If I didn't know any better, Joe, I would say you're one of Microsoft's most vociferouos Vista promoters. Your posts come at a coordinated time.

http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39425964-2,00.htm

Microsoft absolutely recommends customers deploy Windows Vista today. It represents tremendous innovation for consumers and businesses alike, from security and online safety to instant search to cool new multimedia tools. The platform innovation introduced in Windows Vista will carry forward in Windows 7 when it ships. The goal with Windows 7 is that it will run on the same hardware as Windows Vista and that the applications and devices that work with Windows Vista will also be compatible with Windows 7. So customers will be able to fully leverage their Windows Vista investments in the future when Windows 7 ships.

Please buy Vista. Pretty please. We know we misled you, the industry and our partners over 'Vista Ready', but you can trust us now. So, please, buy Vista. Note that "fully leverage their Windows Vista investments" is unlikely to mean: "You'll get a free upgrade". That investment has been fully spent.

For further information and for a video of the touch capabilities in Windows 7 please visit the Windows Vista Team Blog.

Not the Windows 7 Team Blog?

(more at URL)
-------------

Looks like the Hail Mary pass is in the air.

I've used Vista exclusively for over a year, and had no problems doing so. I don't think this is really all that much of a challenge...

I've used Vista for four months now. I spent $73 upgrading from W2KPro. My 2.0 rating PC boots Vista in 44 seconds, wakes up from standby in three seconds, and has given me zero problems.

That's not going to happen! My work admin notebook is XP Pro. My work development workstation is a quad Opteron XP Pro. My portable laptop is XP Pro. My home "desktop replacement" lappy is dual boot SUSe and XP Home. My home workstation is dual boot XP Pro and SUse. In a typical month, it's booted to Windows long enough to load patches and virus definitions. Other than that, it's pretty much on Linux. My dau is starting to prefer using her account on the Linux boot over her own XP Pro desktop. My "sandbox" machines are running Free BSD, Windows Server 2003, Ubuntu Server (used to be Vista Beta), and Ubuntu running on an old P3 laptop. Other than the Beta, the only Vista that's ever been in my house was on my wife's lappy. It was booted as far as the EULA, immediately shutdown, wiped, and had XP Pro installed. Work's not going to change -- our project is using XP. Should I get fired for refusing to use XP? Home's not going to change either. The computers I've got do everything I want. It would cost me two to three thousand dollars to buy Vista licenses and upgrade every box to dual-core and 2 GB RAM. And, for what reason? Just to run Vista??!! I think not! Anyone who can willy-nilly just switch to Vista for a month must live in a very different world than I!

"Nokia recently pulled Vista support...the firmware update failed. Luckily the phone wasn't damaged..."

Three great reasons to take the challenge, I must say. You come up with some interesting comments at times, but this particular column is just kind of weird and boosterish. Must have been some heady times at D6.

These are very basic since these are the most important things for me...

Problems:
Slight UI tweaks may confuse some users (but this is overcome very quickly)

UAC: May annoy some at first, but after a while, almost everyone gets used to it and is thankful that it's there (if not, it can be turned off)

Benefits:

Search: One of the most useful features that helps the user search their entire computer for files

UI: Looks better and it is way more efficient

Windows Media Center: Found in all but "Vista Home Basic," and it is truly amazing

Compatibility: With SP1 and several updates, almost all legacy and newer programs work with Vista.

Security: Way more secure than XP. Built in firewall and security features (including UAC)

Mobility: Mobility center helps to bring all mobile functions into one place

SP1: Fixed almost all previous problems and adds new stability and security to Vista

Seriously, give it a try, it's so much better than XP...don't listen to others, give it a try for yourself...

Funny that you should use Morgan Spurlock in your article. He royally screwed up his health with a 30 day diet of MacDonalds crap. It only seems fitting that Vista would do just that to a lot of PCs. Pass.

@ thatguy

How well does Vista handle spyware and viruses? Last time I checked, you still need third party software to protect the computer against these threats. XP also comes with a firewall out of the box. The only thing new that I know of in Vista is the UAC which in my opinion needs more maturity.

Lastly, do you also need third party software to clean up the tracking files as well (index.dat files)?

Perhaps MS will hit a security home run with Windows 7, but I don't like their batting average.

