers on XP. There's no need for Vista.

Releasing a new OS every 2 years I think is just too quick. They can barely get the OS off the ground without failing and now they're speeding everything up. Before Vista SP2 arrives they already have Windows 7. Before Windows 7 SP2 arrives there's windows 8. But don't forget one thing, you're only buying slightly improved (bug fixed) versions of Windows, which means you're paying at least another 100+ dollars for Windows 7 SP2 (Aka. windows 8 or w/e they will call the windows after that). Is it worth it?

I don't know what all the downplaying of Vista is. I've got it and i love it. Many aspects are way better then xp. I'm a gamer and yes have a kickin system. There where issues at first with a few old games and programs not working. Vista just doesnt like some old stuff. Not to big a deal. Once you learn what not to instal(mainly old stuff), you're good to go. Sure it's not gonna be perfect at first. Cause it's a real upgrade not just a pretty version of the previous OS like XP. XP just had to many issues. Issues that where never fixed. Vista is a real try at something new and better. If software and hardware companies actually got behind it and worked to make working drivers alot faster people wouldnt have been so turned off. Now is a great time to try Vista. Most of the issues are gone and it's alot more stable then XP. Windows 7 is liable to be Vista with a few tweaks and add-ons. If anyone thinks it's gonna be a totally new OS is just not getting the point. Vista is the future, at least the begining of the future. The next version is basically gonna be Vista part 2. Which I'm fine with. Make a great thing better and I'm happy.

And if you don't like buying new hardware for a major new OS then stick to XP or windows 98 and surf the net like your grandma. If that's all you do you don't need Vista or windows 7. I for one want newer technology to give me new features. Sometimes in order to move ahead you need to give up on the past. Perfect example is TV. Who wants to watch a tube tv anymore when we have glorious Hi-Def tv's. The change there is easier to see, but nonetheless the same.

Thats because you actually own it bigsexy, unlike all the people here who just love to complain and be miserable.

The one thing I have not heard from anyboby yet is the fact that windows ME was a bridge between Windows 98 and Win XP. ME has features in it that 98 did not that showed up in XP when it was released. I think Vista is a bridge to. Think About it. I've run both OS'S and have seen screen shot of windows 7, Its going to have the same things in it that Vista has and it looks the same. All I'm hopping is Microsoft spends more time on Windows 7 for a change and not rush it out the door.

See, this is funny. As now that all my systems are Intel Duo 2, 2+ gigs, nice video cards. I will most likely just stay with Vista and skip Windows 7. Not to mention that there will be Vista SP2 or Sp3 out by then.

Long Zheng recently praised ME for many things that are fundamental to our Windows experience:

Windows Movie Maker (new) - allows basic editing of home videos. (However to this date, still highly unstable.)
System Restore (new) -allows the restore of system files, drivers and the registry to a previous known state to recover from a system failure. Might not work all the time, but a huge leap from the format and install approach to troubleshooting.
System File Protection (improved) - monitors and restores undesired changes to important Windows system files. Might be a hassle for advanced users, but gives some protection over malicious damage of system files.
New TCP/IP Stack (improved) - adds ability to sense whether adapters are connected to a network, improved performance and reliability and home networking features.
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) (new) - adds the ability for the computer to request ports autonomously to the router. (An inherent security problem, but simplifies home networking in many scenarios.)
Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) (new) - a standardized framework for imaging devices (cameras, webcams, scanners) to communicate with Windows. Before this, device vendors had to write a custom solution on their own leading to many compatibility problems.
Automatic Updates (new) - allows for download and installations of Windows Updates directly in Windows. Before, users had to manually check the website.
Built-in ZIP support (improved) - allows the creation and extraction of ZIP folders natively in Windows.
Image preview (new) - inbuilt picture viewer for many of the popular photo and image formats.
Bundled games (improved) - Pinball and Spider Solitaire. Nuff said.
USB Mass Storage generic driver (new) - the first consumer Windows OS to support any USB mass storage device without third-party drivers. Before, you had to install a custom driver from a floppy to use any USB drive.

LOL. I thought a lot of this was "new" in Vista?

They just keep improving on the same thing, as any OS does. Windows 7 will improve of Vista and so on.

I had Vista installed on a test machine (dual core, 4GB, extremely fast video card, etc) and when my main machine had a hardware failure, I put the test machine into production. It was slow, would hang, and of course the biggest problem was drivers. I had to uninstall Vista and install XP. So now I have one station with Linux and one with XP. I have no plans to upgrade to Vista now. I find it hopeful that some people here have had success with SP1. I know XP has a little rocky start, but I don't recall if it was as rocky as Vista. Of course eventually we will have to migrate, but not now.

You're either flat out lying or extremely, extremely unlucky because I have a similar system and my Vista machine runs like XP currently does on my Core 2 Duo, which is simply fast. I have a quad core 6600 oced to 3.4ghz running on an Abit IP35 Pro board. I have an 8800 GT w/ 512mb memory and 4 GB of G.skill memory running at 1066. I have about 1TB of hard drive over internals and another 750 GB on a FreeAgent Pro hooked up to eSata.

My machine doesn't hang or crash regularly...it's not perfect but it's fine. I've actually blue screened once ever and that was on bluetooth drivers for my usb 2 toshiba stack key. Other hangs and stuff happen of course, but very very rarely, once a month or longer at it's worst.
The one difference is that you're saying your problem is 'drivers'. All my stuff is new, so I only run Vista drivers.