Are you kidding, I have been using vista on anew acer am1100 mcahine for a few weeks and it realy seems to want to burn out the hard drive with a magnitude more hard disk access that my other XP machine.

I can hardly wait for all those soon to be warranty claims on worn-out hard drives that are soon to descend upon pc manufacturers!
And to to top it off, microsoft has the nerve to make these systems without the option of getting them with XP instead of this crap vista bloatware!

What do you mean that microsoft has rigged it so that you have to install XP pro as a "downgrade"??

It really is time to move to linux and also try out even the reactOS as it will eventually be out of beta and does not need linux to run. The big problem is that linux has been driven by geeks and all we need is a OS that does away with windows...I will have to try to get back to apple again in the future as I reflect on the months and years of time and money wasted supporting my own and other peoples windoz boxes...you know, once a technology gets established, it gets standardized (ie: the electric grid), if MS had invented the electric grid, we would still be jumping through these useless/expensive hoops 100 years later!

I used Vista for over 30 days. I then "downgraded" back to XP when two of my favorite games would not work under Vista. One of the games is a Microsoft made for Windows game called "Gears of War". The support people could not make it work either! Too many troublesome incompatibilities, not enough bling to make it worth the hassle. I mention the games only because they were the straw that broke my back. Now I have XP and all is well. Microsoft is making a big mistake pushing Vista ME, DRM or not. If it don't work, don't sell it.

gs be careful.

Linux was designed in a no desktop world model. Current forms of Linux are starting to improve. Driver Backport project as part of LSM will see lots of driver issues just disappear.

Wine project is coming along nicely.

Little critical note MS Windows is not a ISO standard or any other standard. Its just a defacto standard. Linux Standard Base is a ISO approved standard. Just it does not cover everything yet.

Final one that will start causing Microsoft problems is the freeipa.org project providing Linux with something equal to MS ADS without having to pay ADS licensing. I expect to start to see larger movement on Linux Desktop when freeipa 2.0 gets released.

So far no one is answering how MS is going to cope with direct completion in there markets.

XP Pro will be officially dead at the end of this month, while XP Home will continue to be available, but ONLY on budget ultralights like the Asus Eee and friends. Oh, and it will be offered to OEMs at a massive discount, to try to be more competitive with Linux, which is available at no cost.

Has Joe done a commentary on Microsoft's cut-price XP offer? Just wondered whether he agrees with me that it's an absolutely stupid idea, sacrificing profit margin just to keep a hand in this market segment. It may be tolerable as a temporary strategy, but given that Microsoft seems to have no idea what to do next, it could turn into a very expensive one.

1) Use the compatibility mode on Nokia update program. IT WORKS

2a) if a program does not work it is the publisher’s problem not Microsoft’s/Apple’s/Linux e.t.c.

2b) Sony Ericsson programs work all the time in any version of Windows (XP-Vista), hence it should not be a great deal.

3) It is easy to blame Microsoft for other’s people’s mistakes.

I have a Vista machine here (it came with it) and aside from two problems it seems to be fine.
1. There's a slight incompatibility problem with the sound card that I resolved with no loss of function by deactivating one of the advanced features
2. If I leave it on all week it seems to have some memory leak issues and needs a reboot. After that it's fine.

So while it does have a few annoying quirks, and UAC quickly got turned off, it's not *that* bad. XP is a slight bit faster, but in most things you won't notice the difference.

I have a quad core desktop that ran Vista x64 w/ 4GB of RAM. Out of the box I reinstalled with a clean version from Technet media w/ SP1 integrated. My main use of the machine was for hosting VM's. XP used about ~120MB of system RAM for itself, leaving lots of RAM left to host VM's. Vista, by itself chews up almost 1.4GB of that RAM on x64. All the talk of Vista using "free" RAM efficiently is crap. It DOESN'T give ANY RAM back to applications that need it, and thus I lose roughly 5 VM instances to Vista's selfish memory management. Ultimately, I wiped Vista and used Linux & VMWare to host the virtual machines. MUCH faster, I get more RAM & CPU devoted to the workloads rather than the OS, and it was a completely free solution. To those crowing about how Vista only takes "FREE" ram, bull. It may be free before you run your application, but Vista will never give up the RAM it has taken. Try it for yourself w/ virtual machines. I'll never use Vista again.

I've used Vista Ultimate for over a year now...no major issues.

Move on people this is a tired subject.

Reminds of the whiners about moving to every next Windows version.

I've been using Windows Vista exclusively for the past six months with no issues other than slow network file transfers, which SP1 fixed. With SP1, I'd say that Vista's performance is now equivalent to WinXP SP2.

Previously, I used a Vista RC and Vista RTM about 50% of the time; the other 50% was on Windows Server 2008 R2.

--rj

I've been using Vista exclusively for over 2 years. No issues...

I've been using it since it came out as well.

There were quite a few initial software problems(printer drivers especially) on our enterprise but that disappeared around March 2007(vendors had released compatible sofware by then.

SP1 fixed the networking speed issues and that's about it.

Vista is not usable on the small/mid laptops. The specs may be similar to a desktop but the performance is not. Laptops fall precipitously behind the technology curve and with all the price drops, I don't see that changing soon.

I currently use Server 2008 with the Aero turned on at work. Because it's already at a Vista SP1 code base, it's been perfect out of the gate - in fact I'd say faster than Vista.

@Robert - that has nothing to do with Vista

I play most major games excusivly on Vista(Halo 2 was the main reason I upgraded originally) and it hasn't failed to play one properly yet.

I have been using Vista for over a year with no issues as well other than our SonicWall VPN Client doesn't work but that isn't Microsoft's fault.

There appears to be a reoccurring theme regarding Vista in this blog. Essentially it is "I have no problems with Vista except for blah blah blah."

All this is just an upgrade treadmill with little real added value for the consumer. I stand by my comments of Vista not having basic anti-virus and anti-spyware and that it should have these features out of the box.

I've been running Vista 64 for at least a year, on a 2 - 3 year old pc. Never had a problem, before or after sp1. I do software development with Visual Studio 2003/2005, run sql server 2005, vmware server. I've seen a few things that could use improvement (netork management gui) but to this day I still can't figure out what these columnists are talking about. As near as I can tell they are people who didn't really use vista, and instead decided to spend there time writing doomsday articals in an attempt to get eyeballs reading their missinformed online essays in the hopes of generating ad revenue. Obviously like any other new OS there's bugs or incompatibilities. I think this propogation of bad information by uninformed writers for wired magazine and the like are the reason for poor public perception.

It seems odd to me that people haven't figured out that you can't grow without changing the architecture once in a while and people got what they asked for with UAC. Many of these "incompatibilities" aren't problems with vista, they're problems with the incompatible application. Sometimes you have to cull the old stuff.

@JM

Last time I checked, Vista came with windows defender...hm, sounds like an anti-spyware to me...right out of the box...

All I'm hearing from you is: "I don't care about the facts, but I just try and fit in by bashing Vista. I don't listen to people who actually use it...blah blah blah..."

Nice try JM, next time get your facts straight...

A month is too short a test period. My computer has dropped to 3.61 reliability index since it was purchased 6 months ago. Out of the box it was 8.92 and started a free fall about 3 months after purchase. Hitting as low as 2.88 about 4.5 months after purchase. It climbed up a bit to 7 then dropped back to 2.6 or so. Now it is crawling up from 3.x.

It is slow to wake up from hibernation it is sluggish and given I disabled Aero to optimize memory usage I see nothing better than say Win2003 server. UAC is just a huge IF THEN ELSE statement that doesn't even ask me for a password to proceed. Don't see much of a benefit over other implementations such as Apple's on a Mac.

Even though the inner works may be technically better than previous Windows versions. The end user experience is miserable when compared to XP.

PS I'm afraid to install SP1. Honestly I need to work these days not pray it doesn't go belly up.