Is Vista dead in the water? Sure...if Windows 7 is really going to be released before 2010. Vista hasn't been given time to pick up the way XP has. XP got ~7 years and is now as solid as they come. XP had just as hard a start as Vista did, mostly for the same reasons too - yes, there were bugs, but more so people expected their windows 98/Me/2000 machines to run XP just as fast and XP demanded more. This is pretty much the same script with a different cast. People are expecting to run Vista on old XP machines as fast as XP currently runs on them and that's not possible. Vista requires quite a bit more processing power and no less than 3gb of Ram (to be comfortable). I've migrated my main PC and my wifes machine with no issues (my wifes machine, mind you, has older hardware, but all the parts luckily got Vista drivers as of Nov. 2007). My laptop came with Vista Home Prem. With 2gb of ram it manages to fly, but I'm planning to put another gig or 2 in for good measure.

If you WANT to find fault in something, no doubt you will. But if you're willing to do what it takes to migrate (buy quality vs. sketchy hardware) and make sure most of your drivers are Vista (WHQL) certified, nothing less than a Core 2 Duo or 3gb minimum ram and a video card that does DX10 and you'll be fine.

You're either flat out lying or extremely, extremely unlucky because my fired just built a new machine with similar specs and ran Vista. It ran like you were running XP with a runaway process in the background.

It was slow. Sometimes files would disappear, only to reappear after rebooting. The drivers would not function properly. The netowrk connection would drop every 20 minutes. And the list goes on....

So now he dual boots XP and Ubuntu. He never would have tried Ubuntu before, but after spending so much money on Vista and finding it totally unusable, he thought what the heck.

He first words when he installed Ubuntu..."WOW! This is freaking awesome!" Not only did it run faster than XP, it did so with Compiz Fusion providing eye candy.

Plus, it cost him zero $$$USD. He did not understand how they could just give it away. I told him, M$ has you brainwashed, you do not need to pay for their faulty software.

Ubuntu is great. But Vista works fine on a new system. If he has a problem as you described, he installed something else that isn't playing nice. And that can happen in any OS (specially any GUI OS).

Especially with Vista. Of course no OS is perfect, but Vista is going beyond this. No OS should be as flaky as Vista is for a majority of its users at this stage of the company's existence. A free OS shouldn't be superior in stability and reliability than a commercial one. After all, you did pay a lot of money for Vista, we all did.

Bad software is not a concern with Linux since if a driver or util fails it doesn't take the entire system with it. It just goes back to the default version of them.

Again - only as good as the drivers. The drivers sucked (thanks nvidia and creative labs). But now a clean install with SP1 and the latest drivers. Rock solid.

I think Vista was rushed, I think Vista with SP1 and third party driver suppot is what it should have been (and is now).

It's pitdingo guys. Don't take the flamebait.
If you talk about hot dogs, he'll tell you how awesome Linux is, I find it better to not even read his posts anymore.

sjc, I simply can't agree with you on that. XP in the same amount of time had the same number of issues. People regarded it a failed OS, etc. because they were using it with older drivers and older hardware. Over time and given a chance I'm convinced that Vista would be 'the next' XP. However at this point that can't really happen if MS is to release 7 before 2010, as a matter of fact, as OS roadmaps go 2009/10 would be around the time Vista will fall into it's stride as that would be around the time SP2 would hit, the majority of people would have upgraded completely from XP machines (in regards to drivers made specifically for Vista and not simply to 'work' with Vista). I really believe that it would be as 'solid' as XP is right now. Look at Leopard - TONS of bugs and issues but guess what? It's all on Apple hardware with drivers written by Apple. Give MS a break, they have to write an OS that works with 100+ different kinds of boards running different processors. 100+ different kinds of modem/video card/tv tuner/camera/printer/scanner etc. While it depends highly on the driver devs, MS still has to open up the OS to 'outside' forces, some who only care about getting their hardware to work 'just enough'.

Talk about Trolls

I know. the M$ astroturfers are out in full force

pitdingo,

That comment alone makes you the biggest loser here. But you already know you're a loser don't you? That's good though, as a lot of people are in loser denial.

You are the first person to ever use a "$" in place if the "S" in MS, arent you? The sure sign of a "me too" lemming.

You're a sad pathetic flacid clown.

I don't think Vista is dead, its a pretty good OS. I wish they would have been able to add WinFS and other things they wanted to add, but they had their troubles (probably backwards compatibility issues).

I don't think MS will make a brand new OS, because if they did they would have to throw away backwards compatibility which might be shooting themselves in the foot. If people have to buy all new software and hardware, most will probably just buy a Mac or use Linux. Backwards compatibility is the leash MS has on everyone to stay using Windows. I think the thing they could do is what they did with NT and 9x. They had 9x for a long time and they made a new OS for servers then later on brought that to the masses. It worked once, it could work again.

Should MS bring out Windows 7 before 2010, probably not. If they do it may not be ready, I thin they should take their time to make it right. People will stick with Vista (as they buy new computers) or stick with XP (if they stick with their old ones) and everything will work out in the end. I just hope Windows 7 either adds WinFS and the other things they wanted to put into Vista, or something else that makes it worth it for the people that don't think Vista is worth it.

What a completely misleading article. I'm not even going to read any comments--arguments here would be futile. Just flamebait to fill up the comments section over the weekend.

You want a cookie for making the most stupid topic ? Stop crying wolf please :/

Vista is fine and we need something new from XP thats 6 1/2 years old.