I have been using Windows Vista since beta 1 and have had a respectable to excellent experience with the operating system. Using Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit RTM has brought about various challenges some of which were overcome with various device driver updates and software updates within its first 8 months on the market. I still encounter issues with BVRP Mobile Phone Tools software on Vista 64-bit but otherwise it flawless on Vista x86. Performance is an ongoing story, but contrary to what a lot of Microsoft-Watch commenters have detailed, I have had an acceptable if not normal experience. Windows Vista SP1 incorporated feedback customers suggested including me, where performance and boot times has been signficantly improved in areas such as boot and shutdown times. For me it varies around 30 to 40 seconds on startup from BIOS to desktop compared to Vista RTM which had results of around 45 to 55. The general snap of the system has kept up in comparison to XP, because the new Defragmenter which runs in the background as a low priority task keeping Windows efficient over time. Customers should be most pleased with the out of the box experience Vista delivers. For me personally its getting that digital lifestyle in order, whether its photos, videos, music or file documents. Just the search experience alone has given me tremendous love for the OS. Consumers need to get over the perception of the OS generated by Open Source madness and actually experience before coming to a single minded conclusion. Vista is great from the start and I believe it will only continue to get better and better. I am seeing Vista everywhere I go, I was in the girls auditorium last night and 3 out of 5 were running Vista. HP by the way are creating some great Vista based laptops, one of the young ladies had an HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook with 4 GBs of RAM!

"Windows Defender" has been proven to be among the least effective malware detectors to date. I wouldn't exactly brag about its presence in Vista.

Longer term, Microsoft will continue to lose mind share & market share. It will not be successful in competing with free.

Even today, Vista is nowhere near 200 dollars better than Ubuntu. This gap will only widen as Linux will not go away, go broke, or become harder to use.

I have been using Vista for a year and had no problems with it except for when I loaded the sp1
I reloaded and no problems since

Andre, please understand I'm not saying I'm having an abnormal experience. Quite the contrary and sadly for Microsoft it is quite normal. Unfortunately a normal Vista experience is not an acceptable experience. At least for a large group of people who either have experience with other OSs or expect something better than a facelift.

BTW, could you please explain to me the relevance of a boot up time? Seems like a measurement relevant for an unstable OS or one that requires a restart after install. I'd find the average time to come out of hibernation or the average time to a required reboot to be a much more important figure. For example my Mac comes out of hibernation in about 4 seconds and requires a reboot after about 30 days (gets a bit slow). Vista on the other hand needs about 30 seconds to come out of hibernation and can't be up for more than 30 hours without a reboot.

Why not try Vista, and only Vista, for the next 30 days?

What's to try? There is spyware, bloatware, adware and then everything from the Redmond Bloatfarm!

Wow, what a bumper crop of junk that you get from the beastmasters of Washington.

This is worth having?

@Gerardo - 30 hours without a reboot? I rarely ever do anything but hibernate and in fact the work one is on 24 hours a day/7 days a week.

I never reboot it unless an install requires it. Server 2008 is no different. I don't know about your mac but mine never gets slow - I once went almost 3 months without hibernating or rebooting my PC.

I actually worry about how long I between reboots - a problem may one day come up that causes a problem and I've forgotten what it could have been(device driver for instance).

I believe that the 30 days would be better spent on purchasing XP Pro and using it later on when you buy or build a new computer in a year or two.

Eventually I am planning to finish making the migration...to Linux after this year. So I can have the most modern up to date operating system and yet have the highest performance and speed. Since I don't do any games, the transitioning will be easier.

I'll still use XP and Windows 2000 occasionally if and when needed for running a few non Linux programs like Tax Cut. But thats about it.

Everyone who is complaining about vista is on the bandwagon and has no real issues with it other than just wanting to fit into a crowd of moaners.

I use Vista on my desktop and laptop without any issues. If wanted to I could consider the UAC prompts the only issue I have had with Vista, but that is easily disabled. My desktop has been on for 3 weeks now without any stability problems (would be longer but the power went out) it still runs perfect. My notebook also has had no issues. I don't have any issues with slowness or the hard drive cranking away. I don't have any memory leaks, every application I use functions fine. I have had 0 issues.

It brings me to wonder if everyone who is bitching about the performance of Vista is running it on substandard hardware. Sure, XP recommends 256MB of ram but it sure runs like crap. Vista recommends 512MB of ram but who in their right mind would expect it to run fine? Are all you 'tech' guys too dense to understand that hardware advances over time? It almost scares me that some of you are in the IT field. Your logic really defies the whole idea of technology. The whole IT industry is about change and advancement, that hasn't changed at all. If we didn't look forward and move ahead we would all still be using punch cards and other obsolete hardware.

Change is here, it is a standard that will slowly be implemented, conform or be left behind (and it really isn't that hard to conform)...

I've been using Vista for several months and vendors and companies other than microsoft have been the problem I have found (usually good companies for me like Asus and Intel). They have been slow to write device drivers for Vista. My only complaint would be that the UAC doesn't seem to learn like it's supposed too. I've found Vista to be very reliable.

Things Windows 7 should come with:
Unlocker-the best freeware program there is, Microsoft buy this program and incluse it.
Pdf viewer
Quicktime
Flash
Shockwave
Basic burning application
Virtual drive
Cam video support
System wide spell check

@ "yuo win"

Wow, be glad you don't work for me! I'm in IT, around 7,500+ desktops & 1,100 servers. It is NOT about change & advancement WITHOUT it bringing value (read $$) to the business. We don't "just change" for the sake of transparent window borders. Vista does not bring any fundamental benefits to the business given the increased cost of hardware, licensing, training, and migration. Enterprise IT is not about deploying on every MSFT press release, it's about gaining a competitive advantage through the (smart) deployment of technology given a finite amount of funding. Vista brings nothing to the business's bottom line compared to the above mentioned costs and risks.

Only it would be , if I get TIME and MONEY to waste (sorry JOE, are you going to REPAY THE MONEY if we do not like it?.)
Oh wait, Now I remember that I used THAT TIME downgrading Vista to XP.
Why not to use THAT TIME trying Linux? after all it's free.

@Chris

Good for you, I'm glad you have a job. Not that it was really necessary to include that in your reply, but to each their own.

You could say the same thing about Win2k vs XP...or even NT4 vs XP. I wasn't talking about funding. I'm talking about change. The market changes, hardware becomes outdated as does software. This is a known fact. So if you choose to have your company sit on ~7+ year old hardware/software, that is your choice...but to sit and say that Vista sucks 'because' is silly and immature. Vista is a building block that has been developed to last a long time. Remember how crappy XP ran on some systems when it first came out? Remember how many people hated it and said Win2K was way better because it didn't look pretty? I bet you were one of those tools then just like you are now.

Most consumers who dislike Vista only dislike it because big headed IT clowns like yourself spew slander and misinformation abroad. Half the people I talk to who say they don't like Vista haven't even used it or seen it first hand. If they did use it it was on a substandard system that hardly meets the system requirements. I guess the bottom line is, you're an idiot and posting how many 'systems' you manage doesn't make your ePenis any larger. You're a trolling clown just like most of the other anti-Vista bandwagon.

>>Most consumers who dislike Vista only dislike it because big headed IT clowns like yourself spew slander and misinformation abroad. Half the people I talk to who say they don't like Vista haven't even used it or seen it first hand. If they did use it it was on a substandard system that hardly meets the system requirements. I guess the bottom line is, you're an idiot and posting how many 'systems' you manage doesn't make your ePenis any larger. You're a trolling clown just like most of the other anti-Vista bandwagon.

I've used Vista since the day it was released. It's running on 4 of the 7 computers in my home. I think it's the last Microsoft operating system I'll ever use (the other computers are running Ubuntu which I'm happy with). Vista has simply not been good enough. By an large it has worked but at times it has been frustrating, with a poor experience even on very high spec new machine (4.3 user experience). I insisted on moving my home directory to another drive, which should have a trivial process. Well, it wasn't and there are still timewasting odd gremlins like shadow copies of my documents directory. I am happy with one machine running as a personal video recorder--although the user interface of Vista Media Center is lame and dated. For the rest I wouldn't do it again and I advise anyone considering Vista to skip it and use Ubuntu instead. You can run most Windows applications with the WINE emulator. Yes, there's a learning curve, but it's actually not so different from switching to Vista.

@thatguy

OK, you got me on the anti-spyware Windows Defender as default in Vista. However, it is a free download for XP users as well and is an INCOMPLETE security product. You still need third party antivirus software. Nice try thatguy, but Vista is still not fully secure out of the box without third party software.

Lastly Vista also include software to clean the index.dat files, you know, the 'big brother' tracking files?