But, SP1 is not even released in all parts of the world yet, i think alot of people heard bad things about vista initially.. and are awating SP1 even thought many crashes was caused by bad third party drivers etc.

Even here in Sweden where we have not yet got a 2nd wave language SP1.. I have still to get the english retail Vista with SP1 that ive ordered on April 3.

>Vista is fine and we need something new from XP thats 6 1/2 years old.

Why? I like XP, and Vista offers exactly zero features over XP that I care about.

Vista with SP1 is great. Yes, I have 2 or more gigs in all my PC's. they are all Intel Duo 2 at some level. But seriously, they don't crash, two are Media Centers, that for first time I can simply trust to always get my shows (2 HDTV, 2 SD). Everyone is so brainwashed that XP is the end all of OSes. It's not, Vista (with SP1) is the right step - and I hope they start putting out OSes every 2 years again. I run ALL my games from 2000. All my apps work perfectly, all the new games rock (Crysis, Bioshock, Team Fortress 2). Yes the first 6 months where hell because of Creative and Nvdia (but as I said with SP1..and the latest drivers it's great). There are hundreds of things Vista does that I have a hard time going with out. Yes you can add most of these things to XP...and I'm sure you will need 1-1.5 gigs of RAM. Then again why spends all that time jut to make XP Vista. I can hope Windows 7 is a less resource but come on, it's almost 2010 (what is 4 Gigs really..nothing, I have 16 on my keychain. And best I can tell with many of the peopel below, they simply have a old crapy 3+ year old sysetm. Anyway, XP is still good, I can't see why business would change. But Vista is better. Tell me where isn't not.

Exactly.

The "Vista Sucks" moniker is so 2007. I would have agreed with the trolls back then. ;)

giwo, I hate to be the one to break it to you but Vista inspite of your trolling still SUCKS. Nothing has changed. Didn't you read the above article? There's still many more articles like this one with new ones being released DAILY. "Vista sucks, that's sooooo 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, etc."

bandwagon jumpers, vista is very fast from my experiences, now troll away troll

http://www.betanews.com/...cle/1207942903#c1565229

Read they tested Vista and XP and found that XP was faster.

If you want to be a Microsoft sheep then thats your right don't call people troll's just because they don't like Vista.

Of course it's faster, it's a 6 year old OS running on new hardware. And 5 years from now, Vista will run faster then Windows X on new hardware. Vista is faster on some things, XP on others. But again, MS went in the correct direction, they pulled a lot of low level stuff from the kernal for stablity and security (for example, the video and sound, hence way games run 50-10% slower - also big deal put in a new video card). So saying XP is faster - no sh*t. What is your point. I will take a slight speed hit, for more stable better looking OS.

Did you even bother to check the link before you posted?
What makes Vista more stable? Everything I have read said that its not. Think about it yes XP is a 6 year old OS so that means that Microsoft has had time to find and fix the bugs. Vista is a new OS and Microsoft is still finding bugs and issues. It will take time to make it more stable and secure. Vista's security can be had in XP with a good anti-virus, firewall and common sense. I would not be surprised if a big security flaw was not found in Vista with in the next month or so.
And as far as better looking lol I can give you a list of programs that will make XP look exactly like Vista if you wanted it, can even give you Aero Glass and both are 100% free. So if your that rich that you can spend $399 for Vista for as you put it a "better looking OS" then thats fine. I personally don't see spending $399 for a new OS just because it looks prettier. I don't know call me a fool but I like my money and have better things to do with it then make Bill Gates richer. Are you going to spend another $399 in a year to get Windows 7 when it comes out because it too is supposed to be more stable and will have a little more flash? If you want to spend $399 every 2,3 or 4 years for a new OS cool your choice, but me I will let everyone go and stand in line and be the first to have and I will wait for a few patches come out before I jump on the bandwagon. Go and click on the link and see how fast your Vista is and unless you don't want to believe tomshardware and your lying eyes then you will see that in some cases Vista is not just a little slower its a "LOT" slower in quite a few application. And also I am not interested in buying a faster better computer just to do the same as I could do before. Thats like hooking a trailer to a race car then complaining that you need a bigger engine just to go as fast as you did with out the trailer.

Vista's security can be had in XP with a good anti-virus, firewall and common sense.

*laughs*

You do realize you just listed the three very things most American users don't have, right?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Hey, you leave those 98% of americans alone.
They are my meal ticket.

Heh...

I hear ya. :)

Geek Squad's milking them for all their worth, too. ($300 to configure a wireless connection and install some crapware??? WTF???)

Vista is BAD CHICKEN! MESS YOU UP!

Get the stomach pump for that BAD CHICKEN.

As far as I am concerned VISTA is dead. It is the horrible mess that WindowsME was. I agree that if they are going to support Windows XP till 2014 what is the point of VISTA anyway. They hurried it out the door with shoddy condition and so they got what they deserve. Now we learn that windows 7 might be out in a year or so, so what is the point of Vista, I will never buy it.

I have worked on VISTA (I am a computer tech) and I can tell you, it is not worth having, in my estimation a very poor piece of work. Just my opinion of course. There are some people who like it, but it is not compatible with many things and probably will never be no mater how many patches they make.

for a computer tech you sound like a moron...patches do not make old hardware work, drivers do...

He doesn't know what he's taking about.

as soon as you see those words "I am a computer tech" it's usually followed by something that's a dead give away that their not.

"They hurried it out the door"

Agreed...now go try Vista with SP1 (clean install).