To yuo win:
If because its Monopoly, Ms was giving to us rubbish (products half backed) and after impruving it our cost, it just mean that Ms was taking advantage on us, actually the alternatives (competition) are changing it and none enraged "shill" (behave like the infamous Andre, BlahBlah) will be preventing this.
----------
BTW: "I guess the bottom line is, you're an idiot and posting"... 'you Win' (of course a pathetic anagram)..."doesn't make your ePenis any larger."

@Andre who stated:

"I am seeing Vista everywhere I go, I was in the girls auditorium last night and 3 out of 5 were running Vista. HP by the way are creating some great Vista based laptops, one of the young ladies had an HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook with 4 GBs of RAM!"

She probably needs 4 GB of RAM on her laptop to get a decent response out of Vista. She was right to double up on the MS recommended amount of memory.

Look, Vista was a half baked dog back in 2007. IT veterans who are experienced with sloppy software from vendors should not be slammed from pro vendor wags who have a vested interest in that sloppy software.

Vista may work somewhat fine now (with all of the exceptions listed above), but I am not shelling out $200-300 per box just to appear cool. Real enterprise IT veterans recognize the difference between value and white paper glitter. Besides everyone knows that Macs are cooler than PCs anyway. Just ask the PC guy.

@JM

"She probably needs 4 GB of RAM on her laptop to get a decent response out of Vista."

Where'd you pull that piece of information? Again, another myth that is stated as a fact. I have used and built tons of Vista systems with 2GB of ram and they function flawlessly.

Do you guys complaining even use computers? Do you guys complaining even know anything about hardware or the market outside of your "IT" office? You guys crack me up...so resistant to new things and so quick to blame Microsoft for issues that were not even their problem. This is the only thing I hate about working in this industry...all of the close minded zealots who do nothing but complain.

I have used Vista since the early BETA stages.
I didn't like the interface then and it has not grown on me.
To me, it looks like XP thrown in a blender and purreed, then poured in the pigpen to cure.
Rearranging things doesn't make it better or more secure. And UAC will just condition people to click through to get 'that damn screen out of my way'.
I use it because I have to support it, but I don't like it. It feels like old AOL software, we will protect you from yourself...no matter what YOU want...
I think the bottom line of the whole debate is user perception.
Any OS can have glitches, but if the user interface doesn't 'feel' right, people will complain and look for alternatives.

@ yuo win

It is so typical for some in the IT industry to assume how much memory an end user needs on their machine with a proper evaluation. Perhaps Vista runs great on 2 GB by itself, but she probably added 2 GB so that she could multitask with other applications. Multitasking is something most end users need.

You and I mean 'yuo' are getting a little too upset about Vista. Calm down, its just a half baked OS thats all. Nothing personal here and I am not a zealot. Thanks for the name calling.

@Andre who stated:

"I am seeing Vista everywhere I go, I was in the girls auditorium last night and 3 out of 5 were running Vista. HP by the way are creating some great Vista based laptops, one of the young ladies had an HP Pavilion Entertainment Notebook with 4 GBs of RAM!"...........

Haha, so the girls in the auditorium in Jamaica have that kind of money to own this type of equipment? Or are you just another Microsoft shill as people here say, and the truth does not matter?

I've been using Vista since February '07 (not exclusively, though). The biggest problem I've had is just upgrading to SP1. There are even hardware requirements just to upgrade to SP1. I have 2 computers at home that crashed when I upgraded. My assumption is that it's because of the DirectX 10.1 requirement. One just kept having problems with a corrupt file system and the other kept shutting the screen off and would never come back.

I just got a job supporting Macs back in December. So now that I've been using those, I barely even touch my Vista machines. They are just so much easier and more fun to use. Still, I have to keep using PC's just so I remember how.

I have been using Vista for over a year. It has been absolutely fine, just great. The only exceptions are: I cannot run my finance program from my employer and it is not 100% compatible with my sound card (every few hours it crackles then goes out), but all I have to do is reboot and it works again. Oh, and a few of my programs, some are MS software, cause the Aero interface to go out. The screen flashes and goes black for a few seconds, but the programs work pretty good for the most part. There are other minor issues, but no big deal at all. My "old" mp3 player from 2003 is a bit fidgety. You have to plug it into the computer, in the system tray Vista says it is installing the drivers (everytime I connect), and then it will say the device did not install correctly. I just reboot and once I log in, it works fine. One other thing, my DVD drive cannot read discs I burn at work. But it can when I am booted into XP or Linux. Vista seems slower to move files, but not that much slower. It took about 8 hours and 4 attempts to get SP1 loaded, but I got it and my system feels better. It didn't fix any of my issues, but they are so minor anyway. So, I would say Vista is a complete success, it works pretty great, and I am so glad I have it on my PC.

Can someone who's run a "flawless" vista install point Al in the direction of the Vista Shill SKU? having used the home premium on other's machines (gads, what a monumental time waster working on vista...), Al is interested in the magically perfect Shill edition. He's tired of mucking around with the non-shill editions that are rife with problems.

I think the shill edition is available on bit torrent. The tracker is www.tor_OU812_Vista_shill_1234_back2XP_formatC_WinME

Ha,ha,ha
When yuo... pardon..you downloaded the magically perfect Shill edition, MS will send you a new and powerful Notebook, just log in:

www.where_ is_ my_ laptop.com

Honestly, why?

If I had a brand-new machine, with a Core 2 Duo 2GHz and 3 GB of RAM minimum, I would probably give it a go. But what incentive is there for paying to "upgrade" Windows on my 1-year-old, 2GB machine? I would need to upgrade the RAM at minimum because I often run my Windows virtualized.

I've played with it on a couple friends' machines I was working on. The new UI is counterintuitive in many ways to me; things take too long or too many clicks to do. Speed was OK on both of them, though only on one was I able to compare it to XP, and Vista was 10-15% slower to my calibrated eyes and fingers (both fresh installs).

Minimum RAM usage on either of those boxes was 1GB right after startup, no user-initiated apps running. Is Vista really 700MB better than XP? I'd have to say no.

Interestingly, UAC seems to me to be one of Vista's best features, particularly for less-knowledgeable users. I don't find it overly annoying, and with it could probably run Vista without anti-malware of any kind (except maybe the built-in firewall). But I am also doing this with XP as a non-admin user, though with more effort.

In the end, Vista's advantages don't outweigh its drawbacks for me. I'll use it if I get it on a new machine, or am forced to go to it because of some app I use, but otherwise, no thanks.

Hmm:

> Thirty days with Vista is no longer super painful, particularly if Service Pack 1 is installed.

Wow. The hard sell. Love the commitment.

However, I did 60 days with Vista. Aside from the UAC lunacy, it started losing personal data, flaky as hell, and of course nothing would run on it.

So I bought a Mac.

Keep pounding that Vista bandwagon.

---* Bill

The problem began when MS started dropping features they promised like a new file system that stopped fragmenting.

At each beta release more promised features started disappearing in an attempt to get to market.

Lousy driver support, no previous hardware support as the hardware manufactures balked at new drivers. After all they are in the business of selling hardware. Programs from 3rd parties were ho longer compatable.

When you added up the numbers, it would cost the average PC user $1000 to upgrade.

A high end video card, new software and printer added to the cost $299 for Vista.

For a couple of hundred more that OEM of Vista, you could buy a new machine, so why bother. Besides, XP is as good OS from MS we've ever seen.

c/,-O

@JM

oh ouch, so name me one OS that doesn't need a third party antivirus/spyware suite? Linux doesn't count because it's not a good enough OS to be included...not to mention, no one uses it so no one codes viruses for it. And Mac OS is the same way w/ no one using it, so it's very rarely coded for...not to mention the included security features are too invasive or not secure enough...

Nice try JM...

I've been a PC/Mac user for years, Windows 3.1 up to XP-Pro and System 4 or 5 up to OSX 10.4 - no upgrade to Leopard yet. Truth is, I like the Mac better, but have used Windows XPP more in the last several years.

I have a Dell Vostro, XPP, running with NO PROBLEMS. It came with 2 gig of RAM

Wanted to get my wife a new laptop - got her a Toshiba with Vista Home Premium. Was slow as Christmas, since it only had 1 gig of RAM. Upgraded to 2 gig, it helped but it's still slow. It's a Core 2 Duo, 1.8 ghz processor, so it's no slouch.