So true :) I have been doing this from age 11. Smart enough to know Vista isn't perfect, but is isn't as flawed as the media says either. Then again, what OS is perfect.

I was thinking the same thing terminalX. It appears we a have a lot of readers here who like to present an alternate reality becuase the real world just plain sucks for them.

And, yes, I can be even more condescending and rude.

tell us something we do not already know. Vista == EPIC FAIL

I expect no other statement from the King of trolls. My Vista works just fine no problems of any kind.

we need pitdingo's in the world, it just makes people feel so much better about themselves and be thankful every day that they aren't like him.

I'm one of those folks who has Vista (came with a new machine I got) but hated it so much I went out and bought two more Retail copies of Windows XP Home SP2 (while I still could) so I'd not have to use it. If MS is really going to support XP until 2014, then I see no reason to even consider Vista. Since the copies of XP are retail, I can move them from machine to machine without breaking any rules.

I hope Vista dies an ugly death like Windows ME did. 98 SE was pretty decent, and Windows 2000 Pro was a VERY good business operating system, but Vista just seems like such junk.

They redid the audio architecture so it's software friendly, they originally tried to screw OpenGL by making it run in a DirectX wrapper, and frankly, DX10's only claim to fame is that it is slightly more efficient than DX9. DX9 has all the visual features of DX10, just not the combined shader paths and such. So for me, DX10 is just not worth it. I'm not losing any visual quality by sticking with DX9 on my Nvidia 8800GT 512meg and XP.

It took me a long time to warm up to XP, but I already know that I'll never warm up to Vista.

I did the same thing, only I made up my mind to switch to GNU/Linux and haven't looked back. However, Windows is good for porn downloads (from what I'm told).

You gave no specific reasons why you hated it. Just a blanket statement as usual.

I call BS. Anyone with a "Z" at the end of thier name is already ghetto. Maybe the hops and bong resin affected your ability to grasp the learning curve with Vista. Or perhaps you never bought it and and wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

I bet that's it.

No need for personal attacks.

The Z is on the end because DUDEBOY was already taken, so I just added a Z. :)

As for my version of Vista, Well, with XP I got the press kit which included XP Home and XP Pro. With Vista I was in the testing program, as I was no longer covering Windows as a member of the press.

I have an OEM copy of Vista Home Premium that came with a Gateway PC I bought at Best Buy (model GM5626) because my old "third pc" died an ugly death due to faulty panel wiring in our new home. Lost my 24" iMac, my custom built gaming machine and my 3rd "super peer" machine, which kind of acted like a server in the home net.

So - I'm not a dork - I'm not BS'ing, I just happen to not like Vista.

Specifics?

DX10 doesn't add anything in terms of actual visual improvements - only in terms of efficiency due to unified shaders.

Graphics have been removed from the inner rings (core) for stability, but has the effect of slowing down the graphics.

Audio stack was completely rewritten to focus on a software layer instead of direct access to the hardware (for compatibility and consistency, they say)

Relocation of menu items in context menus, control panel, etc. are just flat out confusing and unnecessary.

ALL versions of Vista should have the ability to run the Aero interface. Users that buy PC's that come with Vista Home Basic are getting shafted. Yeah, I got Home Premium but many machines don't come with that.

Yet another imposed document path that doesn't match the previous ones (First there was My Documents, then Documents and Settings and now USER, which is akin to how Linux does it)

Too many versions of the OS - remember when Windows 2000 Pro was the only single version of Windows 2000? Even XP Home and XP Pro is better than all the versions of Vista.

Restrictions on Virtual Machine use regarding those extra versions of Vista mentioned above.

Hardware that worked in XP do not work in Vista - including printers, scanners and sound cards, for example.

Hype about Vista Ultimate getting all these great "extra free add-ons" but you pretty much only got Texas Hold 'Em for your extra cash.

I could go on and on, but I hope that the point has been made.

Next time, please try not to make such lame assumptions, k?

Besides, you are starting to look like a troll. Try being more reasonable and less of a Vista Zealot and you might be looked at with a tad of credibility instead of dismissed as a crackpot. :)

DX10 doesn't add anything in terms of actual visual improvements - only in terms of efficiency due to unified shaders.

Wait and see? How long was DX9 out before DX9 games stopped looking like DX8 games? We've had what...two DX10 releases? (Crysis, BTW, had *zero* actual DX10 code, it was just a marketing ploy)

Graphics have been removed from the inner rings (core) for stability, but has the effect of slowing down the graphics.

Heh... No. It was moved from the core so it could be run reliably form the GPU. It only "slows down" the graphics on outdated or slower GPUs, or if you have "classic" mode enabled.


Relocation of menu items in context menus, control panel, etc. are just flat out confusing and unnecessary.

Perhaps from your POV. They did it to remove the "enthusiast/admin" esoteric settings out of the "normal" users way. Less clutter, cleaner... Confusing only because it's new and you are resistant to change.

ALL versions of Vista should have the ability to run the Aero interface. Users that buy PC's that come with Vista Home Basic are getting shafted. Yeah, I got Home Premium but many machines don't come with that.

Interface isn't everything. Vista is based on a server core. It is *much* better, even in "Basic" than XP.

Yet another imposed document path that doesn't match the previous ones (First there was My Documents, then Documents and Settings and now USER, which is akin to how Linux does it)

Then change it? This one makes more sense. Would you rather have them stick with a way of doing it that *didn't* make any sense?