I can live with the slowness, as can she. But, she, and I, just can't get over the Vista "experience". The straw that has broken the camel's back is when you click pretty much anywhere, it makes the window shrink/resize downward. I've tried every thing I can find, reinstalling IE, installing all the updates, patches, asking our IT/friends, submitting questions online, etc., NOTHING works. It is SO FRUSTRATING!!! "WHY won't my laptop run was well is yours?", is the standard comment I hear nearly every night. "Why won't it run as well as my desktop at my (elementary) school?" I have to tell her that both machine are running XPP instead of Vista. She's had enough, as have I.

So, sometime in the new few weeks, I'll find a cheap place to purchase XPP. I'll have to spend a GREAT deal of time trying to find the appropriate drivers so the laptop will work properly, as I did with my son's HP laptop (top of the line machine, 2 gig of RAM) when he decided to downgrade. It just isn't worth it, trying to get Vista working properly so my wife won't be upset all of the time. I HAVE (really I WANT) to live with her, I DON'T have to live with Vista.

BTW, at my university, they won't even talk about going Vista. In fact, every freshman and 1/4 of the faculty this fall will receive new MacBooks. Vista is bad enough that it's convinced our IT department that it's better to switch everyone to a Mac, a "toy" that they've laughed at for YEARS. For those who MUST have Windows (some business and science faculty), the Intel Macs will have XP-Pro installed. As far as Vista is concerned, they are saying, "No way, Jose."

Who knows, maybe when Windows 7 is stable, some of us will move back. Right now, it's either stick with XPP or OSX with the Mac.

thatguy:"Linux doesn't count because it's not a good enough OS to be included."

Ubuntu last laptop standing in hacking contest

Ubuntu machine was the sole survivor of a hacking contest designed to find undiscovered flaws in Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

The competition at the CanSecWest security conference pitted hackers against three laptops running Vista Ultimate SP1, Leopard OS X 10.5.2 and Ubuntu 7.10 to discover which was the most vulnerable.

The Leopard machine fell first, just two minutes into the second

day of competition which allowed hackers to target applications installed on the operating systems.

Apple's MacBook Air was let down by a flaw in Safari, when security researcher Charlie Miller used a technique similar to a phishing attack to give him remote access to the machine.

On the third day of competition, hackers were allowed to target any "popular" piece of software that runs on the remaining machines. Adobe's Flash proved to be Vista's downfall, as hacker Shane Macaulay discovered a zero-day exploit in the software.

Adobe has been notified of the flaw, while Macaulay gets to keep the Fujitsu laptop running Vista Ultimate SP1 that he managed to break in to, and a $5,000 prize.

The Ubuntu Linux machine was the only one to make it through three days of competition unharmed. Although Macaulay is reported to have claimed that his Flash exploit could be tweaked to target any of the three operating systems within a matter of hours.

It mean All the S.O can be vulnerable, BUT Ubuntu was the best and here the 3 SO were in the same conditions (the same environment).

@thatguy

"so name me one OS that doesn't need a third party antivirus/spyware suite?"

OpenSuse 10.3

Linux and Mac do count as valid OSs. MS is where GM and Ford were back in the 1970s.

@badknee

Just what I have been saying all the time. Q: What is the compelling reason to switch to Vista? A: None. Just because SOME people have had no problems? That is the reason to switch? Even if you don't have problems, which is rare, you are getting less performance and the ability to do, well... not much more really. Just fancy pants Window Dressing and sub-par mini-apps. Just use XP Pro SP3 and superior 3rd party apps to protect your machine and you have a superior system to Vista.

And even if Windows 7 fixes the problems with Vista, will that make it better than XP? Will it have better performance than XP? Will it have capabilities above and beyond XP, capabilities that actually matter, not just Sidebars, translucent windows and Windows Media Player 12?

The only reason Vista will sell is because it is force fed on your new PC and eventually MS will pull the plug on XP.

I've used vista exclusively now for over a year.. I love it.. don't know what all the complaining is about.

Check this document comparing XP vs Vista.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=37D0C614-9C06-4B61-BB2E-6AB9953A14AB&displaylang=en

The comparison XP version of IE vs Vista IE 7 is interesting. And the UAC details have nice details...