Too many versions of the OS - remember when Windows 2000 Pro was the only single version of Windows 2000? Even XP Home and XP Pro is better than all the versions of Vista.

*yawn* Windows 2000 was not meant to be a consumer OS. :) XP had what? 9 versions including "starter" and "N"? Give it a rest.

Restrictions on Virtual Machine use regarding those extra versions of Vista mentioned above.

How many home users do you know of that use Virtual Machines?

Hardware that worked in XP do not work in Vista - including printers, scanners and sound cards, for example.

*laughs* Your 8 year-old hardware not working in a new OS? *shock* *amazement* *dismay* (Can you see the sarcasm?) If your hardware doesn't work with Vista....don't upgrade. Duh?

Hype about Vista Ultimate getting all these great "extra free add-ons" but you pretty much only got Texas Hold 'Em for your extra cash.

I agree. 100%. Ultimate is a complete rip-off until and unless they actually start offering "extras", which, from the way they have minimized it in SP1 does not look likely at all. This, above all, pisses me off, but it's a marketing issue, not a problem with the OS itself.

I could go on and on, but I hope that the point has been made.

Sure... That your perceptions and reality don't always walk the same line. You need to remember back to the old days of WFW, 95, 98, and when XP was released. We had to do minor upgrades then. Well, it's been 8 years since most of us have had to deal with that. We've gotten comfortable with not needing to update/upgrade our hardware, which is fine, if you don't intend to migrate to Vista. But using it to try and make Vista look like a bad thing? It's no different than previous OS driven upgrades, just 6 years late or a few upgrade cycles ahead depending on your perspective.

Saying Vista doesn't offer anything simply means you haven't looked at it or done *any* research into it. It's based on a server core, it's more stable, and it *does* run faster than XP when run on a proper system.

Example: 4GB, Dual-core, with discrete graphics (PCI-e, 512MB). Vista *will* kick XP's a** on this system if the hardware is compatible. It uses RAM *much* more efficiently on systems that supply enough. It offloads the UI to the GPU, which with a decent GPU speeds up response and "snappiness" greatly.

Of course, if you starve it of RAM and GPU, it will slow down *greatly* and XP will take the upper hand.

I'm not saying Vista's release was perfect. It sucked. MSFT screwed the pooch big time. They frak'd up the reqs and did not properly communicate how bare or minimum specs might impact the levels of performance.

They should not have released an upgrade SKU. Period. They should have raised the minimum recommended specs to dual core, 2GB and discrete video. They messed up.

...but that doesn't mean that on a proper system, Vista does not blow XP out of the water in every way imaginable.

So much of the Anti-Vista / Anti-XP sentiment is based on personal bias rather than facts and data. That's kind of sad, actually.

That said, DX10, imo, not worth upgrading to Vista for. BTW, I have all Nvidia based DX10 cards - 8800 GT 512, 8600 GTS 512, 8500 GT 256, 8400 GS 256. All 3 machines are Dual Core, two have 3 gig of RAM and my main gaming rig has 4 gig of RAM.

According to my benchmarks and those of gaming sites around the net, like FiringSquad for example, XP out-performs Vista in most every game out there.

I'm not saying Vista won't get better over time. But I am basically saying that Vista, as released and so far as patched, is a poor effort from Microsoft, especially compared to where Windows XP is today.

My advice to everyone who uses and likes XP is to buy as many RETAIL copies of XP as you may think you need before it is no longer available.

With security, driver and patch support for Windows XP slated to last through 2014, I see no reason why anyone should switch to Vista if they are happy with XP.

I have Vista and can boot to it any time on that Gateway machine just by changing the default boot drive in the BIOS. I have not removed it or butchered it. But each time I go into Vista, I am constanty reminded of just how bloated it feels, how inefficient it is compared to XP and how limiting it can be if you have hardware that is more than a year or so old.

If people want to run Vista - hey - honest - more power to you. But I would like to see XP remain as a retail and OEM purchasing option at least until the next full version of Windows is released.

Who knows, maybe microsoft will learn from their blunders with Vista and come out with a superior OS next time around.

I thought Windows 2000 Pro was head and shoulders above Windows NT for example and in my mind, there's no reason why history can't repeat itself if the developers just acknowledge the mistakes and try hard to correct them.

As of now, I just can't see how Vista offers any real advantages to most users.

On the Virtual Machine thing, since MS made Virtual PC free and VM's are getting so much press, it may well be that the number of users testing and running VM's will increase significantly.

My gripe with MS in this regard is the lame, restrictive licensing. You should be able to run WHATEVER legal version of Windows you have in their VM. You have games that only run well in Windows 98 SE? You have copies of Windows XP Home and want to try using a VM? There should be no reason that you should not be allowed to.

The Vista = ME comparison is to me a fairly easy one to understand. XP compared to Vista (at this stage) is simply a faster, more stable and better product. It may take so long to fix Vista that many folks may just want to skip it and wait for the next full release of the Windows OS. It's not like they will be missing out on anything important, right?

it may well be that the number of users testing and running VM's will increase significantly.

Nice bit of prognostication there, but there's no real practical use for the average user.

That said, you seem to be under the impression that you can't run a VM in certain versions of Vista.

If that is the case, you have been seriously mis-informed. The licensing restrictions for virtual machines are on using Vista as a guest, not a host. :) Just an FYI.

I perhaps did not explain myself well.

I was indeed talking about the fact that MS has restrictions that force you to purchase more expensive versions of the operating systems if you wish to install them into a virtual machine.

Then this should work fien for you;

You have games that only run well in Windows 98 SE? You have copies of Windows XP Home and want to try using a VM? There should be no reason that you should not be allowed to.

:)

Both 98 and XP can be virtualized painlessly.

Errr - legally? :)

Er....

No.

You are legally allowed to virtualize 98.xp, etc... if you own a legal copy. MSFT didn't try to license that kind of use until Vista.

As far as that goes, this current VM licensing hasn't been tested in court yet. If you own a copy of the OS and aren't running it on another PC, I really don';t think MSFT has a legal leg to stand on to keep you from virtualizing it.

For some reason, I thought that XP Home was not allowed to be run in a VM. I must have misread.

Anyway, now that I've slipstreamed my two original copies of XP (one home, one pro) I should be covered. I legally own two Pro and three Home.

I think my two press copies that I slipstreamed can still be installed on up to 10 machines. Nice...

I'm sort of looking forward to Service Pack 3 for XP and am sort of learning about RVM Integrator and the RVM Update Pack. Thankfully, he did not include IE 7 in the Update Pack, but I'm not really sure how the 2.2.1 Update Pack compares to what is currently on Windows Update in the Critical Update area.

I'm glad I'm set and I'm glad Virtual PC is free. :)

Ever tried VirtualBox? I use it myself. Haven't used Virtual PC in ages, I should probably have another go at it.

Check it out. Seems to work pretty good.

Enjoy XP, man. Seriously. I've got no problems with it, I only merely try to point out the benefits of Vista when I can... and play with the trolls a bit of course. ;)

Microsofty has been looking for the next generation on Windows ME. Vista is it. Glad I didn't step in it.

I think that vista has been a mood point for Bill Gates and for the rest of us. Mood point is an understatement, of course.

I wouldn't doubt that maybe he would rather return and bring leadership back into Microsoft instead of wasting the rest of his poor rich life learning how to play bridge.

I've been using Linux in multiple versions since before it even had X11 support, likewise for Windows and it's pregraphical ancestors. And I can firmly say having used vista x64 for six months exclusively: so what? I see no compelling or indispensable features. When they canned winfs MS was left, practically speaking, XP+Windowblinds. As for security, I suspect most of the praise is from those who have disabled UAC, et al. C'mon treating the user like he/she is a virus is not a good strategy.

...I see no compelling or indispensable features....
________________________________________________
Same here. Once I tried GNU/Linux, I couldn't be impressed by Vista (and that includes the graphical capabilities). Remember, this was the OS that started out with lots of promised features as comeoffit notes, but delivered none, unless you count UAC. Ugh.

When they canned winfs MS was left, practically speaking, XP+Windowblinds.

Riiiight. Another one who thinks Vista is a pretty UI.

For someone who actually claims to know something about computers...you apparently don't. UI isn't everything. Try looking under the hood...if you can.

Interesting to note that many computer manufacturers are now offering to supply new laptops with XP or Vista, some even do not offer Vista at all because hardware drivers tend to crash (particularly graphics). I notice that certain flavours of Linux and also Solaris are being loaded by some companies.
I don't think it's so much that Vista is struggling, I think Microsoft has lost touch with the real market. For a laptop, Vista is a joke, it's way over the top!
From my stats on my own site, Microsoft systems and it's browser 'IE' are losing numbers fast. I would read from those that Microsoft is about to burst it's bubble!

When I called our HP SMB rep a while back he said the vast majority of their customers requested XP. By license agreement with MS they weren't allowed to offer it listed first or by default.

Don't know if things have changed since that.

"Is Vista dead in the water?" LOL. Well it's not exactly a smashing success. I'd call it a lemon at this point. But the handwriting is on the wall:

http://macdailynews.com/...p/weblog/comments/16943/

I'm using Vista since RTM was released, and now I just can't look at XP, because it feels really odd and uncomfortable. Vista is not perfect, but seriously improved the way you work with computer. it's not about Aero interface with it's pretty useless flip3D and stuff, it's about tons of little useful things. Most people say "Vista sucks" just because they didn't really tried to learn it and get use of it. If Vista would be like XP in use, THAT would be indeed "WinME part 2", and if you look closely, you will see that Vista is completly different.

x.iso, Vista sucks.

I casn see x.iso probably has the ability to pass the MENSA acceptance test.

You are wrong iso, people think "Vista sucks" because they can't afford it. It works fine with no issues unless you are one of those retard who has to build your own computer, then the s*** hits the fan with compatibility.

Not one person here who says Vista sucks actually owns it. You are all retarded and pathetic DaveBG clones.

I only had one issue ever with a Lexmark printer and Vista. Low and behold, Lexmark provides Vista drivers, problem fixed.

I think you are all afraid of change like most people. You would rather complain about an O/S you've never tried or don't own because you thrive on misery.

Nice try M$ fanboi but Vista still SUCKS, no matter how hard you try and come to it's rescue. I for one do not have to own it. I had plenty of time to play with it when I setup my sister in law's new HP computer running slow, sluggish and bloated Vista.

The jury is out now, Vista is Garbageware. Get over it. :)

I have used all kinds of operating systems. I like Ubuntu and use it on a regular basis. I have also used Mac OS from time to time.

Vista works great on my machine (custom built). The only problem I have had is with Linux finding drivers. I would rather have something just work instead of looking for some strange driver off sourceforge to fix my issue.

Mac drivers work since they are limited to a few machines. That is simple and even someone without much computer knowledge could see that.

I do like how mature you are however. I remember using that M$ abbrevation years ago and I suppose it is still cool to a few people out there.

actually, I used Vista on 3 custom built computers, 2 notebooks and had no problems. Yeah, few drivers didn't found at first start, one or two didn't found automatically when internet was connected, but little later solution was found with direct links to drivers (i would just insert CD and installed driver, or find manufacturer site and downloaded it, if it was important or critical drivers). But for example, even my tablet was worked already in Vista installer, while in XP it was pain in a** to install driver for my Genius MousePen tablet.
By the way, computer I built, was not expensive, but rather pretty powerfull.

Me too. However, I RDP back my my XP box to get work done.

My Vista box is a toy. My XP box is where s*** gets done.

*plonk*

You do realize that the jury being "out" means the verdict is not in yet, right?

And I'd be willing to bet the slowness you experienced with your sisters laptop has much more to do with the hardware than Vista itself. While, admittedly, the OS takes some configuring to run smoothly (to my tastes, at least), it runs quite well on respectable hardware. Unfortunately most manufacturers (even with the Vista capable debacle) will still happily sell you a Vista box with 1GB of RAM.

Wow, you are such a moron.

Well bless you Hollywood_,
You must be one of the fortunate few. XP runs better under bootcamp on my Airbook, than Vista does on my 9 day old Dell XPS M1530 (specked to the max).
The latter was so clunky Futuremark could not give me a score, did a vlite install with SP1, still a crock.
This rig will be my fourth notebook (all highend) that will soon be cookin' with XP on it.
Indeed will give me something to do whilst cracking my first beer for the evening.

The real morons are losers like you and the other Vista trolls whining about the bloated OS and living in a silly state of denial that Vista is a lemon, no matter how many service packs you add to it. :)

You do realize that Vista is still a lemon, right giwo?

Dude, Im using Vista at work and home and I also have mac at home. They are just a tool to get the job done. You are giving us the mac user a bad name. Get a life.

Vista is fine, OSX is fine. Get over it

Your are probably the worst mac fanboy of all. Just go away. My dev box at work has Vista x64 on it. Work like a charm, no problem.

Every OS sucks in different way. They are all have pro. and con. They all have security flaws/patches...

"The jury is out now"

that means no decision has been made, and the second you used $ for MS you become nothing but a troll, troll

ahh yes, when can't win with the facts, resort to personal attacks, typical troll like pit$ingo

because you used it ?

Now who is making global statements Hollywood. Something you always accuse me of making... I will at least say that its MY opinion.

I for one Got Vista for free With a Dell Laptop, that was "Vista Compatible" ahead of launch...

Got it, installed it, used it for a few months with XP in a virtual HD so I would remain compatible. and guess what? I was in the virt drive more often then the main installation, so it didn't make sense to stay with Vista. I happily downgraded Back to what it should have been all along. A Windows XP MCE Laptop.

In every case XP ran all the things I wanted to do Better and faster then Vista did. and Even when I retested with SP1 it did little to change that fact in my case. This is the story I hear from MANY people. Not just the people you all call trolls. But even from within Microsoft's own Technet forums.

I'm not saying Vista does not have its place. It does... Just as XP home did when it was going through its growing pains... The problem MS faced was making global statements of Compatibility to satisfy vendors. Which were unattainable IMHO.

There should have been 1 tier of Vista for NEW machines only (maybe 2 if you split 32/64bit). And low end options would continue to be XP MCE SP3. And business efficiency could have been Windows 2003 Workstation.

By the time windows 7 happens Vista would become the low end option for older machines, XP becomes legacy, and so on. This pattern works, and just because MS does not prefer that model, does not mean that the Customers will not choose to go that way to protect their equipment investments.

Sorry but I think with THIS lesson and the lessons learned from the disastrous Windows ME. MS is probably rethinking the 1 windows version to rule them all attitude. That may just be what saves them in the eyes of consumers.

"M$ fanboi"..... Jesus. That is the mark of a wannabe with no thoughts or originality. Typical sheep behavior from a broke moron.

Take your web speak and **** off. Anyone who buys a Dell has been swindled, HP and Vista get along just fine.

Dell + any O/S = you got ****ed.

Well said odarky. Most of the people here have nothing better to do than complain about something they don't own.

Just like the 360 or PS3. Most losers buy one and cheerlead instead of objectively testing each one. I was the biggest Sony hater who owned a PS3 since launch.

I then starting playing with the video settings and actually updated the firmware to 2.2. Low and behold, I found out it is the finest DVD upscaler I have come accross so far. They fixed the lousy black levels and are actually adding DTS-MA and HD with update 2.3.

Of course not Slap, none of these self proclaimed "haters" actually own it.

"Not allowing everything to run under administrative privileges closes a great deal of those holes."

This "feature" has existed in since Windows NT. You can properly lock down XP and W2K using easily researchable security templates in a domain.

We do this, and viruses and spyware are so rare that we see more system problems from antivirus than we see from viruses. (i.e. no virus/trojan has ever impacted us other than the incoming spam flow increasing.)

Not the point.

You can do that. I can do that. IT groups can do that.

Mom and Pop can't. The thousands of myspace users can't (they can't even create a web-page that doesn't make you want to gouge out your eyes).

Which of those groups makes up the majority of Windows users?

Too much hardware demand in too many cases: you don't need a cannon to kill flies. Many of the features of Vista which demand that hardware are never used, be it in networks or at home. After more than 1 year of Vista most users keep using XP, and a significative number of them runs 2000 and even Win98, as you may see here:

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?

How are you dead in the water when 95% of all PC's use your software? Lol

Are you implying no company has ever lost market share before?

If not, are you implying that consumers can't and will not choose a different OS than the one they are on?

This is anecdotal, but I've never heard of an equivalent backlash on introduction of an OS since Windows ME. And back then you didn't have much chance for communication with peers since the net was so young.

So yes Vista is getting a lot of migrations, a lot of people are buying it. What choice do they, the masses have? They've used XP and they liked it, and they see 90% of PC's with vista on it so they get it...

But there is truth to this article that a lot of people in the business don't like the direction Vista takes them. We're not suggesting MS is going to die now or overnight, but we are suggesting this is a stumble that didn't have to be.

Easy when there are better alternatives out there now, such as Mac OSX, that users are becoming more aware of.

And Linux is also becoming better at the user-friendlyness, and Wine is becoming better at running Windows apps. I can run most of my frequently used Windows apps on Linux now.

There have always been threats to Windows' dominance out there, Vista is just helping speed things along a bit.

IIRC that 95% figure does NOT include PowerPC Macs, and if you do include them the number shrinks to somewhere between 80-90%. Which is a good start IMO.

The article is about the lemon OS Vista. So you're saying that 95% of all PC's use Vista? LOL. I hate to be the one that burst your bubble but thanks to the strong emergence of the Mac recently, M$ market share has dipped below 90%. And it steadily keeps falling...and falling...and falling... Thank you Vista for helping to makes this possible. :)

Yet Vista alone has more marketshare then osx and linux combined, the end is near! OMGZ ELEVENTY!!!

Some people like vista, some like linux, others like osx, some like xp and a few like a calculator. Use whatever tool works for you. If you don't like vista or Microsoft products in general why do you bother commenting, go to slashdot or the apple lounge...

Because I'm humorously entertained by you Windoze users who continue to put up with Microshaft. :)

Apple is no better than MS. The refuse to acknowledge that the Mac Pro early 2008 model have a problem. It reboots when wake up from sleep. I know..cuz i bought the damn thing. Pissed me of to no end..

After like 3 months they just post the 'update' you should see the message on the apple messageboard people are pissed.

Apple and MS is a corporation, they will do anything to get your money. Wake up!

your very entertaining as well, now go use your mac(hacked in 2 minutes)book

The only reason why Windows has such a large share is that Gates knew how to write a contract that forced manufacturers to pay a royalty for each system whether it included a copy of Windows or not. So in fact it wasn't because they made a better product but because of their unethical business practices.

The net was hardly young in 2000(when Windows ME was released).

Bill Gates made a smart decision to work with every manufacturer to make his OS work. Can Apple say that, how about Linux?

Apple hardware and software has always gone hand in hand so its a mac or nothing.

Linux has only recently gotten more consumer friendly, its still not there and probably will never be simply because Linux would turn into what everyone hates - MS.

So, how is any of that unethical?

Again, I don't expect anything intelligent it will be your typical rant that Linux is god, MS sucks blah blah blah.

I am sorry to disappoint you, but your figures are only for the US market. Market share of Apple worldwide is not more than 3%, actually closer to 2%, while it is aroud 7-8% in the US.

I use Vista and think it is a fine improvement over XP, thought not clearly a necessary one. Also I have UAC disabled which makes it easier to use. When I had UAC on, I hated Vista.
I've been toying with a Linux partition and I must say overall I very happy with Linux, and if it weren't for a few programs and other things that aren't made to work in Linux I would be using it full-time.
So Microsoft really needs to take a hard look at the product it is creating. The legacy support while nice to have, has got to go. In its wake should be virtual machines and conversion software for example.
Even the modular plan sounds like a good one as often we get saddled with product we don't need or will ever use when buying Windows.
Unless things change I very well could be a Linux user by the next time Windows is updated, simply because Linux is improving far faster than Windows is managing to simply stay current.

I threw server 2008 ( I like to think of srv08 as what Vista could have been) on my custom built desktop, and it runs amazing! Dx10, areo, sidebar and a few other server to desktop tweaks and its simply the best OS experience I have ever had out of all MS OS`s and I loved 2K and XP, but this is gold compared to them. I have no issues running all my apps, utilities, codec`s and games and connecting all my video and audio devices works smooth and very fast.And For all non believers try Firefox 3 beta on a srv2008 platform its lightning (25% overall) quick web browser then firefox 2 or 3 on either vista or XP uptime

Well I have Vista SP1 on all 7 of my computers and I have never seen any crashes, the oldest is a P4 2.6 which runs Vista fine, I have no problems with drivers either, having said all that I also have XP Pro on 6 of those computers as well which I tend to use most of the time, so I would say it was a waste of money buying Vista as XP does everything I want it to, but my laptop had Vista on from new and works fine, I will admit I did think about putting XP on it when it was new but after using it for a few months I see no point, bottom line is if it comes with Vista SP1 I would be happy to use it, but I won't be buying any more copies of Vista, thank god for OEM versions, if you want to try Vista that’s the way to go. Having said all that I would be perfectly happy to run W2K Pro over XP or Vista, it was faster than both and never crashed, so why did we update to XP again?

"so why did we update to XP again?"

The BNG factor - bold new graphics.

Geez...people sure get rabid about an operating system that is "Dead in the Water."

LOL!